The Kagera War, also known as the Liberation War in Uganda, was fought between Tanzania and Idi Amin Dada’s troops from October 1978 to June 1979. The war broke out after the President of Uganda and a self-declared Field Marshal, Idi Amin Dada, ordered his troops to cross over the Tanzania-Uganda border and occupy part of the territory of Tanzania to the north of the Kagera River, also known as the Kagera Salient. Despite repeated demands by the President of Tanzania, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere, for Amin to withdraw his troops from Tanzanian soil and to end the unlawful occupation[…], Idi Amin […] turned a deaf ear and refused to heed Mwalimu Nyerere’s demands. 

 

Ironically and,quite interestingly […], neither the international community (except a few African leaders) nor any regional organisation condemned Amin’s act of aggression against Tanzania. Instead, the international community remained quiet and never really attempted […] to resolve the ‘conflict’ peacefully! Thus, in the absence of any meaningful third-party conflict resolution interventions, Tanzania was left with no other option but to go to war. In the course of prosecuting the war, Tanzania’s initial objective […] was to dislodge Amin’s forces from the Kagera Salient. 

 

Upon […] attainment of this objective, however, the Tanzania Peoples’ Defence Forces (TPDF) troops were obliged to pursue Amin and his henchmen of troops deep into Uganda for two main reasons: First, to liberate the people of Uganda from the inhumane suffering that they had endured for the eight years of Amin’s brutal rule. Second, to pre-empt the possibility of a massacre of Ugandan civilians that Amin had already threatened to mete out against Ugandans he accused of ‘supporting the Tanzanians’. Furthermore, Tanzania’s decision to oust Amin and to completely rout his forces was reached after the capture of two of Amin’s most operationally significant towns in Uganda, which were also Amin’s main military strongholds: Masaka and Mbarara. 

 

The rationale for this most critical decision was to remove Amin from power and to ensure that he would never regain that power again. A number of Ugandan resistance groups, most of whose members were living in exile at the time of the outbreak of the war, took advantage of the situation and fought alongside the brave TPDF troops 

to liberate Uganda from Amin’s dictatorial reign. This book […] provides a detailed […] and authentic account of how the war occurred and was prosecuted to the end by the Tanzanian troops.