Idi Amin

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Idi Amin on a ten-shilling note

Idi Amin Dada Oumee (May 17, 1928 Kampala, Uganda^[1] – August 16, 2003, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia) was an army officer and President of Uganda (1971 to 1979) whose regime was notorious for its brutality.

Amin's tenure witnessed much sectarian violence, including the persecution of the Acholi, Lango, and other tribes in Uganda. Reports of the torture and murder of 300,000 to 500,000 Ugandans during Amin's presidency have been widespread since the 1970s.

Early life and career

Amin was born in the Kakwa tribe in Koboko. He was deserted by his father at an early age and brought up in Buganda by his mother, who claimed to be a sorceress. He received little formal education.

Amin joined the King's African Rifles of the British colonial army as a private in 1946, rising to the rank of lieutenant after seeing action during the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya. He was considered a skilled soldier, however he also had a reputation for cruelty. He rose through the ranks, reaching sergeant-major before being made an effendi, the highest rank possible for a Black African in the British army. Amin was also an accomplished sportsman. Besides being a champion swimmer he held Uganda's light heavyweight boxing championship from 1951 to 1960.

Promotion in the military

After independence in October 1962, Milton Obote, Uganda's first prime minister, rewarded his loyalty by promoting him to captain in 1963 and deputy commander of the army in 1964. In 1965 Obote and Amin were implicated in a deal to smuggle gold, coffee, and ivory out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A parliamentary investigation demanded by President Mutesa (also the Kabaka (King) of Buganda), put Obote on the defensive; he promoted Amin to general and made him chief-of-staff, had five ministers arrested, suspended the 1962 constitution, and declared himself as the new president. In 1966 Mutesa was forced into exile in Britain where he died in 1969.

Amin began recruiting members of his own tribe into the army as well as many Muslims from his West Nile area to the northwest of Uganda near the Sudan border. Relations with Obote began to sour. Obote first responded by putting Amin under house arrest, and when this failed to undermine his support, Amin was given a non-executive position in the army.

Seizure of power

Amin's regime was infamous worldwide.

After hearing that Obote was planning to arrest him for misappropriating army funds, he seized power in a coup on January 25, 1971, when Obote was attending a Commonwealth summit meeting in Singapore. He was assisted by Rwandan exiles, whom Obote had targeted as enemies. Obote stayed in exile, and Amin declared himself the new President.

Idi Amin was initially welcomed both within Uganda and by the international community. He gave former king and president Mutesa, who had died in exile, a state burial in April 1971, freed many political prisoners, and disbanded the Secret Police, the General Service Unit. He promised to hold elections within months. Shortly after taking power, however, Amin established "death squads" to hunt down and murder Obote's supporters as well as much of the intelligentsia, whom he distrusted. Military leaders who had not supported the coup were executed, many by beheading.

Obote took refuge in Tanzania, from where he attempted to regain the country through a military invasion in September 1972, without success. Obote supporters within the Ugandan army, mainly from the Acholi and Lango tribes, were also involved in the invasion. Amin retaliated by bombing Tanzanian towns, and purging the army of Acholi and Lango officers. The ethnic violence grew to include the whole of the army, and then Ugandan civilians, Amin becoming more and more paranoid. The Nile Mansions Hotel in Kampala became infamous as Amin's interrogation and torture centre.

On August 4, 1972, Amin gave Uganda's 70,000 Asians (mainly of Indian origin) who held British passports 90 days to leave the country, following an alleged dream in which, he claimed, God told him to expel them. Those who remained were deported from the cities to the countryside. The same year he severed diplomatic relations with Israel, and in 1976 with Britain. In 1972, Amin turned to Colonel Muammar Al Qadhafi of Libya and the Soviet Union for support.

Amin is carried by four British businessmen during a party for diplomats in 1975. A Swedish businessman holds an umbrella in the manner of servants who once shielded tribal rulers from the sun.

Amin had strong links to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). The Israeli embassy was offered to them as headquarters; and Flight 139, the Air France Airbus hijacked from Athens on June 27, 1976, was invited by Amin to stop at Entebbe International Airport in the city of Entebbe, 32 km from Kampala. The hijackers demanded the release of 53 PLO and Red Army Faction prisoners in return for the 256 hostages, and were assisted by Amin's troops. Amin visited the hostages more than once. At midnight on July 3, 1976, Israeli paratroopers attacked the airport and freed all but two of the hostages. (One was killed by the Israeli forces, while another, 75-year-old Dora Bloch, who had been taken to a hospital before the rescue, was murdered by two army officers on Amin's orders after the hostage rescue.) Uganda's air force was badly crippled as its fighter jets were destroyed in the action (see also Operation Entebbe).

The success of the operation largely contributed to his downfall, while increased resistance and sabotage operations crippled the nation during his final years. Partly on the basis of his "visions" and this behaviour, Idi Amin is often believed to have suffered from neurosyphilis: Deborah Hayden makes the case for this hypothesis in her Pox: Genius, Madness and the Mysteries of Syphilis.

As the years went on, Amin became increasingly erratic and outspoken. He had his tunics specially lengthened so that he could wear many World War II medals, including the Military Cross and Victoria Cross. He also granted himself a number of official titles, including King of Scotland. Amin was fond of racing cars (of which he owned several), boxing, and Disney cartoons. Many foreign journalists considered him a somewhat comical and eccentric figure; he was widely caricatured in the west as a murderous buffoon. There were also rumours that he was a cannibal, though this has never been proved.

Deposition and exile

In October 1978 Amin ordered the invasion of Tanzania while at the same time attempting to cover up an army mutiny. With help of Libyan troops, Amin tried to annex the northern Tanzanian province of Kagera. Tanzania, under President Julius Nyerere, began a counter attack, enlisting the country's population of Ugandan exiles. On 11 April 1979, Amin was forced to quit the capital, Kampala. The Tanzanian army took the city with the help of the Ugandan and Rwandan guerrillas.

Amin fled to exile, first in Libya, where sources are divided on whether he remained until December 1979 or 1980, before finding final asylum in Saudi Arabia. He opened a bank account in Jeddah and resided there, subsisting on a government stipend. The new Ugandan government chose to keep him exiled, saying that Amin would face war crimes charges if he ever returned. By the end of his reign, his more commonly-used self-granted titles were "His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, Victoria Cross, Distinguished Service Order, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular."

On July 20, 2003, one of his wives, Madina, reported that he was near death in a coma at the King Faisal specialist hospital in Jeddah. She pleaded with Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni that he might return to die in Uganda. The reply was that if he returned, he would have to "answer for his sins". Idi Amin died in Saudi Arabia on August 16, 2003, and was buried in Jeddah.

On August 17, 2003 David Owen told an interviewer for BBC Radio 4 that while he was the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary (1977–1979), he had suggested to have Amin assassinated. His idea was directly rejected. Owen said, "Amin's regime was the worst of all. It's a shame that we allowed him to keep in power for so long."

Portrayal in media

• Idi Amin Dada (1974) - A documentary.
• Rise and Fall of Idi Amin (1980) - An exploitation film recreating Idi Amin's atrocities.
• The Last King of Scotland - Upcoming Hollywood movie directed by Kevin Macdonald and based on the novel of the same name by Giles Foden. Forest Whitaker will star as Amin alongside Kerry Washington and Gillian Anderson.

Footnote

Related topics

• Uganda
• Uganda under Amin, part of the History of Uganda series.
• President of Uganda
• Politics of Uganda
• Political parties of Uganda

External links

• Separate fact from fiction in Amin stories. Originally published in The Monitor
• Biography of Amin
• Another biography of Amin
• Film about Amin/Uganda