Word: amins
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Though Kampala, Uganda's capital, had fallen to a combined Tanzanian- Ugandan force two weeks ago, the main political prize continued to elude the new provisional government of President Yusufu Lule. Former President-for-Life Idi Amin Dada was still at large. He had been variously reported to have fled to Zaire, the Sudan or Iraq, as well as to several points around his own country. At week's end he was said to have been spotted in a village near the eastern Ugandan town of Mbale, traveling in a Land Rover full of radio equipment and accompanied...
...beefy ex-dictator's exact location was uncertain, the second most wanted figure in Big Daddy's reign of terror turned up fairly quickly: Robert Astles, a white, British-born onetime road-construction foreman who advised Amin on the uses of repression as well as on his public relations buffoonery. Kenyan police arrested Astles after he had crossed Lake Victoria by speedboat from Uganda. Astles once was close to Milton Obote, whom Amin ousted as President in 1971; in time he turned adviser to Amin and soon became a main architect of the dreaded State Research Bureau...
...fighting was sporadic and sometimes comical. One Tanzanian soldier told of his unit being attacked by a speeding black Mercedes filled with Ugandan troops loyal to Amin who fired at full tilt out the windows. "We knew they were serious," the Tanzanian said, "because they were losing all that air conditioning...
...advancing Tanzanians were trying to overtake Amin's retreating soldiers and then leave them to villagers, who would attack them with sticks and machetes. In turn, Amin's panicked forces carried out reprisal massacres of civilians in several towns...
While the new regime struggled to take hold, the grim details of just how badly one of Africa's relatively prosperous countries had fared under Amin's chaotic rule began to appear. The Ugandan economy had all but collapsed. Factories were closed, agricultural production had virtually stopped, and there was no hard currency to buy such essential imports as fuel...