After suffering much humiliation from ADF and an insurrection from Rwenzururu kingdom, Museveni attributed the whole mess to intelligence failure, “How did these people weave such a scheme without being pre-empted?”
With admission of failure on handling a minor tribal domestic issue, Museveni decided to create a UPDF mountain brigade and looked to France to offer specialized training of the new unit.
French Alpine troops flew to Uganda to embark on this training mission of a new Ugandan army unit to help combat violence in the mountainous Rwenzori sub- region.
Chasseurs alpins are the elite mountain infantry force of the French Army. They are trained to operate in mountainous terrain and in urban warfare.
“This training of the UPDF in mountain warfare is necessitated to secure the Ugandan mountains for the security of those living nearby and for tourism,” Museveni said in 2016.
The French established Karugutu Training school which specializes in Mountain War Fare Technical Courses.
For the French military industry, Museveni’s mountain army project offers business- already Marck & Balsan a French defence equipment manufacturer won a major equipment and materials supply tender under military cooperation arrangements.
“As ADF spreads across Eastern Congo, we need more capabilities to monitor and deter them from using our mountain ranges by deploying specialized forces. The Albertine Region needs serious protection for the young oil industry to thrive,” said a former CDF Gen David Muhoozi.
However, the real test for Museveni’s mountain army came to a test last month when President Felix Tshisekedi invited Uganda to hunt for the ADF inside Congo.
For Museveni, the Mountain army headed by Maj.Gen. Kayanja Muhanga was the choice to deploy for this mission in an operation named Shujja.
In less than a week into the operation, Maj.Gen. Kayanja announced a halt in the operation against the rebels citing impassable roads, thick forests and bad weather that made it impossible for any advance onto the rebel bases.
This mountain army was a bad choice for the operations against ADF require a unit with special jungle warefare skills.
It should be remembered that for more than 7 years, the Congolese army and Monusco had been pursuing these rebels in the dense jungles with no success.
On realization of lack of skills in jungle warfare, Monusco decided to invite Brazil troops to train Congolese army in jungle combat skills.
Beni and Ituri are extremely forested with a tormenting equatorial climate all year round.
The rebels and other armed groups set up bases in the middle of these forests and have remained untouched. They easily walkout and terrorise neighbouring areas and return to base scot-free.
It was therefore a tactical mistake in choosing a mountain unit to conduct operations in a flat densely forested terrain with equatorial weather.
Uganda had one last choice- to use their air force and artillery to seemingly bombard rebel bases in the forests but their accuracy in targeting these bases is still a matter of debate because of high margin of error in obtaining accurate coordinates to facilitate pilots and artillery gunners.
Like as always predicted, military experts argue that on the part of UPDF there was minimal pre-operations intelligence collected and this could have forced the UPDF into a halt mode as its Intel teams collect real-time data on the ADF.
Thus as UPDF reorgansises itself and allowing the Congolese to take lead of this operation, the Ugandans will spend more time constructing the roads as part of fulfilling payment of a colossal U$10billion in fines to losses it inflicted onto DRC during the UPDF occupation 20 years ago.