• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Uganda Freedom Movement (UFM)

The Uganda Freedom Movement (UFM) was formed mainly with Baganda support. The military with much difficulty did finally hold multi-party elections on December 10, 1980. These elections are generally considered to have been rigged. Upon Obote's assumption of power, a number of guerilla groups were formed in the central region of the country principally organized by Yoweri Museveni and Andrew Kayiira with the National Resistance Army (NRA) and the Uganda Freedom Movement (UFM).

The Obote Government was subject to constant attack from guerrilla groups operating inside the country. Following the withdrawal of Tanzanian troops in June 1981, there were reports from the West Nile Region of further atrocities by Ugandan soldiers. In January 1982 the Uganda Popular Front was formed to co-ordinate, from abroad, the activities of the main opposition groups in exile: the Uganda Freedom Movement (UFM), the Uganda National Rescue Front and the National Resistance Movement (NRM), led by former Minister of Defence, Lt-Gen. Yoweri Museveni.

The Uganda Freedom Movement (UFM), an urban guerrilla group based in Kampala, Mukono and Mpigi, operated with some success between February 1981 and September 1982. However, its unsuccessful attempt to establish camps xn the bush in early 1982, combined with the abduction from Nairobi of its political chairman, Balaki Kirya, in July, and the departure of its military leader, Andrew Kayiira, in August, led to an irreversible decline in its fortunes, and it is a matter of some controversy as to whether it still exists as a fighting unit. Its membership was largely Bantu (notably Baganda) and Western-orientated.

Members of these groups originally received some degree of training and funds from Libya "because no-one else would help," but the arrangement terminated in 1983. Otherwise, they gained almost all of their weaponry from attacks on UNLA bases and convoys.

The UNLA and Obote attempted to deny these guerilla groups popular support by mounting massive retaliatory raids against were systematically of operation. Hundreds of thousands of people civilians in their areas driven from their homes and farms, their property looted and relocated into refugee camps.

By 1982, although Acholis still form one of the largest groups in the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNIA), many of them believed that President Milton Obote and his fellow Langis were intent on eventually ousting Acholis from positions of power. In Nairobi an increasing number of Acholis were in favor of uniting more practically with other anti-Obote groups in order to safeguard partially the Acholis' future in Uganda. Acholi leaders for the first time appeared ready to unite with the Uganda Freedom Movement led by Andrew Kayiira, and the National Resistance Movement, whose military commander remained Yoweri Museveni.

On July 29, 1985, Obote was again overthrown in a military coup d'etat by General Tito Okello. Okello declared himself an interim head of state of a transitional government designed to re-establish civilian ru!e in 1986. He sought to unite the country's opposing political forces by creating a unified government incorporating political parties and several opposition groups.

Under the new government, which ruled through a Military Council, General Tito Lutwa Okello became head of state, and Brigadier Basilio Olara Okello served as the chief of defense forces. To establish a coalition government, Tito Okello invited all political parties and guerrilla organizations to cooperate with the new regime.

In August 1985, members of FEDEMU, FUNA, UFM, and UNRF agreed to this proposal, thereby gaining representation on the Military Council. However, this alliance of former enemies proved unable to govern Uganda. In October 1985 the NRM accepted the proposal that Gen Tito Okello continue as chairman öf the Military Council and as head of state. It also accepted seven seats in the Council, but only as long as the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA)--the government armyhas the same number of seats. There should be only two other seats, one for the Uganda Freedom Movement (UFM), and the other for the Uganda National Redemption Front (UNRF).

In December 1985, these efforts culminated in the signing of a peace accord with the National Resistance Army (NRA), a coalition of primarily southern and western ethnic groups, and the nation's largest armed resistance group. The NRA took advantage of the weak coalition government, established control over rural areas of southwestern Uganda, and overran several military garrisons west of Kampala. The NRA also established an independent administration in former president Amin's home territory in the northwest.

On January 26, 1986, leaders of the NRA claimed control of the government and dissolved the council headed by Okello. On 29 January 1986, Museveni was sworn in as President. In February 1986, he announced the formation of a new cabinet, comprising of mainly NRA members and National Resistance Movement (NRM – the political wing of the NRA). The cabinet also included representatives of other political groups including the Democratic Party (DP), the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC), the Uganda Freedom Movement (UFM), the Federal Democratic Movement (FEDEMO) and three members of the previous administration.

"The Hidden War, The Forgotten People" launched by Makerere University’s Human Rights & Peace Centre (HURIPEC) in October 2003, analyses the war as an act of long-standing ethnic vengeance against northerners by the NRM government, asserting that “the war in Acholi was caused by bad government actions against the Acholi population”. It cites Museveni’s formative days with the “ethnic-based” FRONASA in Tanzania292 (made up of mainly western Ugandans), as well as “the strategy of ethnic cleansing embarked on by the NRM/A” against the Acholi before the Luwero Triangle massacres because of what the NRM leadership viewed as the latter’s looting of the national cake.

However, the scant evidence provided does not back up the report’s bold assertions sufficiently. Museveni’s interview with Drum magazine in 1985, which is ambiguously anti-northern and pro-democratic, a single interview with an unidentified “key informant” that the conflict was a war of revenge against the Acholi, and inconclusive descriptions of the NRM’s alliances with Yusuf Lule’s UFM/A and Moses Ali’s UNRF294 as somehow cementing the antinorthern hatred. While the evidence to back up the ethnic theory may be weak, it is people’s perceptions that matter most in a peace process.

The UFM withdrew from NRM coalition Government in 1987. The 35th Battalion, originally organised from Uganda Freedom Movement soldiers in Namukoora, southeast of Kitgum, collaborated and abandoned their weapons in September 1987. And they left that place vacant. The Government in September 1985 launched an offensive to clear them out of northeast of Kitgum, to clear them out of those areas when they had come in as a result of the 35th battalion withdrawing. The Government occupied all those trading centers: Namukoora, Padibe, Madiopei, Kitgum. Now when th Government pressurized them northeast of Kitgum, they wanted to cut off those forces so they shifted southeast of Kitgum and the Government also shifted our forces. On December 25 they attacked Government forces at Pajule. They were punished severely.

In a January 2007 case the Masaka District Court charged DP President John Sebaana Kizito and MPs Erias Lukwago and Issa Kikungwe with falsifying documents that implicated the government in the 1987 murder of Andrew Kayiira, a former energy minister and leader of the defunct Uganda Freedom Movement.

The government cited national security as grounds to interrogate journalists and ban newspaper content. For example, police in Kampala cited national security when they interrogated six Monitor journalists after the newspaper began a series that called Museveni's government responsible for former Uganda Freedom Movement leader Kayiira's 1987 death. The Monitor stopped publication of the series following government interference.