Africa's Most Curious War

Kampala gives up, but Big Daddy is still at large

"As Conqueror of the British Empire, I am prepared to die in defense of the motherland, Uganda." With his habitual bombast, Uganda's murderous President-for-Life Idi Amin Dada, 55, last week tried to put the best face on his disintegrating hold on national power. It was, apparently, a futile effort. After several days of sporadic fighting, the occupation force of largely Ugandan exile troops entered the outskirts of Kampala and prepared for a final push. Though scattered fighting still continued in pockets, the invading forces were poised to take control of Uganda's capital.

The seven-month war, which already ranks as one of the most curious in Africa's history, seemed to be fizzling out rather than concluding with a bang. The remnants of Amin's forces, accompanied by most of the 2,700 troops sent by Libyan Strongman Muammar Gaddafi to help him, had retreated to Jinja, Uganda's second largest city. Some observers thought the Tanzanians had deliberately left the exit route east from Kampala open to permit the Libyans a face-saving exodus by an airstrip at Jinja some 60 miles to the east of the capital.

Kampala itself slipped out of Amin's grasp with what one resident Western diplomat called "an eerie silence." Inching forward with extraordinary caution, the invading columns moved into the suburbs of the city from the southwest; they discovered a capital bereft of both defending troops and most of its civilian inhabitants. The Libyans, who two weeks ago had pushed the Tanzanians and Ugandan exiles out of Kampala's suburbs with a sharp counterattack, had already moved out of the city to avoid entrapment. One of the first landmarks to fall was the notorious Makindye military police headquarters, where thousands had been tortured and killed by Amin's secret police, the State Research Bureau. Soon afterward, Entebbe Airport was in Tanzanian hands, along with one of Amin's ornate state residences near by.

Meanwhile, there was considerable confusion as to Amin's whereabouts. Earlier in the week the self-styled Conqueror had displayed his ample, 300-lb. presence, bedecked in a blue air marshal's uniform and ribbons, in different parts of Jinja. Driving around the city in his favorite Citroen-Maserati, and followed by a fleet of Mercedes-borne aides, he alternately threatened his dispirited troops with execution and pleaded with them to withstand the "exhausted" enemy. Late Friday, Amin's voice came over Radio

Uganda loud and clear in a broadcast said to have originated in the station's Kampala studio. In a rambling speech, he lauded the mostly invisible economic achievements of his eight-year regime and announced that the invading Tanzanian army was "sitting on fire and would not survive."

The Tanzanian-based Uganda National Liberation Front was already trying to take over local administration by dispatching district commissioners to towns it controls in southern and western Uganda. The Front was also prepared to establish a new government in Kampala once the city was firmly under its control. No one could be quite sure when that would happen. Amin might decide to make a brave last stand at Jinja, or he might simply flee to either Libya or neighboring Kenya. But it was also not beyond belief that Big Daddy would simply disappear into the bush, and carry on with a government-in-exile somewhere in the wilds of northern Uganda.

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