Uganda offers Gaddafi asylum

Uganda became the first country to publicly offer asylum to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi this week should he bow to growing international pressure to step down. “Gaddafi would be allowed to live here if he chooses to do so,” said presidential spokesman Tamale Mirundi.

“We have soft spots for asylum seekers,” he added.

Asylum would offer a way out for Gaddafi and could help Uganda win further favour with Western powers who want a way out of the crisis wracking Libya and back President Yoweri Museveni’s government with generous aid donations.

Museveni has shown support for Gaddafi in recent weeks calling for an end to the allied air strikes on Libyan army positions and praising Gaddafi’s leadership in a lengthy open letter.

“Gaddafi, whatever his faults, is a true nationalist. I prefer nationalists to puppets of foreign interests,” wrote the Ugandan president.

The relationship between the two leaders is long and tempestuous. In the 1970s Gaddafi supported the brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin with funds and weapons, largely because he was Muslim. Later, after Museveni helped overthrow Amin, Gaddafi lent his support to Museveni and the rebel army that brought him to power in 1986.

The two men have since exchanged honorifics: in 1988 Gaddafi awarded Museveni the Al-Fatah medal, the country’s highest honour, and in 2004 Museveni reciprocated by awarding Gaddafi the Order of Katonga, Uganda’s highest military honour.

So frequent were Gaddafi’s visits and so generous his support to the traditional kingdom of Toro in western Uganda that a local Ugandan tabloid alleged an affair between the Libyan leader and the Queen Mother, Best Kemigisa. The affair was denied and the editors of the Red Pepper newspaper were sued in court.

But relations have been strained in recent years as the two have differed over Gaddafi’s vision of a ‘United States of Africa’, his support to traditional kingdoms and rulers and the belief that the Libyan leader is seeking to extend Islam’s influence in sub-Saharan Africa.

When deadly riots erupted in September 2009 between the people of the Buganda kingdom and state security services Museveni pointed the finger of blame at external forces. This was widely interpreted as a veiled reference to Gaddafi who envisages a continent linked together by a web of traditional chieftains and kingdoms funded by Libya’s oil wealth.

In contrast Museveni has emerged as a champion of regional rather than continental integration. He is a strong backer of the East African Community, an economic bloc linking Uganda with Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi.

Observers say Museveni, who has been in power since 1986 and won another five-year term in February this year, sees himself as an ideal candidate for East Africa’s first president.

For his part Gaddafi covets the role of president of an economically and politically united Africa. Facing ambivalence from the continent’s political leaders Gaddafi has turned to its traditional chiefs and kings for support.

In 2008 he had himself crowned ‘King of Kings’ at a gathering of more than 200 traditional leaders who he summoned to Benghazi. The Benghazi summit followed a meeting of the African Union in 2007 at which Museveni was instrumental in blocking a Libyan proposal to fast-track plans for a United States of Africa, souring relations between the two men.

Relations reached their nadir in 2008 when, during a state visit to Uganda, the presidents’ bodyguards came to blows. Gaddafi was in Kampala to open an immense new 15,000-capacity mosque that he funded and then named after himself, completing a job started decades earlier by Amin.

Afterwards Gaddafi cut the visit short and left without warning.

Three months later Museveni appealed to the US for help saying he feared a Libyan attempt on his life, according to a diplomatic cable obtained by the website Wikileaks.

“Museveni noted that tensions with Muammar Gaddafi are growing and as a result, he worries that Muammar Gaddafi will attack his plane while flying over international airspace,” wrote a US dlplomat in June 2008.

“Museveni requested that [the US] and [Uganda] co-ordinate to provide additional air radar information when he flies over international waters.”

But with the discovery of commercially viable quantities of oil in Uganda’s Lake Albert basin relations seem to have been on the mend. Libya is interested in funding a refinery that Museveni hopes will produce 150,000 barrels per day for export regionally and for internationally.

Even if Gaddafi chooses exile he may not welcome Uganda’s offer. Uganda is one of 30 African countries that are signatories to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court whose chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is considering whether to bring war crimes charges against Gaddafi.

If Moreno-Ocampo opens an investigation then Uganda would, in theory, be obliged to hand Gaddafi over to the court.

Other African countries that are not members of the ICC and so might offer safer havens include Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Zimbabwe.