In many my previous writings I have decried the fact that all security is reduced to military security. In my most recent article on ‘State terrorism in Uganda before, during and after council, presidential and parliamentary elections’ I detailed the various dimensions in which state terrorism should be analysed.

I implied that if those various dimensions of security are not factored into security analyses, then we are not being conscious enough about security.

In this article, I will exclude other types of security to concentrate on military security, which is security mediated by the gun.  My focus is on regional military policing, with Uganda at the centre. Involvement in regional military policing frequently implies diverting resources from essential development in the social, economic, political, environmental, ecological, cultural, moral and ethical dimensions. When this is the case, corruption is inevitable.

Regional and national security in the Great Lakes Region has become one with the new emphasis on regional military policing. Consequently, military and civilian policing can no longer be easily distinguished.

In Uganda, it is more common to find military commanders commanding the police at different levels of the institution. When the commander-in-chief sources personnel for regional military policing, he is free to get them from the military and the police because the difference between military and police is blurred. It is also common to see ordinary policemen who are military men and women in police uniform. This is why there have been statements such as “Uganda is militarily occupied”. And when the commander-in-chief sends his men and women to carry out military policing in other parts of the Great Lakes Region, one school of thought argues, the region is militarily occupied by the Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF).

It has been frequently said that regional military policing involves military forces undertaking policing duties within a specific geographic area, often in coordination with civilian police, and can include tasks like maintaining order, traffic regulation and security missions. Recent research, however, found little evidence to support the idea that military policing improves public safety (Bilderback, 2023). They didn’t see any reduction in crime. If anything, they saw an increase in crime after the intervention was over. That was quite surprising. 

However, despite this discovery, regional military policing continues to be popular in military decision-making especially in the Great Lakes Region.

As far as Uganda is concerned, regional military policing is happening simultaneously with the militarisation of law enforcement in the country so that if its army is involved in regional military policing in the Great Lakes Region or East Africa, it is also involved in military policing within its borders. This is the reason why state violence has become centrally placed before, during and after elections. At one time, a military contingent on return from a military policing mission in Somalia, was immediately deployed to keep law and order during the electioneering period leading to the Presidential and Parliamentary elections of 2021.

Many people were killed in Luuka District when the contingent intervened to prevent Kyagulanyi Ssentamu from campaigning in the district. The person who was in charge is said to have been the late Major General Paul Lokech, who had been commanding the Ugandan contingent in Mogadishu, Somalia, against the Al Shabbab militiamen. Because of his war heroics against the Al Shabbab, the Somalis in Mogadishu called him the Lion of Mogadishu. It was not a surprise that the commander-in-chief appointed him Deputy Inspector General of Police to ensure law and order while donning police uniform. It seems he was detailed to deal with Opposition as if it was a terrorist group.

Across the birders, Museveni has ready and willing student in the frame of Kenya’s President William Ruto, South Sudan’s Salva Kiir and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame. During anti-tax protests last year, and fearful that the Kenyan youth would overrun the State House, President Ruto deployed the military on the streets in the capital Nairobi to repulse angry mobs that broke into parliament buildings and ejected members of parliament.

It should, however, be mentioned that impregnating the police with military personnel is not unique to Uganda only. Across the world, law enforcement has become increasingly militarised over the last three decades, with civilian police operating more like armed forces and soldiers replacing civilian police in law enforcement tasks (Gustavo, Flores-Macías and J Zarkin, 2019).

Gustavo, Flores-Macías and  Zarkin (2019) have argue that the constabularisation of the military has had important consequences for the quality of democracy in the region by undermining citizen security, human rights, police reform and the legal order. A hybrid threat is “any adversary that simultaneously and adaptively employs a fused mix of conventional weapons, irregular tactics, terrorism and criminal behavior in the battle space to obtain their political objectives. When it comes to non-state threats operating across a spectrum of tactics, from criminal to terrorist to militant, a great deal of overlap and confusion between the spheres of crime and war, blurring police, constabulary, and military obligations emerge (Tallis,  2019).

The distinction between civilian and military law enforcement typical of democratic regimes in the world has been severely blurred in Uganda and in the region. So, when the military commits crimes against the citizens, it is common for the police to say they are not the ones and vice versa. We are just lucky if one of them owns up.  A clear example, was during the parliamentary by-election in Kawempe North Constituency recently when both the military and the police denied the criminal acts of what is said to be a joint police and army outfit called JATT ostensibly erected to combat terrorism.

The UPDF Public Information Officer, Major General Felix Kulayigye has often referred to the outfit as thugs, criminal gangs, and hooded criminals. In an interview with Nation Media Group, he distanced the army from JATT’s activities. Police, however, defended JATT’s presence among security ranks adding that it was legally established. Police Spokesman Kituuma Rusoke drew comparison between JATT and the Black Mamba, which was a group of hooded men that besieged the High Court in Kampala on November 16 2005 to re-arrest 14 people that were said to belong to People’s Redemption Army (Wafula, 2025).

Minister David Muhoozi, of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, described the practice of Joint Anti-Terrorism Taskforce (JATT) officers covering their faces with hoods as “unacceptable,” asserting that law enforcement officers must be identifiable while on duty (Omara, 2025). However, the Chief of Defense Forces (CDF) Muhoozi Kainerugaba, went on to thank the outfit for a job well done –terrorising the citizens, maiming some.

However, while meeting his NRM Parliamentary Caucus at his State House, the official home of his family in power, the president expressed concern and dissatisfaction with the behaviour of the military in North Kawempe Constituency by-election.

Let me end this article by briefly focusing on Uganda’s regional military policing in the Great Lakes Region.

Uganda, through its militarised Uganda Police Force (UPF), plays a role in regional policing through its membership in regional bodies like the East African Police Chiefs Cooperation Organisation (EAPCCO), which aims to harmonise and strengthen police cooperation and information sharing among member countries. However, as I stated elsewhere, Uganda’s military policing in the Great Lakes Region is dominated by the military. Recently, Uganda sent soldiers for regional policing in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan. It was not the Inspector General of Police, Abbas Byakagaba, who sent our men and women to do policing, but the Chief of Defense Forces (CDF) Muhoozi Kainerugaba, to do military policing in the DRC and South Sudan.

In the DRC, it was to repel militia that he accused of massacring people. In South Sudan, the aim was to pre-empt a civil war that threatened to remove President Salva Kiir Mayardit from power (Bagala and Wadero, 2025). Retrospectively, the NRM Parliamentary Caucus approved the sending of Uganda’s troops to South Sudan (Okello, 2025).

It is likely that Uganda will continue to cast itself as the Great Lakes Region and it is expected that its parliament will do the same. The more Uganda assumes this stance, the more money that would have gone to the development, transformation and progress of the country will be directed into regional military policing. The country’s education, health and infrastructure will continue to deteriorate because there will be no adequate money to invest in these human endeavours.

The little that will be left will be stolen by unscrupulous people. The Inspector General of Government (GG) says we lose Ush10 trillion ($2.73 billion) to corruption annually. In fact, war and corruption are inseparable. From Syria to Sudan, Yemen to Afghanistan, the most corrupt states are also torn apart by political conflicts, showing the strong connection between the two.

Experts define corruption as the “misuse of public power for private or political gain” and during conflict, the potential for “misuse of public power” no doubt increases ((Murat Sofuoglu, 2021). That way corrupt regimes are sustained in power by corruption and they tend to create to prefer conflict hotspots. If they do not exist they create them.

Regional conflicts such as those prevalent in the Great Lakes Region are attractive to corrupt deals. Rose-Ackerman, who has extensively written on corruption, and cited by Murat Sofuoglu (2021) says, “The problem is to determine the direction of causation. Do civil wars lead to corruption because they disrupt ordinary market transactions and lead some officials to develop sidelines in the black market?” Well, here is an outlet for further research, especially by scholars in Uganda.

For God and my country!

• A Tell report / By Oweyegha-Afunaduula / Environmental Historian and Conservationist Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA), Seeta, Mukono, Uganda.

About the Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA)

The CCTAA was innovated by Hyuha Mukwanason, Oweyegha-Afunaduula and Mahir Balunywa in 2019 to the rising decline in the capacity of graduates in Uganda and beyond to engage in critical thinking and reason coherently besides excellence in academics and academic production. The three scholars were convinced that after academic achievement the world outside the ivory tower needed graduates that can think critically and reason coherently towards making society and the environment better for human gratification. They reasoned between themselves and reached the conclusion that disciplinary education did not only narrow the thinking and reasoning of those exposed to it but restricted the opportunity to excel in critical thinking and reasoning, which are the ultimate aim of education. They were dismayed by the truism that the products of disciplinary education find it difficult to tick outside the boundaries of their disciplines; that when they provide solutions to problems that do not recognise the artificial boundaries between knowledges, their solutions become the new problems. They decided that the answer was a new and different medium of learning.

Further reading

Al Jazeera (2025). Uganda deploys troops to Soth Sudan as Civil War Fears Grow. Al Jazeera,  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/11/uganda-deploys-troops-in-south-sudan-as-civil-war-fears-grow Visited on 11 March 2025 ar 13:37 pm EAT.

Andrew Bagala and Arthur Arnold Wadero (2025). Uganda Covers Salva Kiir’s back again amid power struggle in South Sudan. Monitor, 12 March 2025, https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/uganda-covers-salva-kiir-s-back-again-amid-power-struggle-in-south-sudan-4961080#story Visited on 15 March 2025 at 18:04 pm EAT.

BENJAMIN R. BEEDE (2008). Journal of Political & Military Sociology. Vol. 36, No. 1 (Summer 2008), pp. 53-63 (11 pages). Published By: University of Florida Press.

Christopher Kiiza (2025). Defense Minister: I am not aware of UPDF Deployment in South Sudan. ChimpReports, March 12 2025 https://chimpreports.com/defence-minister-contradicts-cdf-army-spox-denies-updf-deployment-in-south-sudan/ Visited on 15 March 2025at 13:58 pm EAT.

DEREK LUTTERBECK (2004). Between Police and Military: The New Security Agenda and the Rise of Gendarmeries. Journal of Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 39, No. 1 (MARCH 2004), pp. 45-68 (24 pages). Published By: Sage Publications, Ltd.

Dickens, H. Okello (2025). NRM Endorses UPDF Deployment in South Sudan. ChimpReports, March 14 2025. https://chimpreports.com/ugandas-ruling-party-endorses-updf-deployment-in-south-sudan/ Visited on 15 March 2025 at 13:49 pm EAT.

EDITORIAL (2021). President Museveni Needs to talk Peace and Reconciliation. The Observer, January 21 2021. https://observer.ug/viewpoint/president-museveni-needs-to-talk-peace-and-reconciliation/ Visited on 15 March 2025 at 17:33 pm EAT.

Farouk Chothia (2025). South Sudan has denied Uganda Troops have been deployed to its Capital. BBC News, 11 March 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1d4z4lnxvxo Visited on 15 March 2025 at 13:32 pm EAT.

Geoffrey Omara (2025). General Kainerugaba, Minister Muhoozi Disagree on Personnel Identification. Chimp Reports, March 12 2025 https://chimpreports.com/gen-kainerugaba-minister-muhoozi-disagree-on-security-personnel-identification/ Visited on 15 March 2025 at 13:08 pm EAT.

Giles Muhame (2021). Operation Free Shabelle: The Story Somalia War Hero, General Paul Lokech. ChimpReports, August 22 2021 https://chimpreports.com/operation-free-shabelle-the-story-of-somalia-war-hero-gen-paul-lokech/ Visited on 15 March 205 at 16:07 pm EAT.

Gustavo A. Flores-Macías and Jessica Zarkin (2019). The Militarization of Law Enforcement: Evidence from Latin America. Cambridge University Online, 27 December 2019. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/militarization-of-law-enforcement-evidence-from-latin-america/03EE3B407BA25D8D2762A7ED3871060E Visited on 15 March 2025 at 11:07 am EAT.

Jenipher Camino Gonzalez with AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters (2025). Uganda deploys troops to DR Congo to repel Militias. DW, 18 2 2025, https://www.dw.com/en/uganda-deploys-troops-to-dr-congo-to-repel-militias/a-71665459 Visited on 13 March 2025 at 13:23 pm EAT.

Joshua Tallis  (2019). Hybrid Threats and the Constabularisation of Strategy. Strategy Bridge, April 22 2019. https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2019/4/22/hybrid-threats-and-the-constabularization-of-strategy Visited on 15 March 2025 at 11:36 EAT.

Murat Sofuoglu (2021). Why war and corruption are inseparable.

Pete Bilderback (2023). Researchers find little evidence that military policing reduces crime. Brown University, June 15 2023. https://www.brown.edu/news/2023-06-15/policing Visited on 15 March 2025 at 10:34 am EAT.

Phillip Wafula (2025). What Police, Army said about Hooded JATT Operatives. Monitor, March 6 2025. https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/national/what-police-army-said-about-hooded-jatt-operatives-4951742 Visited on 15 March 2025 at 12:34 pm EAT.

Prossy Alobo (2024). Shs 10 trillion lost annually to corruption – IGG Kamya. Nexus Media, October 3 2024. https://nexusmedia.ug/shs10-trillion-is-lost-annually-to-corruption-igg-kamya/ Visited on 15 March 2025 at 18:23 pm EAT.

Shania Shayal Prasad (2024). Regional Military and Police Network Needed. FBC News, August 31 2024. https://www.fbcnews.com.fj/news/regional-military-and-police-network-needed/ Visited on 15 March 2025 at 10:25 am EAT.

TRT World (2021).

Xinhua (2023). Uganda sends troops to Rwanda for joint regional military training exercise. Editor Xinhua, 13 June 2023. https://english.news.cn/20230613/e658fc0de35942259c4118723db3063c/c.html Visited on 15 March 25 at 10:59 am.

Wilfred Kamusiime (2021). A Tribute to the Late DIGP, Major General Paul Lokech. Uganda Police Force, August 24 2021. https://upf.go.ug/a-tribute-to-the-late-digp-maj-gen-paul-lokech/ Visited on 15 March 2025 at 15: 58 pm EAT.