Aging General to Lead Uganda : U.S. Embassy Plans to Evacuate Its Personnel

Gen. Tito Okello was sworn in Monday as the new head of the Ugandan government in a ceremony on the steps of the Parliament building in the Ugandan capital of Kampala, battered in two days of shooting and looting by drunken soldiers.

Okello, who is believed to be about 71, promised elections and a return to civilian rule within a year.

Although the gunfire that rocked the capital for the last two days has subsided somewhat, it was learned that the U.S. Embassy in Kampala was making plans Monday to evacuate its personnel.

According to the plan, which was not yet final, the U.S. Embassy personnel and their dependents--believed to number about 40--are to be evacuated by road today. It is about a five-hour drive from Kampala to the Kenyan border.

Sources in Nairobi said the convoy also could include German, Italian and British members of the diplomatic community.

All airports in Uganda are closed. A journalist who contacted the control tower at Entebbe airport by telephone Monday was told, “If you come here, we will shoot you.”

It was learned that U.S. officials in Kampala had advised the Ugandan leaders that it was considering an evacuation. The officials noted that although no U.S. citizens were harmed during the two days of violence that followed the coup, a warehouse containing embassy supplies was looted by armed soldiers.

If the evacuation is carried out, it is likely that the convoy would be escorted by Ugandan army personnel and vehicles. One possible hitch to the plan, it was learned, was finding enough embassy cars, several of which were stolen or partly dismantled in the hours after the coup. One was hit by a mortar shell.

The U.S. Embassy in Kampala has only minimal security, and there are no U.S. Marine guards assigned there, as there are at most U.S. embassies.

The ceremony on the Parliament steps suggested that the new government was taking its first steps to impose order in the country, but it was far from clear how effective the move would be.

Full Battle Gear

The appearance of the aging general, the top commander in the Ugandan army, dressed in full camouflage battle gear, drew a crowd of about 500 soldiers, civilians and a sprinkling of the city’s diplomatic corps. Some spectators were venturing out of doors for the first time since the Saturday coup that drove Ugandan President Milton Obote out of power and into exile, at least temporarily, in neighboring Kenya.

“Within a year, Ugandans will have a government of their choice,” said Gen. Okello in remarks that lasted less than a minute.

Earlier Monday, Kampala radio announced that Okello will become the chairman of a ruling military council. It said he will announce the appointment of an “executive prime minister,” who will in turn appoint a Cabinet. In the meantime, the radio said, the permanent secretaries of the various government ministries were to assume responsibility for running the government.

On Sunday, the government announced that the constitution and the national Parliament had been dissolved. A dusk-to-dawn curfew remains in effect.

Rebellion in the North

Standing at Okello’s right for the ceremony was Brig. Basilio Olara Okello (not related to the new head of state), who a week ago ignited a military rebellion in the north that quickly advanced on the capital and ousted Obote, who had held power in Uganda since 1980.

Diplomatic sources in Nairobi said Monday that the Kenyan government has privately confirmed that Obote was still in the country. Some reports said he was staying at an up-country farm of Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi.

Residents of Kampala said Monday that the shooting and looting that broke out in the city over the weekend had subsided, but most residents were staying indoors. Shops and offices were closed, and the streets were mostly empty.

The new government, diplomats said, was believed to be making overtures to rebel leader Yoweri Museveni, who for almost five years has led his Uganda National Resistance guerrillas in a campaign against the Obote government. It was not yet clear that their appeals were meeting with success, although a spokesman for Museveni said Sunday that the guerrillas welcomed Obote’s ouster.

Several Reported Arrested

A key member of the Obote government, Vice President and Minister of Defense Paulo Muwanga, was reportedly safe at his house in Kampala. Several other members of the former president’s Cabinet were reported to have been arrested, including Chris Rwakasisi, another close Obote adviser.

Muwanga is rumored to be in contact with both the top generals, but the new regime has not mentioned him in any of its public statements.

Tito Okello is a career soldier who was trained by the British and who served with British troops in Burma in World War II. In the pre-independence era in Uganda, with the British in control of the military, Okello was a noncommissioned officer. He was made an officer after independence.

He had risen to the rank of colonel by 1971, when Obote, Uganda’s first president after independence, was toppled by Idi Amin, then the top commander in the Ugandan army.

2,000 Remained Loyal

Okello then commanded the army’s second brigade, a unit of 2,000 troops who remained loyal to Obote in the first hours after Amin’s coup. David Martin, an historian of the period, has written that Okello might have been able to thwart the coup but that he failed largely through indecision. After two days, Okello fled across the border to Tanzania.

In September, 1972, Okello led about 1,000 Ugandans in an invasion attempt aimed at driving Amin from power. The invasion was beaten back after two days.

He returned to Uganda in 1979 after Amin was driven from power by the Tanzanian army. Obote, with whom he had remained close, appointed him commander of the army and chief of the defense staff.

The real power in the army, however, was in the hands of Gen. David Oyiti Ojok, an effective young commander who had been at Okello’s side during the 1972 invasion attempt. Okello, military observers said, was content to play largely a figurehead role in the army and leave the actual command to Ojok. Ojok, however, was killed in a helicopter crash in 1983.

Brunt of Casualties

Ojok’s death, analysts say, led to the unraveling of the Ugandan army. Obote appointed one of his own Langi tribesmen to take Ojok’s place, after a lengthy wait, triggering dissatisfaction among the rival Acholi tribesmen in the army, who felt they were bearing the brunt of the casualties inflicted by Museveni’s guerrilla movement.

It was a revolt of the Acholi--both Okellos are Acholi--that led to the coup on Saturday.

The success of the coup, however, does not guarantee that peace will follow in the Ugandan army, most observers say. Nor does it guarantee that Uganda’s deep tribal conflicts will be quickly smoothed over.

Museveni’s movement is based largely on the support of the Baganda tribe, whose members dominate the southern part of the country and the area around Kampala. The tribe, in pre-colonial times, was one of the most powerful in East Africa, ruled by a series of monarchs known for their ruthlessness. The last of the Baganda monarchs, Kabaka Muteesa II, was driven out of the country by Obote in 1966.

Powerful, Well-Educated

Since then, the Baganda have remained out of power, and many observers of Ugandan politics have suggested that little peace can come to the country without a political system that includes this powerful and generally well-educated group.

Descriptions of Kampala in the aftermath of the coup--scenes of soldiers walking down the streets carrying looted television sets on their heads, smashing windows, swilling down cases of beer--indicates that the army has not undergone any sudden transformation because of the change at the top.

Uganda’s Roman Catholic cardinal, Emmanuel Nsubuga, who last week called on Obote to resign, noted Sunday that none of Uganda’s 14 million people have taken to the streets to celebrate the change in their country’s government, usually an aftermath of coups in Africa. Instead, he said, they are cautious and fearful.

“I think Ugandans have learned their lesson,” he said.