It was going to be a matter of time before Ugandan president Yoweri Musevenis rage, over the decision by Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi to seek military assistance from Rwanda to fight Islamic State (IS) terrorists, boiled over to the surface. The jihadists have been killing people and destroying property in the countrys northern province of Cabo Delgado for four years. For a while, after Kigali sent Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) troops and a contingent of Rwanda National Police (RNP) officers to Mozambique, Museveni had stayed put waiting to see the Rwandan mission fail. On his return from Kigali, President Nyusi had told reporters that he asked President Paul Kagame for military assistance because Rwanda is the only country in Africa with a proven record and experience in fighting violent extremists. As some in the Southern African region sought to criticize the Mozambican leaders decision to seek Rwandas support, Ryan Cummings, a security analyst based in Cape Town, said that President Kagame is admired for contributing peacekeeping missions worldwide and thats why his Mozambican counterpart, Filipe Nyusi, reached out to him. Rwandan soldiers and police officers hit the ground running and the global news media started reporting that, together with Mozambican troops the joint forces were quickly retaking towns and territory from the IS fighters. They had killed several terrorists and captured some of their leaders. Then Mocimboa da Praia, a strategic port city which the jihadists had turned into their headquarters, was recaptured. Museveni wasnt amused and his Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) went to work. The agencys mouthpiece, Chimpreports, put out a lead story which alleged that South Africas minister of defence, Thandi Modise had warned Rwanda not to celebrate any victories in the war against IS in Mozambique, calling reports of the fall of Mocimboa da Praia, Rwandan propaganda. Meanwhile, a local news media outlet, Club of Mozambique, was reporting that Mocimboa da Praia was retaken ...after a campaign led by Rwandan troops who were deployed to the region last month, as part of a bilateral agreement. Within hours, however, Chimpreports took down the story, along with a fake audio it had attributed to the minister. Clearly, some South African official was breathing down its editors necks. Within the same period, reports that president Museveni had sent an envoy, Gen Ivan Koreta, to Mozambique with a special message to President Nyusi started to circulate on social media and according to Uganda government-owned newspaper, the New Vision, During the meeting, Koreta expressed Ugandas availability to help Mozambique overcome the challenges it is facing such as terrorism. Mozambique, its northern province of Cabo Delgado in particular, has been under attack from the IS terrorists for the last four years, with many innocent people killed and many more forced to flee their homes. Even after it became public that president Nyusi had asked Rwanda for help, Museveni didnt offer his military support. Then global television networks began broadcasting images of Rwandan and Mozambican troops, inspecting the positions and towns they had recaptured from the Islamists, including Mocimboa da Praia, which IS terrorists used as their headquarters. Commanders from the joint force on the battlefront were announcing that 90% of the work was complete. Thats when the Ugandan president decided it was time for his army to join the fight. Analysts who, for decades, have closely observed Musevenis political scheming in the Great Lakes region, though, saw it coming from a mile away. In 1997 when Rwandan troops were approaching the outskirts of Kinshasa, the Capital of Zaire later renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with the war to remove its long-time kleptocratic ruler, Mobutu Sese Seko coming to an end, Museveni sought to pull a wool over Kigalis face. He suggested to then Vice president and minister of defence, Paul Kagame that the Rwandan troops pull back and have his own soldiers who he said were fresh, take over the capital. It didnt work. Cabo Delgado is symbolically deeply personal to Museveni, who has idolized Mozambique for over fifty years now. In 1970, as a student at the University of Dar-es -Salaam, he wrote a paper on the verification of Franz Fanons theory of violence. It was, he said, inspired by a visit he and a number of other students made in 1968 to the liberated territory of Mozambique, arranged for them by FRELIMO freedom fighters. Through the years he has never missed an opportunity to tell whoever cared to listen that Montepuez in the northern province of Cabo Delgado is his Mecca. It is, Museveni says, where his military career began and the place where the original nucleus of his fighters trained and by the time Amin collapsed on 11th of April 1979, this group of 28 had helped me raise a force of 9000 soldiers. In May 2018, president Museveni made what the news media in Uganda described as a nostalgic pilgrimage to Mozambique accompanied by three other individuals who he said were the only surviving members of the original group trained by Mozambican freedom fighters, in Montepuez, Cabo Delgado. He told Mozambicans that he had made the trip to express gratitude for their invaluable contribution to the liberation of his country and pledged that the people of Uganda will never forget this solidarity. Indeed, during his inauguration in May he introduced the official who represented Mozambique as the delegate from the country which liberated you (Ugandans). With all this outpouring of unity and affinity, one would have expected Museveni to send his army the moment Mozambique was first under attack. Once he had to wait for Rwandan and Mozambican troops to recapture all the territory that the terrorists had occupied, after decisively routing them, you begin to question what his motives are. And, during his pilgrimage, Museveni had made a spirited pitch for his army, telling an attentively listening President Nyusi and members of his cabinet, in a state banquet in Maputo that the Uganda army is the most capable force anywhere, that can defeat IS. Somalia had become a no-go-area ....The US army had been forced to withdraw under heavy losses. Many people thought we were mad to agree to involve ourselves in the situation......I was confident that we would defeat the demented terrorists......When you hear that Uganda has got an army that defeated Al-Shabab ....remember that the beginnings of this army were Montpuez (in Cabo Delgado). Museveni told his hosts. However, as Gen. Koreta was conveying the message to President Nyusi that Uganda wants in, the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) was announcing an investigation into the killing of innocent Somali citizens by the Ugandan army in the Lower Shabelle region. The soldiers are in that country under the African Union mandate. President Museveni has, for long, pursued an active policy aimed at destabilizing Rwanda. He has funded and supported anti-Rwanda terrorists, including the Rwanda National Congress (RNC) and Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FRLR). Museveni was, therefore, most certainly rubbed the wrong way when, after bragging to the Mozambican authorities about his armys unequaled capacity to defeat Islamic insurgents, President Nyusi overflew his airspace to seek military support from Rwanda, a country the Ugandan ruler has worked to undermine at every turn. Oftentimes it is not what politicians advertise about themselves that matters, it is what others truly believe about them that counts.
