A DG Student/U.S. Soldier’s Notes from Uganda

Last year, I started Georgetown University’s Democracy and Governance graduate program; this year, I’m in Uganda on a mission (or two). My primary mission is a military one: I’m deployed here as a civil affairs specialist with the U.S. Army Reserves. My team’s job is to assist the Ugandan army with the civil-military relations aspect of their disarmament campaign in a remote region of the country called Karamoja. As you may have guessed, it’s not your typical deployment – unlike in Iraq or Afghanistan, the U.S. military’s footprint in Africa is very small, and the only battles being fought here are in the “hearts and minds” of the African people. So you’re probably not going to hear much about this mission on the news, but as much as my time and my job permits, you’re going to hear about it here.

My other mission is to observe and explore on the ground some of the themes we discuss in the Democracy and Governance program. Uganda is in many ways an opportune place to study the difficulties of consolidating democracy: it is a “partly free” state that introduced multi-party elections in 2006, and that has an election coming up in 2011; like many newer democracies it has a history of ethnic tensions, which even as recently as a few months ago turned violent; and it has recently discovered significant oil and gas reserves, the political and economic repercussions of which have not yet become clear (but have often boded ill for democracy elsewhere). Any like many other states in the region, Uganda suffers from pervasive corruption, with scandals and crackdowns regularly making the headlines here.

In addition to exploring these internal challenges, I will also seek to understand how Uganda’s relations with the international community shape its political development. For example, Uganda, like many other African states, depends heavily on foreign assistance. This dependence has been decreasing in recent years, however, and may decrease even further as revenues from energy resources increase. Another interesting factor is that Uganda is the only African state besides Burundi to contribute troops to the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia. And in Iraq, as part of “the most privatized war in history,” Uganda has provided tens of thousands of (cheap) private security personnel to guard U.S. bases and key facilities. For these and other reasons, the U.S. has a measurable interest and investment in a partnership with Uganda, and my team and our mission represent part of that partnership. At the same time, it does not take long to see that Chinese influence here is also significant – and growing (more on this later).  So throughout the year I will be paying attention to how these and other external factors shape (or try to shape) Uganda’s development and policies.

Exploring the challenges and the contexts of Uganda’s political development will be an interesting – and a daunting – experience for me this year.  Besides being out of the country, I am definitely out of my element  (I studied Russian politics as an undergrad, largely because I don’t like hot weather), so feedback from Democracy and Society’s readership would be very valuable to me.  And I hope that I in turn can provide some interesting glimpses into life (and of course politics) on the ground here, as well as perhaps provide some insight into the U.S.’ strategic interests and activities in Uganda.

Next week I will be writing about the international community’s reactions (or lack thereof) to Uganda’s proposed Anti-Gay Bill, which has taken center-stage in national politics.

Sign outside the Electoral Commission in Kampala