Uganda - The Scoop

Though President Yoweri Museveni is tossing his 15,000 troops and hardware at Congo leader Laurent Kabila in a jungle catfight, the man who didn't want to be king is actually making some parts of Uganda a decent place to make a living without the threat of getting whacked by crazed rebels or government troops on a binge for some beer money. Uganda's eight-percent annual growth rate is the largest in sub-Saharan Africa. However, most of the prosperity is being felt in the south, where Museveni is from, while the northern half of the country continues to be bogged down in butchery, debauchery, bribes and beggary. Northerners feel the government has neglected them and left them exposed to attack. The land is fertile. But the ongoing insurgencies of the Lord's Resistance Army and the Allied Democratic Forces are forcing farmers to flee into Uganda's larger towns and across the border into Congo. As fighting between the government and now well-trained and Sudanese-armed rebels spreads to central and western Uganda, there seems little hope for any peacemaking. Khartoum is pissed at Museveni for supporting Sudan's insurgency in the south, and Museveni isn't going to talk peace with a northern rebel backed by Sudan. It makes for a good, old-fashioned bush war. In March 1999, the U.S. State Department warned against all travel to Uganda in the wake of the killings of eight foreign tourists-including two Americans-in Bwindi National Park in southwestern Uganda by Hutu rebels. And Museveni's involvement in the Congo civil war means catching a rare glimpse of a silverback gorilla will become even rarer.