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Death
of a Despot
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Unconfirmed
stories of cannibalism created an aura of super-villainy
around Amin
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"Capricious,
impulsive, violent and aggressive he certainly is, but to dismiss
him as just plain crazy is to underestimate his shrewdness, his
ruthless cunning and his capacity to consolidate power with
calculated terror,'' said London Telegraph reporter Christopher
Munnion about the late Idi Amin Dada.
The
notorious ex-dictator of Uganda died Saturday, August 16 2003, in
the Saudi Arabian port city of Jeddah, where he had found refuge for
the past two decades from a reluctant host.
Amin
seized power in a 1971 coup, declaring himself president-for-life
after having rapidly ascended in Uganda’s military hierarchy,
despite a military career fraught with allegations of brutality and
sexual promiscuity. Amin suffered from numerous venereal diseases,
prompting some to attribute his erratic and violent behavior to the
mental depredations of syphilis.
Estimates
of the death toll inflicted on the Ugandan populace during his
8-year reign of terror range from 150,000 to 500,000.
Amin’s
legacy is shrouded in a gruesome mythos of carnage and wanton
brutality. Stories of cannibalism, while never confirmed, served to
create an aura of super-villainy around the late Amin, while his
dabbling in black magic and his whimsical, often erratic nature
fueled a visceral fear of him among Ugandans and a profound distaste
among Western observers.
Amin
was ultimately granted political asylum in Saudi Arabia, despite his
blatant violation of almost every tenet of Islam. |
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His
victims were an eclectic mix, often targeted for petty reasons as
well as for their political opposition to Amin’s rule. The
headquarters of the euphemistically named State Research Bureau, the
apparatus charged with interrogating and torturing anyone deemed
guilty of political dissidence, often hosted clergy, former and
serving ministers, supreme court judges, and the countless faceless
victims of the regime – students, blue-collar workers, peasants,
and the like, who made up the bulk of the regimes victims.
Among
the more notable of Amin’s brutal exploits was the murder of his
wife and her suspected lover in 1974. Kay Amin’s body was found
– albeit, cut up into small pieces, in the boot of her accused
lover’s car, himself found dead the same day - an alleged suicide.
Reportedly
favored amongst Amin’s methods of dispatching his opponents was
feeding them to crocodiles, of which many could be found near
Amin’s residence overlooking Lake Victoria. Others were forced to
bludgeon each other to death with sledge-hammers.
While
initially enjoying good relations with Israel, where he had
undergone military training, Amin broke with the Jewish State and
become one of its most vociferous opponents when it refused to
supply him with military aircraft. In a calculated insult, Amin
peppered his speech with praise of Adolf Hitler.
His
enmity towards Israel culminated in his complicity in the failed
1976 Entebbe hijacking, in which Palestinian and German militants
commandeered an Air France airliner, and forced it to land in
Uganda. The hijacking was resolved with a bloody Israeli commando
raid on the Entebbe airport. Amin was accused almost universally of
collaborating with the hijackers, though he emphatically denied any
such accusations, and claimed he was engaged in negotiations to
secure the hostages’ release.
It
is notable that Lord Owen, former foreign secretary of Great
Britain, proposed assassinating Amin.
Under
Amin’s rule, Uganda collapsed economically, precipitated by his
expulsion of tens of thousands of Ugandan Asians. Amin claimed he
had been the recipient of a divine decree, in which no less than God
himself had appeared in his sleep and ordered the expulsion,
effectively destroying Uganda’s business class.
In
the end, it was Amin’s ill-calculated ventures into Tanzania that
brought about an end to his despotic regime, when he provoked his
arch-nemesis Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere (whom he had
previously challenged to a boxing match) into throwing his
country’s military weight behind Ugandan exiles in Tanzania.
The
BBC’s Africa Correspondent at the time, Brian Barron, describes
his entrance into the State Research Bureau shortly after the
collapse Amin’s regime, “We stumbled down the stairs of the
empty building into a charnel house. The floor was awash with blood,
the bodies of the SRB's last victims lying in the darkness in their
concrete dungeons.”
A
convert to Islam at an early age, Amin was ultimately granted
political asylum in Saudi Arabia, despite his blatant violation of
almost every tenet of Islam – from his sexual promiscuity, to his
genocidal purges of his own people, to his dabbling in ritualistic
magic. Saudi Arabia’s acceptance of Idi Amin arguably damaged its
already tarnished self-proclaimed reputation as a bastion of Islamic
orthodoxy.
Human
rights groups have expressed their dismay that Amin was allowed to
live out his days in the lap of luxury, beyond the reach of
international law. His legacy of destruction and carnage has placed
him firmly in the pantheon of tyrants who never answered for their
crimes against humanity, such as Pol Pot, the Shah of Iran, Stalin,
and their ilk. The impunity with which they perpetrated atrocities
against their people and the comfort in which they lived out their
lives has caused them to become a focus of heightened campaigns by
rights groups attempting to bring about a greater adherence to
international statutes that prosecute crimes against humanity, such
as the International Criminal Court.
In
a coma for the much of the past month, Amin finally succumbed to
multiple organ failure. Commenting on news of Idi Amin’s death,
Uganda’s presidential spokesman expressed satisfaction, calling
his death "good." It is a sentiment doubtless shared by
millions.
Noor
ad-Deen Ingalls is an International Relations graduate from Tufts University and is
currently pursuing an MA in Arabic Language and Literature in Cairo,
Egypt. You can reach him at atabek@islam-online.net.
Azizuddin
El-Kaissouni
is a graduate of the American University in Cairo, he holds a BA in
Political Science with a specialization in International Law. You
can reach him at azizuddin@islam-online.net
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