Ugandan strongman Yoweri Museveni is like the fireman who is secretly an arsonist, starting fires he then rushes in to put out.
In this WhoWhatWhy podcast, journalist and Africa expert Helen Epstein explains how Museveni, president of Uganda since 1986, has inserted himself into, and has been the cause of, many of the conflicts in East Africa.
He has taken advantage of the US fear of terrorism by inflating the risk of it on the continent, and then telling the world what he is doing to take care of the problem.
Museveni has used this strategy, including escalating the civil war in South Sudan, to secure more weapons from the US, and vast sums of money from the World Bank, which has consistently lied to prop up Uganda’s economic condition.
The people of Africa, and Uganda in particular, had high hopes for progress when Barack Obama took office. Obama gave a speech in Africa in July of 2009 in which he promised to do more to advance human rights and democracy there. Unfortunately, the White House and the State Department both dropped the ball, which gave added power to Museveni. He even got the State Department to cover up some of his crimes.
Epstein argues in her conversation with WhoWhatWhy’s Jeff Schechtman that the US needs to reconsider its support for the African dictator, whose country has one of the world’s poorest educational systems, and one of the highest rates of infant mortality.
And she explains how Museveni is actually creating more opportunity for terrorists, producing more refugees, and escalating proxy wars in the region.
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Related front page panorama photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Ugandan army soldiers (DoD).
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