This is just a small issue, but scribbled on a large tissue.
What one finds rather exasperating with you (in spite of all your rather un-UPC goodheartedness) are your tiring references to ‘NRA’ when you talk about the Ugandan military which, by the way, any future government, even a UPC one, will inherit. Unless you intend to opt for the Bremmerian wisdom of disbanding the UPDF, like Paul Bremmer did in post-Saddam Iraq….the rest being as much of history as it is hysteria.
It is like some in the current set of Uganda’s political elite that are in charge, who continue harping on the ‘Okellos’; or worse still, if many years after its dissolution and renaming as the UNLA, one went on referring to the same UNLA as ’Kikosi Maalum’…the UPC allied component of the Anti-Amin effort. Of course the intention would be to denigrate the UNLA by linking it to Milton Obote and the UPC. That kind of spin would be desperately hare-brained spin. And yes, you are a UPC spin person but get your feet to the ground brother Ochieno.
I would suggest that you get yourself acquainted as quickly as you can,to the reality that, the rank and file of the Ugandan military is an amalgam of at least two dozen pliticomilitary groups that have graced the country in the last three or so decades, and not those Tutsis and Rwandese as many of you here like to refer to them. The NRA is just one out those many groups that make up the UPDF, and the original NRA soldier is now a very, very, very rare commodity. And by the way, that is not to imply that, yeah, good riddance. Here you are with the nuts and bolts of the Uganda military which you still call the NRA:
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National Resistance Army (NRA)
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Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA)
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Uganda People’s Democratic Army (UPDM/A)
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Uganda People’s Army (UPA)
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Ruwenzururu Kingdom Freedom Movement
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Uganda Freedom Movement (UFM)
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Uganda Mujahdeen Movement (UMM)
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Ninth October Movement/Army (NOM/A)
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Allied Democratic Front/Force (ADF)
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Force Obote Back Army (FOBA),
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Federal Democratic Movement (Fedemo)
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West Nile Bank Front (WNBF) I &II
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Uganda National Democratic Alliance (UNDA)
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National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (NALU)
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Uganda National Rescue Front (UNRF) I &II
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Holy Spirit Movement/Holy Spirit Mobile Forces (HSM) I & II
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Citizen Army for Multiparty Politics (CAMP),
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Action Restore Justice (ARJ)
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Former Uganda National Army (FUNA),
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Anti-Referendum Army (ARA),
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Peoples’ Redemption Army (PRA)
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Uganda Salvation Force/Army (USF/A)
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Lord’s Army
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Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA),
You sound a little bit clueless about the reality when you, Mr Ochieno, ad nauseum, refer to the NRA; and that causes many of us to really doubt your judgment and statesmanship if one may call it that.
Your aim is to vilify those young men, many of whom have no idea about UPC, or even the NRA: many of the UPDF riflemen were born after 1986…may be 90% of the young boys in UPDF battalions. The UPC many of them know is the group that in the 2006 elections polled 0.82% of the votes, behind a young independent man that polled 0.95%. That is all they know! They have no idea about your fixation with NRA. They have never belonged to the NRA.
Many are from the groups I have listed for you above. They joined the UPDF to earn a living, they work under severe hardships, when their bosses are busy stealing their pay and procuring for them substandard equipment. Several were integrated into the UPDF from anti-NRM insurgency groupings which they were gangpressed into joining, through grissly initiations like murdering their own parents and siblings.
The great majority of those boys are yearning for a change that can make their situation better than it is now. 100% of those boys who joined the UPDF through regular recruitment did not receive pay as recruits because Uganda is the only country in the world that does not pay its recruit during the first nine or more months of initial training. This is the situation in the UPDF, and ironically, that was the situation in the UNLA…..
Just as an example, A Ugandan Colonel (whether Acholi, Langi or Munyankore) earns about the equivalent of $ 6,000 per year where as his British counterpart earns $150,000. That UPDF Colonel needs to hear voices that promise to alleviate his plight, and not those like yours, that are bent on demonising him. A future government that holds childish views about the hard-pressed UPDF soldier definitely alienates itself in advance.
For those of you who keep referring to the UPDF as ‘Tutsi/Rwandese’, you cannot imagine what anger you cause for young boys who are living under serious hardships. Somehow, you end up politicising them, and poisoning them against your own interests. Besides, an alphabetic listing of the UPDF would probably show that, about 40% of the surnames start with letter ’O', and not because they are Otafiire, Owoyesigire, Owakubariho or Owobusingye. It is the Okellos, again! Infact the name ‘Okello’ may be anything up to 10%.
You need to adopt a more mature attitude towards those boys, otherwise, you will not be ‘building for the future’.
Stop dancing the anti-NRA ndombolo of 1985. Tune in to the new music brother. Be seen to be moving on!
Very sincerely,
L/Cpl (rtd) Otto Patrick
