17 August 2003

Idi Amin Dada is dead, finally, at 78, or 80, depending on what you hear. He never knew precisely when he was born. But that is the way record keeping was for the subjects of the dying Empire. He had been on life-support since July 18. He suffered from high blood pressure and went into a coma before being admitted to the hospital at Jiddah, Saudi Arabia. Later, Reuters reported that hospital staff said he suffered multiple organ failures. In keeping with Islamic tradition, the former Christian was buried swiftly.

In his time he had been the unquestioned master of Uganda. Eight years of absolute power. He stood 6'4" and he had been a boxing champion. I didn't have much in common with him except perhaps a love for fast cars. He was the topic of the afternoon over drinks at the Nyali Beach Hotel in Mombassa, Kenya a long time ago. It was early June of 1979 and he had recently departed for exile. The situation in Uganda and the erratic behavior of the former despot were still the most interesting topics in eastern Africa.

One of the favorite anecdotes was about the time he demanded the British Ambassador crawl to him to beg the release of one of his nationals. Or the time he had the white residents of Kampala carry him around on a throne. We were talking about him at the Nyali Beach Hotel in Mombassa, Kenya, Nairobi in 1979. We were in port and relaxing, and the British crew was at their leisure, scheduled the next day for a trip down to Rwanda with a cargo of matches and other sundries. The flight crew of the B-707 was one short, since the flight engineer was off getting a part fixed for the jet at the local garage. I didn't know it then, but they were part of a loose consortium of the former Empire that had stayed in the neighborhood. They continued to have associations with the dark side of Her Majesty's Government, just to see if there was ever an opportunity to slip the knife into him.

As it turned out, they had.

We had a marvelous time with the Brits and they invited us to fly down to Rwanda with them the next morning. We were inclined to do that, but already had tickets for the Night Train to the capital. It was a good thing, too, since the airplane broke down in Kigali and we wouldn't have made it back to the ship. At the train station that night we were approached by a pan-handler of great dignity, who informed us in cultured English with rounded vowels that he "was from Uganda, and he had been defeated." He thanked me gravely as I handed over some shillings. Defeated by Big Daddy, I thought, as we climbed onto the old East African Rail car. That is what Amin called himself. Dada. Big Daddy.

Field Marshall Amin started life humbly. He had been a soldier in the British colonial army, enlisting as an apprentice cook. He later claimed to have fought in Burma, but since he didn't join up until 1946 that seems to be another of the little falsehoods he loved. He rose swiftly through the ranks and was able to seize power on Jan. 25, 1971, overthrowing President Milton Obote while he was abroad.

What followed was a reign of terror that combined low comedy and terror and wound up in bed with the Palestine Liberation Movement.

The Times says Obote once called Amin "the greatest brute an African mother has ever brought to life." President Jimmy Carter said events in Uganda during Amin's rule "disgusted the entire civilized world."

But his frequent tweaking of the British nose played well to the former subjects of the Empire. But beyond the bombast was an appetite for cruelty that was world class. His penchant for the cruel and extravagant became evident in 1972, when he expelled tens of thousands of Asians who had controlled the country's economy. Deprived of its business class, Uganda plummeted into economic chaos. It is the prototype for the embarrassment that is Zimbabwe.

Amin declared himself president-for-life and awarded himself an array of medals. He ran the country with an iron fist, killing real and imagined enemies. Human rights groups say between 100,000 to 500,000 people were killed during his 8-year reign.

Although nominally a Christian, he converted to Islam. His critics say he did it to gain financial and political support from Qaddaffy and the oil sheikdoms. His "conversion" brought with it bloodbaths against the black Christians on a large scale. For this he relied on his new friend, Yasser Arafat, who installed his PLO training camps in Uganda, from where PLO-trained thugs massacred hundreds of thousands of Christians.

Michael Kaufman, writing in today's Sunday New York Times, splits the difference on matter of the dead and claims the death toll was 300,000. The people he had murdered were mostly the nameless of society. He used two killing groups with twentieth century names: the Public Safety Unit and the State Research Bureau. Along with the military police, these forces numbered almost 20,000 and came from Big Daddy's Nubian tribe. They were permitted to choose their victims, who had things they desired. They were equal opportunity killers.

They killed so many in the early 1970s that the grave-diggers could not keep up and the bodies were thrown into the Nile to be eaten by crocodiles. Even the reptiles were overwhelmed, and the remains clogged the intakes at the hydroelectric pants. There were also many hundreds of prominent men and women among the dead. They included cabinet ministers, Supreme Court judges, diplomats, university rectors, educators, prominent Catholic and Anglican churchmen, hospital directors, surgeons, bankers, tribal leaders and business executives.

It also included Dora Bloch, a 73-year-old woman. I'll have a little more on her story in a minute.

Big Daddy had a penchant for the dramatic. His enemies said his erratic behavior may have stemmed from untreated syphilis. They claimed he had human heads in his refrigerator and dined on his opponents. He declared that Hitler had been right to kill six million Jews. He called the legendary Julius Nyerere, then president of Tanzania "a coward, an old woman and a prostitute," though he allowed as how he loved him and "would have married him if he had been a woman." He called Kenneth Kaunda, then the president of Zambia, an "imperialist puppet and bootlicker." He said Henry Kissinger was "a murderer and a spy." He said he expected Queen Elizabeth to send him "her 25-year-old knickers" in celebration of the silver anniversary of her coronation.

He also offered to become king of Scotland and lead his Celtic subjects to independence from Britain. He also ejected Peace Corps volunteers and the United States Marines who had guarded the American Embassy in Kampala.

But those who watched him closely knew better. "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." That is what Christopher Munnion says, and he was the reporter for The Daily Telegraph who was detained at the notorious Makindye military barracks. Four of his cellmates, former police officers, were murdered with sledge hammers.

Big Daddy had special terms for how his opponents would be dealt with. "Giving the V.I.P. treatment" to someone meant to kill, as did the instruction "Go with him to where he sleeps."

"Giving tea," meant whipping and dismemberment. As Big Daddy's economic situation worsened he increasingly saw his fate linked with that of the Palestinians.

On June 27, 1976, Air France Flight 139 with 246 passengers was hijacked. The plane was bound for New York from Ben Gurion International with a stop in Athens, an airport notorious for lousy security and the venue for the next summer's Olympic Games. That is where the terrorists boarded the flight. Producing weapons and grenades, they directed the plane to Benghazi, Libya for refueling. The aircraft left then left Muhammar Qaddaffy's territory and proceeded south to Entebbe, Uganda, where it landed on morning of June 28.

I don't know if the Family of Dora Bloch will get any money from the $2.3 billion dollar account the Libyan established to absolve himself of the guilt for blowing up Pam Am Flight 103. They should, and I'll tell you why.

Big Daddy seriously miscalculated his alliances. He teamed with Dr. Wadia Hadad's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the operation, which included two members of the German Baader-Meinhoff Gang. He agreed to provide a venue and personnel support on the ground in Uganda. Once at Entebbe, the passengers guarded by Ugandan soldiers and local PFLP terrorist operatives in addition to the hijackers themselves. The hijackers called for the release of 53 convicted terrorists, some of them held in Kenya. If their demands were not met, the terrorists threatened to blow up the plane and its passengers. Forty-seven non-Jewish passengers were released, although he French captain and his crew refused to leave without all their passengers. Those released confirmed that the Ugandans were active partners in the hijacking.

Eventually another group of a hundred non-Israeli passengers were released and only 105 Israelis remained in the terrorists' hands. The Israeli's pretended to negotiate but instead planned a daring rescue operation. The Israeli Defense Force planned a lightning assault on Entebbe featuring 200 commandos, five C-130's and two back-up 707's for communications and medical support. The C-130's S carried a black limousine and British-built Land Rovers intended to confuse the Ugandans.

The raid came off magnificently. It stands as perhaps the best ad hoc military operation in history and the template for the failed attempt to rescue the American hostages at the Embassy in Tehran. . The aircraft landed without incident shortly before midnight and the limousine and its escorts drove up to the Old Terminal, moving consistent with the appearance of Big Daddy himself. They were challenged at the last minute, but the Commandos shot their way in, taking only minimal casualties. A second assault team took out the off-duty terrorists and Ugandan guards. One of the casualties was Lt. Col. Yoni Netanyahu, brother of the man who would become Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The assault on the Old Terminal building was completed within three minutes after the lead plane landed. The hostages and crew of Air France 139, the Israeli dead and wounded, were all evacuated within seven minutes. They left the bodies of the eight hijackers in the Old Terminal and torched the Ugandan MiGs so there would be no pursuit. The paratroops reloaded their vehicles and equipment in good order and the operation was complete within forty minutes. After refueling in Kenya, they were greeted on landing at Ben Gurion cheering thousands.

That might have been the moment that Big Daddy lost it. There was only one hostage left. Dora Bloch been on her way to her youngest son's wedding in New York when the hijacking interfered. She had a serious case of indigestion shortly after Flight 193 arrived at Kampala. She was taken from the airport to Mulago General Hospital, and that is where she was when the raid went down. She was the last Israeli in Kampala, and she was going to pay for it.

A British diplomat visited Mrs Bloch in hospital on Sunday evening after the Israeli swoop on Entebbe. Two plain-clothed guards told him she was about to be discharged to the Imperial Hotel in Kampala.

When he returned to the hospital an hour later with some food he was denied entry.

Although the British protested, Big Daddy continued to deny knowledge any knowledge of Dora Bloch's fate. Parliament was told she was presumed dead on 13 July. Britain severed diplomatic relations with Uganda, the first time it had ejected country from it's Commonwealth. It turned out Big Daddy had a couple of his guys drag her out of her bed and bludgeon her to death.

He was not done playing on the big stage, though he did not know how his enemies were arrayed against him. In 1978, Big Daddy attempted to seize Kagera, a barren area to the west of Lake Victoria. By early 1979, his forces crumbled under the determined attack of Tanzanian forces and Ugandan exiles. If you se the hands of MI-6 and Mossad in this, you would not be far wrong. The capital of Kampala fell on April 12, and with his wives and children, Big Daddy lit out for Tripoli and eventually Saudi Arabia.

In late 1979, when we were in Kenya, Dora Bloch's remains were identified by pathologists after they were discovered near a sugar plantation 20 miles east of Kampala. It might have been the same plantation where the young Amin had worked as a cane-cutter.

Retirement and forced inactivity was hard on him and Big Daddy always sought to return to power. He flew to Kinshasa, Zaire, in 1989 on forged documents to start a dramatic drive to return to power. Everyone concerned was embarrassed. The Congolese detained him for a while, the Ugandans announced they would only accept him for the purposes of bringing him to trial and then feeding him to the crocodiles.

The Saudis reluctantly allowed him to return, and Big Daddy made his exit from the front pages of history. Big Daddy's last years were spent in enforced isolation as the Saudi Arabian authorities made sure he maintained a low profile. The New York Times reports that he was occasionally seen driving around Jiddah and Riyadh in a white Chevrolet. Out in the desert they say you can really let a big American car go.

Copyright 2003 Vic Socotra