{Uganda Parliamentary Defence Committee says wrong priorities threaten national security}
If not addressed, problems in the way the way the UPDF is run pose national security threats, according to analysts including some on the powerful Parliamentary Defence Committee.
An indication of this emerged this September as the parliamentary committee on Defence and Internal Affairs scrutinised the ministerial policy statement of the Ministry of Defence.
While queries about how the ministry spent some Shs 20 billion is what made headlines, the legislators seemed to have touched a raw nerve when they raised the question of failure to retire army officers—an issue that haunts many in the force.
The MPs report has also awakened debate about several other concerns ranging from incessant desertions, regional imbalances in recruitment, training and promotions, failure to revamp the army’s productive sectors, failure to kick start the army general hospital and delay in pulling out of foreign missions.
Owing to its decisive successes against national and regional security threats, the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) has achieved near-hero status both at home and abroad. Its victories against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), al Shabab in Somalia and Riek Machar’s rebels in South Sudan, have won it praises from Chinese, European and American diplomats including former U.S Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Even his most determined critics appreciate that President Yoweri Museveni has turned the army around a ragtag force, which won him the president in 1986 and was riddled with corruption in its early years, into the pacifier of the region.
Recent developments could expose the underbelly of this efficient fighting machine.
Failure to retire officers is one of the most controversial issues in the army, a senior UPDF officer, who also qualifies for retirement, told The Independent on conditions of anonymity.
Since 2007 and 2008, when the army leadership retired many officers, the force remains clogged with officers who qualify for retirement. Despite budgeting for retirement annually, legislators were concerned that the army has only been releasing a maximum of 20 officers, year on year.
“It is not only unconstitutional but also a gross violation of human rights of soldiers; keeping such a disgruntled group of soldiers is a threat to national security,” the defence committee legislators wrote in their September review of the Defence Ministry Policy Statement.
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