Prime
Our army must not become mercenary
What you need to know:
- Ugandans expect the highest levels of discipline inside the country’s defence forces.
- The rank and file swear an oath, and are trained to protect the country and secure citizens against any and all threats to person and property
In the last three months, there has been a troubling rise in the number of soldiers being arrested for violent crime, including murder, armed robbery and extortion.
What this reveals is an unacceptable deterioration in discipline amongst the troops. It similarly speaks to an alarming laxity in security enforcement inside army barracks. There are also some doubts now about the vetting of recruits since most of the suspects are young and probably newly enlisted men – raising questions as to whether enough is being done to insulate the forces from infiltration by criminally disposed individuals.
Ugandans expect the highest levels of discipline inside the country’s defence forces. The rank and file swear an oath, and are trained to protect the country and secure citizens against any and all threats to person and property. Those high principles can only be upheld where discipline is taken seriously.
Recruitment into the armed forces should be treated as a very serious and sensitive matter. Psychological evaluations are recommended to ensure that you enlist the proper sort of people. The army leadership has a duty to deny those who think joining the forces is an invitation to partake of ill-gotten wealth through crime.
It is particularly concerning that many of the soldiers recently arrested are suspected to have either directly participated in the holding up of businesses, especially mobile money and banking agents, or have been found staging illegal road blocks. Clearly, the criminal’s motivation is to steal money.
There is more than a moral problem facing the army when soldiers turn their guns against the people. The frequency and geographically dispersed nature of occurrence increasingly rules out the possibility that these are isolated incidents, raising fears that this could be an evolving systemic issue.
Even more worrying, is the reported hiring out of military weapons to thugs. Implied therein is an even graver danger to national security. Where soldiers are able to sneak out guns with criminal intent, the logical deduction would be that the overall security at our military armouries is not what it should be.
Whether at barracks or in specialised unit locations, it is paramount to ensure strict control over access to, and deployment of weapons. When controls can be easily defeated, unauthorised access to guns can play into the hands of those who seek to foment greater evil in society, not least terrorism.
Our military commanders should not let the Uganda People’s Defence Forces lose its relatively good reputation to a growing and most disreputable mercenary tendency amongst the troops.
Now that army assault rifles are finding their way into the dark underworld of armed thuggery, it is the military’s duty to demonstrate a ruthless and unequivocal determination to immediately stop this deadly enterprise. Do not let it become a national security issue.
