Another Fine Mess: America, Uganda, and the War on Terror

by Helen C. Epstein

Overview

Is the West to blame for the agony of Uganda and its neighbors?

In this powerful account of Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni’s 30 year reign, Helen Epstein chronicles how Western leaders’ single-minded focus on the War on Terror and their naïve dealings with strongmen are at the root of much of the turmoil in eastern and central Africa.

Museveni’s involvement in the conflicts in Sudan, South Sudan, Rwanda, Congo, and Somalia has earned him substantial amounts of military and development assistance, as well as near-total impunity. It has also short-circuited the power the people of this region might otherwise have over their destiny.

Epstein set out for Uganda more than 20 years ago to work as a public health consultant on an AIDS project. Since then, the roughly $20 billion worth of foreign aid poured into the country by donors has done little to improve the well-being of the Ugandan people, whose rates of illiteracy, mortality, and poverty surpass those of many neighboring countries. Money meant to pay for health care, education, and other public services has instead been used by Museveni to shore up his power through patronage, brutality, and terror.

Another Fine Mess is a devastating indictment of the West’s Africa policy and an authoritative history of the crises that have ravaged Uganda and its neighbors since the end of the Cold War.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780997722925
Publisher:	Columbia Global Reports
Publication date:	09/05/2017
Pages:	262
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Helen Epstein is Visiting Professor of Global Public Health and Human Rights at Bard College in Annandale, New York. Her book The Invisible Cure: Why We Are Losing the Fight against AIDS in Africa (Picador 2008), was a New York Times Notable Book and was Amazon.com's best science book of 2007. Her articles have appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, Harper's and other publications and she has worked as a consultant for such organizations as the World Bank, UNICEF and Human Rights Watch.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"As her new book reveals, Helen Epstein is an eloquent advocate of human rights and democracy for Africans, as well as a courageous critic of how U.S. aid supports oppressive dictators like Yoweri Museveni in Uganda."
- William Easterly, Professor of Economics at NYU and author of The Tyranny of Experts and The White Man's Burden

"For decades, Western policy-makers have hailed Uganda's Yoweri Museveni as a benign autocrat, a charming African Bismarck and trusted partner in the fight against Islamic fundamentalism. Another Fine Messreveals a far darker side to this key African ally, while exposing the cynicism at the heart of American policy in Africa's Great Lakes region. This gripping, iconoclastic, angry book raises a host of uncomfortable questions."
- Michela Wrong, author of Borderlines and It's Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower

Editorial Reviews

07/03/2017
In this relentlessly angry but convincing polemic, Epstein (The Invisible Cure), visiting professor of global public health and human rights at Bard College, exposes the corrupt and murderous regime of Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled Uganda for over 30 years. Though uneasy over Museveni’s poor record on human rights, the U.S. government considers him a bulwark in the war against terrorism. Museveni’s army defeated Uganda’s previous military dictator in 1986, after five years of guerilla warfare. He took power promising peace and democracy, but almost immediately began suppressing democracy, rigging elections, and—with the help of massive amounts of American aid—using his army to oppress the Ugandan people and wreak havoc in neighboring nations (including Rwanda, where Epstein concludes Museveni bears major responsibility for the genocide). Epstein spent years in Uganda working on AIDS research, and most of the Ugandans she interviews are opposition members. She recounts Museveni’s misconduct and bloody military adventures in painful detail, with the express goal of persuading the U.S. government to change its policy. That may be a tough sell, but Epstein succeeds in disclosing the nefarious deeds of a U.S. ally. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

A stunning new book of reportage and analysis.... Helen Epstein lays out in appalling detail how Museveni, who seized power in 1986, has helped worsen every major conflict in eastern and central Africa since then.” —Pankaj Mishra, Bloomberg

“Epstein’s absorbing book is a damning indictment of the American hypocrisy that has been on display across Africa since the Europeans packed up and left as colonialism collapsed after World War II. A public health consultant who has spent many years talking to and writing about many of the dissidents who have opposed strongman rule in East Africa, Epstein has compiled a catalog of almost every arrest, kidnapping, and execution engineered by Museveni and his goons—all while America looked the other way.” —Helene Cooper, The New York Review of Books

“Very accessible and richly detailed.” —Africa is a Country

“Epstein’s briskly narrated yet detailed chronicle is as much an indictment of US policy toward East Africa as it is of President Museveni’s record at home and abroad.” —Kevin J. Kelley, The East African

“Epstein joins a number of other critics of current U.S. policy in Africa in noting that the ‘war on terror’ has led Washington to sharply increase military assistance to the region, emphasize stability over democracy, and tacitly or explicitly support dictators...an often troubling indictment of U.S. policy.” —Foreign Affairs

“Epstein forcefully showcases the collateral damage of myopic American foreign policy that obsesses about terrorism everywhere—even in Uganda—to the detriment of all other considerations. Another Fine Mess chronicles how American foreign policy driven by short-term security concerns results in long-term crises and an entrenchment of authoritarian rule in the process. An important and prescient cautionary tale.” —Brian Klaas, Fellow at the London School of Economics and author of The Despot’s Accomplice: How the West is Aiding and Abetting the Decline of Democracy

“As her new book reveals, Helen Epstein is an eloquent advocate of human rights and democracy for Africans, as well as a courageous critic of how U.S. aid supports oppressive dictators like Yoweri Museveni in Uganda.” —William Easterly, Professor of Economics at NYU and author of The Tyranny of Experts

“For decades, Western policy-makers have hailed Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni as a benign autocrat, a charming African Bismarck and trusted partner in the fight against Islamic fundamentalism. Another Fine Mess reveals a far darker side to this key African ally, while exposing the cynicism at the heart of American policy in Africa’s Great Lakes region. This gripping, iconoclastic, angry book raises a host of uncomfortable questions.” —Michela Wrong, author of Borderlines and It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower

“Epstein’s book is well written, well documented, and brief enough that it should be widely read. Essential for anyone interested in American foreign policy as it relates to Africa.” —Library Journal

“A sizzling indictment of Uganda’s current strongman and of the American policy in Africa that supports his corrupt regime with generous foreign aid.” —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

09/15/2017
Author (The Invisible Cure), journalist (The New York Times), public health consultant, and professor (human rights & global public health, Bard Coll.) Epstein weaves the life story of Ugandan journalist, political activist, and professor Kiwanuka Lawrence Nsereko into the modern history of Uganda to expose the unconscionable decades-long support by the United States and other Western governments of President Yoweri Museveni, a murderous dictator who has plundered foreign aid and natural resource funds to gain wealth and power and install and maintain similar strongmen in neighboring African nations. Epstein demonstrates how Museveni played U.S. administrations from Reagan through Obama by selling himself as the bulwark of democracy against Islamist extremism in East and Central Africa, building an army to intervene in (and exacerbate) conflicts in neighboring countries on behalf of "Western interests" in the "war on terror." Though others have written about Uganda in this context (Epstein cites particularly Ogenga Otunnu's Crisis of Legitimacy and Political Violence in Uganda), Epstein's book is well written, well documented, and brief enough that it should be widely read. VERDICT Essential for anyone interested in American foreign policy as it relates to Africa.—Joel Neuberg, Santa Rosa Junior Coll. Lib., CA

Library Journal

2017-06-27
A valiant attempt to disentangle the many threads snarled in the continuing African tragedy.Epstein (The Invisible Cure: Why We Are Losing the Fight Against AIDS in Africa, 2007) has reported extensively on Africa for the New York Times and the New York Review of Books, among other publications. Here, the author recalls an African myth in which a wily hare outwits powerful but dimwitted enemies and then likens Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni to the clever hare manipulating bumbling Americans. She charges that the United States, while purporting to support the growth of democracies, has ignored his corruption and human rights violations as long as he has convincingly claimed that Uganda is a democracy and has appeared to be a bulwark against advancing Islamic terrorism. She reports that Museveni's American-trained army "has been highly effective in crushing nascent democracy movements in Uganda and in other countries," and she grimly details the dictator's outsized ambitions and atrocities against innocent people. The numerous unfamiliar African names and a plethora of abbreviations for various military forces—e.g., NRA, LRA, RPF, AFDL, SPLA—will challenge readers who do not pay close attention to the text. Fortunately, Epstein prefaces her work with a concise timeline of events in Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan, Zaire/Congo, and Somalia that can be consulted by readers struggling to understand her dense account of the violence and corruption that have beleaguered that part of the world. So what should the U.S. do to change the situation? According to the author, it's crucial that we renew the pledge to support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but a specific plan of action is not included. A sizzling indictment of Uganda's current strongman and of the American policy in Africa that supports his corrupt regime with generous foreign aid.

Kirkus Reviews