Understanding security in regional-national military policing in the great lakes region – Uganda in perspective

By Oweyegha-Afunaduula

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 in security analyses, then we are not being conscious enough about security.

In this particular article “Understanding security in regional-national military policing in the great lakes region: uganda in perspective”, I am excluding 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 Uganda Police at different levels of the institution. When the Commander-in-Chief resources personnel for regional military policing, he is free to gets 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 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.guerillas. 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.

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 good 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 besieges 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 focus 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 Organization (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 The Parliament of Uganda 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 UGX 10 trillion to corruption annually.

In fact, war ans corruption are inseparable. From Syria to Sudan, Yemen and 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