His career began as defense minister of Uganda (1978-80), from which post he was dismissed in 1980 by President Binaisa, when he was caught organizing his own parallel, private army from the disbanded forces of thugs of the Idi Amin regime.  During the next elections, running as a candidate of his own party, the Ugandan Patriotic Movement, he was totally put out in the cold.  His "Movement" won no more than just a single seat in parliament.  In response he took his guerrilla "Movement" into the bush of the Luwero Triangle north-east of Kampala where Uganda's depopulation began.  It began explosion of terror and murder that would set the tone for the much larger genocide that would later sweep throughout much of central Africa under his direction.

Museveni's guerrilla war was not fought against the government, but against the people of Uganda.  A researcher, Cicilia Ogwal wrote in a 1995 paper,*(Dictatorship and Donor Policy in Uganda - Cicilia Ogwal, 1995)  "Within days of the launch, much of rural Luwero was a theatre of death and devastation.  The victims - men, woman, and children - were bayonetted, clubbed to death, and those who sought to run were shot..."  The victims were selected according to ethnic origin, political identity, and economic means.  One group of eye witnesses who came with their chieftain to visit Museveni in his compound reported having seen hundreds of human heads placed on poles and in trees along the perimeter of his fortress.  Inside the fortress, they were taken to a large grass hut that contained many more human heads with fresh blood on them.  "Pointing to the heads Museveni is to have told the visitors: 'This is what we do to those who don't agree with us.'"

According to other eyewitnesses, whose village was raided, who were made to go to the fortress, "from time to time, in the afternoons, the very old men, the sickly and boys too young to be child-soldiers were led into the bush, ostensibly to collect firewood.  They were never seen again.  Likewise, the female captives who were old, breast feeding, sickly, pregnant or too young were taken towards a river ostensibly to bathe and all never returned.*(as above - Reported in EIR August 8, 1997, p.49)

After a six year reign of terror in the bush, Museveni seized the capital Kampala.  An estimated 300,000 people died over the next two years in the north of the country, and many more in the east, as Museveni consolidated his power, while many more than those died from corresponding secondary causes.  Museveni himself described methods used, in New Vision magazine, June 27, 1989: "There was a policy of destroying food stuffs being used by the rebels," he wrote.  Mrs. Ogwal explained in her before mentioned document what this meant: "The entire food-stuff in granaries and fields were destroyed or plundered by the army.  Millions of livestock were plundered.  Also destroyed were homes, boreholes, water wells, schools, dispensaries, cooperative society stores, family implements of all types, household goods, including chairs, tables, beds, beddings, plates, cooking utensils, and pots.  Everything that could sustain live was destroyed or plundered."

The region was once a major cattle breeding area.  The city of Siroti had the biggest cattle market in East Africa, and a packing plant that had shipped its products throughout all of Africa.  The cattle were systematically taken away, the market and plant destroyed.  Deprived of all food and means to plow, 2.7 million people were left totally destitute without the means to survive.  Many didn't.  They simply died of starvation.  Nor has Museveni's war against the population of Uganda ended.  Even now, after 11 years of fighting, people within Uganda are still dying in this war of the government against its people.*(reported by EIR, August 8, 1997, p.50-51)

The first major escalation of Museveni's revolutionary killing began with the successful invasion of Rwanda in 1994 that unleashed a blood bath in which the lives of one million human beings ended abruptly.  Two years later, heavily armed contingents of the forces of the Ugandan, Rwandan, and Burundi military brought Museveni's revolutionary assault into Zaire.  The first targets were the camps of the Rwandan refugees who had fled in 1994.  Some of the inhabitants where forced to return to Rwanda, the rest tried to escape, but were pursued and murdered.

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Stories about War from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche