Talk:Uganda–Tanzania War

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"Events immediately preceding dad’s overthrow

January 1, 1979

The Uganda Freedom Movement (UFM) calls for a meeting of Ugandan exiles in Nairobi. Later the group joins the Moshi Conference. Some fascinating facts have come out about the build-up to the Uganda/Tanzanian War concerning the make up of the fighting forces—the so-called Liberation Forces.

Apart from the 208th which was a regular Army Brigade, the other five TPDF Brigades that invaded Uganda in 1979 were made up of largely volunteers from the Peoples Socialist Militias, the semi trained fighting force that already provided security at village level in Tanzania (Ma Nyumba Kumi).

One of the reasons why the fighting was halted for three months after dad withdrew from the Kagera Salient in October 1978 was that before the invasion, the TPDF recruits needed some further basic training. This took place in various military camps that were set up in the area to the south of the Kagera River. By November of 1978 the Regular army 208th Brigade was based in a camp at Katoro, a village a few miles south of Kyaka Bridge, with the 206th camped a short distance to the west. The 201st Brigade meanwhile was stationed at the main trade centre of Bukoba.

By contrast, the 207th Brigade was based at Bugandika, a few miles to the north of the road between Bukoba and Kyaka. Although this is a rural area, it lies at the foot of the infamous smuggler’s road – the marram track connecting Lukunyu, Kanyigo and Bukwali to the rest of Tanzania. This area lies in Kiamtwara Chiefdom, one of the places where the Tutsi refugees settled in 1962.

These four volunteer Brigades retook the Kagera Salient in January 1979 but there were two other Tanzania Brigades that assembled rather later. The troops of the 205th arrived in Kagera Region only in late December 1978 and completed their training in February of 1979 at a camp near the Parish of Kakuuto, just over the border in Southern Uganda. The last TPDF units to assemble passed through Kagera region in early 1979 and were formed into the Minziro Brigade when Mbarara was captured in February 1979.

The Brigades took specific routes during the invasion. The 207th Brigade advanced from Kyaka, Kyotera, Masaka, Lukaya and onwards to Kampala . The 205th Brigade advanced from Bukoba, Kyaka, Kyotera, Masaka, and branched to Mbende, Hoima, and Masindi and onwards to Gulu. The 206th and Minziro Task force set off from Nykanyasi, Mbarara where Minziro was setup, onwards to Kasese, Fort Portal , Hoima, Masindi, Pakwach, Arua, and finally my hometown Ko-buko in West Nile . The 208th and 201st Brigades advanced from Bukoba, Kyaka, Kyotera, Masaka, Lukaya, Kampala, Jinja, Tororo, Mbale, Lira and Gulu. Speculation is rife amongst locals that the spread of the Aids Scourge followed these specific routes during the ironically named Liberation of Uganda.

Caught up in this momentous surge were a bunch of pre-teenage children of the man the Liberators wanted "

• Source: Details of TPDF brigade movement during invasion (half way down page), accessed December 2007 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Buckshot06 (talk • contribs) 11:17, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved: insufficient support. DrKay (talk) 14:38, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

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Uganda–Tanzania War → Uganda–Tanzania war – Per Caps. Subject has not "achieved proper name status" per google book search. Apteva (talk) 05:20, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

There are two possible titles. Uganda–Tanzania war with an endash and with war not capitalized, or Uganda-Tanzania War with a hyphen and capitalized. From what I can see the uncapitalized with an endash version is the more commonly used. My personal preference is to prohibit endash from titles, but that would mean moving to Uganda-Tanzania War with a hyphen. In any case the current title is incorrect as it fails to follow any guideline. Apteva (talk) 05:20, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

• Support "Uganda-Tanzania War with a hyphen and capitalized" SLawsonIII (talk) 22:05, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. The proposer knows full well that usage in this title has been carefully weighed already. It is given as an example in WP:ENDASH (at WP:MOS). The way Wikipedia deals with style choices is not by incompetent and biased appeal to "reliable sources". (No matter how reliable they are for content, this is a style matter. Their wildly diverging style choices are filtered through guidelines in MOS, painstakingly developed by consensual discussion and assessment of decisions made by other major style guides and manuals. For cases like this one, status as a proper name has zero relevance to the choice between en dash and hyphen.)
  For details concerning the editor's disruptive multi-forum campaign, see his or her concurrent RM proposal at Talk:Comet Hale–Bopp. All of this discussion of a general style issue should be conducted at the relevant central forum: WT:MOS. Apteva refuses to confine it there, and imposes on editors' time and patience at scattered locations instead.
  I therefore request speedy closure of this RM discussion, as pointy and disruptive in the extreme.
  Noetica^Tea? 02:58, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
  • No personal attacks please. Address the issue, not the editor. I am only interested in having our articles have correct names. A MOS is not the place to discuss a specific article - only this talk page is where this discussion needs to take place. What the MOS says is that proper names use a hyphen - that means that this would be "Uganda-Tanzania War", with a hyphen. If it is not a proper name, the MOS says to use an endash, meaning it would be at "Uganda–Tanzania war", with an endash and with war not capitalized. This is not a general style issue, but one of applying that established style correctly. However what is more important than what the style guide says is what is the actual correct name for the article? The fact that it was used erroneously in the MOS is not important. People make mistakes. Fix them and move on. Apteva (talk) 03:16, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose – Apteva has invented a new theory that proper names get hyphens and non-proper names get en dashes. It makes no sense, and his widespread pushing of odd changes contrary to the WP:MOS is getting tiresome in the extreme. On the other hand, I don't really object to downcasing war, if the military projects will let go of their guidelines that say that recognized war names should be capitalized thus (see WP:MILTERMS). This has nothing to do with en dash versus hyphen, and must be discussed with a sensible rationale if people want to go that way. Styles in sources are mixed, on both issues; that's why we follow WP style as agreed in the MOS. Dicklyon (talk) 07:04, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose A great deal of time has already been spent cleaning up Apteva's mistakes and trying to educate them about policies and guidelines. Apteva's WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT is getting old. --Neotarf (talk) 07:56, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

  Please, if WP contains an error, no matter how long it has been there or how it got there, it is appropriate to fix it. There is not a lot of literature on this particular war, but it is clear that if war is capitalized, the title should use a hyphen, and if war should not be capitalized then the article should also be moved. In any case the current title is not correct. I do not know of very many "mistakes" that I have made, but I do know of errors that have been re-introduced because of reverting my edits. It is pretty obvious that someone is misinterpreting what a typical style guide would say, including ours, by ignoring the advice that names use hyphens by trying to use dashes in names. Names do not use dashes, and our MOS says so. There are situations where dashes are used, but not in proper nouns. One of the best examples of where an endash is not used is in Mexican-American War. It is trivial to verify this. The vast majority of the 10,000 - almost twice that actually - books that use that name spell it with a hyphen, and all of them used some sort of style guide or dictionary or common sense to decide to use a hyphen instead of an endash. Why would a wikipedia editor think that their reading of their style guide was incorrect and that even in names they should have used an endash? We do not do original research and we do not make things up. We look for reliable sources and follow what we find there - and if we can not verify what we use we toss it. Just to clarify "A great deal of time" to click undo on maybe half a dozen edits is clearly an exaggeration. What I am trying to avoid is exactly that. I could easily fix the 100-200 articles that I know of that have an endash that should be a hyphen, but I am not going to do that. I am going to get consensus on doing that first, and get the legion of endash warriors (all ten of them?) to help me. Otherwise I am just going to attract a stalker who is going to follow me around and re-introduce errors. Apteva (talk) 01:32, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose I agree that some editors need to comment on the content, not the contributor, but Noetica's explanation of reliance on sources for style versus content is the only way to maintain internal consistency, essential for a respectable work, on Wikipedia. As a proper noun, referring to a specific, individual historical conflict, the current capitalization is entirely appropriate. I'm neutral on the punctuation question, which would be better solved through an RfC. --BDD (talk) 19:22, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

• My search simply put found this: when authors are talking about other stuff and just referring to the war, they don't capitalize War. See: this book. When the sources are directly focusing on this war, they capitalize War. See this source, or the second hit on Google Scholar from a journal focusing specifically on the war and capitalizing 'War'. So mentions don't capitalize, focus does=I go with focus. On the dash, I also prefer hyphen over endash, but will leave that primarily to others. SLawsonIII (talk) 22:05, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

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Potential sources

• [1] -Indy beetle (talk) 04:10, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
• [2] -Indy beetle (talk) 08:38, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Oh, plagiarism from the media

• Mugini, Jacob (4 January 2020). "General Musuguri: Ex-CDF Chief Who Turns 100 Years Today". Daily News. Retrieved 4 January 2020. It seems that Tanzania's Daily News has used some of our work to write this article without attribution. -Indy beetle (talk) 12:21, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

I am not surprised. Frankly, I think that it is great how people in Africa read these article and consider them great sources - but they could at least mention Wikipedia if they write for newspapers, especially if they completely copy entire sections. Applodion (talk) 13:22, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Lede (lead) section needs condensing - WAY too big.

The general guideline for lede (lead) sections, ahead of the table of contents, is 3-4 summary paragraphs, footnoted with references. See the official WP:Lede guidelines, or the ledes of most important Wikipedia articles.

This article's current lede is the size of an entire article. (In fact, the "paragraphs" are each the size of small Wikipedia articles!). This discourages casual researchers, and reduces the attention that will be given, to this article, by the general public.

To put the current lede in perspective, for the...

• Ugandan-Tanzanian War, which involved, at most, a dozen nations, and killed less than 5,000 people,

this article's lede is as large as the lede for the article on...

• World War II -- which involved nearly all of the world's nations, killing over 70,000,000, ultimately revolutionizing global politics, modern warfare, science and technology -- generally regarded by historians as the largest single event in human history.

I respectfully urge one of the editors responsible to trim down the current lede, to something easily and quickly read, and move the details to the appropriate sections/subsections below the Table of Contents.

~ Penlite (talk) 06:05, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

I respectfully disagree. This passed GA, and is a finely written article with an excellent lede. Applodion (talk) 17:31, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Defeat of Idi Amin by Tanzania army and Ugandan exiles

Idi Amin Dada's government fell on April 11, 1979; not June 1979. 102.85.137.234 (talk) 09:24, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Please read the article. Fighting lasted into June. Applodion (talk) 13:39, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

International support

The template about countries involved only mentions African countries while ignoring the context of the cold war. It is known that the USA and UK supported Uganda while the USSR, China and Israel supported Tanzania.2A00:23EE:2770:304F:8C50:958D:24C4:57D0 (talk) 07:48, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

The article says the UK welcomed the fall of Amin and supplied the Tanzanians, that the US instigated an economic boycott of Uganda, and that both the UK and the US sabotaged Amin's appeal for foreign troops. DrKay (talk) 08:41, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

The article is propaganda. There is evidence that the USA and UK were complicit in Ugandan war crimes. The war was part of American and British strategy. It was an attempt to distract the anti-apartheid coalition (Tanzania Zambia Angola and Mozambique). The Russians and Israelis had cut relations with Uganda in 1971 and 1972 respectively and provided vital support for Tanzania. 2A00:23EE:2738:4326:451E:A45E:F52B:498B (talk) 10:00, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

The UK condemned Amin's regime and also cut off diplomatic relations. DrKay (talk) 11:13, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

You and your imperialism don't belong on Wikipedia. Get blocked. 2A00:23EE:2738:4326:451E:A45E:F52B:498B (talk) 11:19, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

I also need to point Belgian hypocrisy out. They not only made the false comparison between Yugoslavia (a federation where all ethnicities were given equal rights that fought against fascism in ww2) and Amin Uganda (an antisemitic fascist state) but were themselves involved in trying to save the Amin regime through their former colony Zaire. 2A00:23EE:2738:4326:451E:A45E:F52B:498B (talk) 11:32, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

I kindly request that you stay civil. Furthermore, this is not a forum for your viewpoints on imperialism and injustices, this is the talk page for a specific article. Applodion (talk) 12:24, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm not attacking anyone personally. I'm just trying to show the truth. I will add the USSR and China myself. 2A00:23EE:2738:4326:451E:A45E:F52B:498B (talk) 12:41, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

You need sources for this kind of stuff. You can't just claim "X country got involved" and add it to the article. Applodion (talk) 13:28, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

"You and your imperialism don't belong on Wikipedia. Get blocked." is obviously a personal attack. DrKay (talk) 13:56, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

This all seems like some half-baked, or even non-baked version of Nyerere's and Machel's "Second Front" thesis, which proved a convenient rationale for Nyerere to withdraw his forces at the Mozambique/Rhodesia border to reinforce Tanzania and for Machel to allow that with good grace while also lending the TPDF one of his battalions. To claim "There is evidence that the USA and UK were complicit in Ugandan war crimes. The war was part of American and British strategy." flies in the face of other verified information about the war. If you say there is evidence, then show it. China's role here was minimal but it is reflected in the body text; they really didn't want to be involved in a conflict but sent some token arms to Tanzania and expedited some previously ordered hardware. The USSR was heavily involved with Uganda up until shortly before the war and throughout the conflict was trying to backpedal out of their entanglement. I've yet to see anything which indicates Israel had any involvement here at all. -Indy beetle (talk) 03:36, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Arab troops including Palestinians fought for Uganda so Israel must have naturally supported Tanzania. 2A00:23EE:2748:2CAA:A7D3:28BF:CA13:1DCF (talk) 12:43, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

Uganda was extremely anti-communist 2A00:23EE:2748:2CAA:A7D3:28BF:CA13:1DCF (talk) 12:45, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

By your logic, Israel would have been involved in almost every conflict between 1945 and 1990; you need sources for your claims. The PLO involvement in this war is well sourced. Applodion (talk) 15:45, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

You need to provide sources. DrKay (talk) 13:56, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

• "Arab troops including Palestinians fought for Uganda so Israel must have naturally supported Tanzania". Editors' personal opinions on what "must" have happened based on their personal impressions of something are not how we write articles. -Indy beetle (talk) 08:10, 29 September 2024 (UTC)