Word: kampala
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...dispatched to evacuate them. After fleeing southern Uganda, where Amin's army was crumbling in the face of a Tanzanian invasion force, nervous Libyan soldiers camped beside the runway pleading for planes to come and get them. Big Daddy himself had pulled out of his tree-lined capital, Kampala, to a command post somewhere near the Kenyan border. At week's end about the only sign of Amin's outsize presence in the city where he had held brutal sway for eight years was on television screens: rather than dwell on the perils facing Big Daddy...
...towns held by what were supposed to be Amin's elite forces, the Suicide Regiment and the Simba (Lion) Battalion. These troops not only surrendered; some even joined the anti-Amin forces. Late last week Tanzanian units and various anti-Amin groups began pushing north of Masaka toward Kampala, 80 miles away. But a Ugandan tank force managed to retake the garrison town of Tororo, near the Kenyan border, which had briefly fallen to the rebels...
...collapse of Amin's forces spread, Kampala announced that ex-servicemen, policemen and even prison officials were being thrown into the regime's defense. Amin appealed to the Organization of African Unity to persuade Tanzania's President Julius Nyerere to call off his invasion. But the OAU leaders, meeting in Kenya, made only a halfhearted attempt to do so. They seemed to agree with Milton Obote, whom Amin overthrew as Uganda's President in 1971. In Tanzania, where he has been living in exile, Obote declared, "Now is the time for Amin to pay the price...
Amin's problems have been further complicated by a wave of sabotage. On Feb. 3, a fuel depot and two electrical substations were blown up in Kampala, knocking out power and water supplies in the area for three days. The Save Uganda Movement, one of several guerrilla groups operating inside the country, claimed responsibility for the attack. The State Research Bureau, Amin's notorious secret police agency, has arrested hundreds of "suspects," but has failed to crush the guerrillas. With pride, the leader of one anti-Amin group declared in Nairobi: "Our office in Kampala was searched...
...army, his mother and two brothers were killed by Amin's soldiers during a barracks purge in 1974. Kuli escaped to Kenya and joined a dissident group. Eventually he re-entered Uganda and began to take part in sabotage activities; he helped blow up the fuel depot in Kampala. Says Kuli: "I cannot say to the day when Amin will go, but it will be within six months. I am perfectly willing to die. I have nothing to live for but to kill Amin." This time, many others appear to share the view that Big Daddy's swaggering...