Uganda had always had an interest in southern Sudan when it was part of Sudan, and the SPLA was fighting the NIF Khartoum regime, and as the independent nation that is now South Sudan.
I saw the UPDF covertly helping the SPLA back in 1997 during Operation Thunderbolt. The operation’s goal was to take control of key towns in the south of the state of Central Equatoria. Yei Town, a.k.a ‘Little London’, was a crucial military base for the National Islamic Front’s (NIF) Sudan Armed Forces (SAF). It was from Yei that the Sudanese government were supplying the useless and pointless West Nile Bank Front (WNBF), the Uganda National Rescue Front (UNRF (II), as well as the infamous Ugandan whacky terrorist group, the Lords Resistance Army (LRA)– almost ironic that an Islamist regime in Khartoum was supporting a crazy bloody so-called-Christian terrorist-cult. There were many reasons for Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni to throw his support behind the SPLA before, during and after Operation Thunderbolt, but Sudan’s active support of the LRA and other anti-Uganda government rebels were probably big sore points.
Sudan had Osama bin Laden and some of his Al Qaeda organization members hanging around at the time as guests of President Omar al-Bashir and Hassan al-Turabi, leader of the NIF. Some Al Qaeda members were participating in the fighting against the SPLA offensive. I was told that these “Afghans” didn’t want to surrender so SPLA tanks drove over them as they didn’t run but preferred death as martyrs.
(Outside Yei, along the main road going into the town, there were two miles of dead SAF soldiers and their allies, perhaps up to 900 men laying dead. One Canadian journalist later in Nairobi asked if I had seen “the road kill’.
I had thought we had seen the leader of the WNBF Juma Abdalla Oris dead on a stretcher; it was speculation. What had happened to Oris after Operation Thunderbolt was a mystery for a long time, as the WNBF ceased to exist. As it turns out, he was apparently seriously injured in that offensive but survived. According to reports, he died in March 2001 in Sudan.) — RdM
See report, News 24: ‘Declaration of war’: Uganda troops deploy in South Sudan as tensions increase: https://www.news24.com/news24/africa/news/declaration-of-war-uganda-troops-deploy-in-south-sudan-as-tensions-increase-20250311
Uganda’s military chief said on Tuesday his country had deployed special forces in South Sudan’s capital Juba to “secure it” as tensions between President Salva Kiir and his First Vice President Riek Machar stoke fears of a return to civil war.
Tensions have been growing in recent days in South Sudan, an oil producer, after Kiir’s government detained two ministers and several senior military officials allied with Machar.
One minister has since been released.
The arrests in Juba and deadly clashes around the northern town of Nasir are seen as jeopardising a 2018 peace deal that ended a five-year civil war between forces loyal to Kiir and Machar that cost nearly 400 000 lives.
“As of two days ago, our Special Forces units entered Juba to secure it,” Uganda’s military chief, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, said in a series of posts on the X platform overnight into Tuesday.
“We the UPDF (Ugandan military), only recognise one President of South Sudan, HE Salva Kiir … any move against him is a declaration of war against Uganda,” he said in another post.
To read more, see: https://www.news24.com/news24/africa/news/declaration-of-war-uganda-troops-deploy-in-south-sudan-as-tensions-increase-20250311
via John Papathanassiou
#uganda #southsudan #spla #Kiir #Machar #civilwar #updf #juba #incursion #africa