On the night of August 12, three Ugandan military helicopters crashed on Mount Kenya enroute to Somalia. A fourth helicopter made it safely to Somalia.

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, a former guerrilla leader who still occasionally dons his military uniform, straps an AK47 across his chest, and does target practice to buttress his soldier credentials, was livid.

Uncharacteristically, he did not say anything immediately. His first action was to appoint an inquiry, naming his brother, semi-retired General Salim Saleh to head it.

The choice drew quick criticism from Ugandan parliamentarians, some of whom alleged Museveni had appointed family to cover up.

Probably not, as Saleh is too much of a maverick and loose cannon and a poor pick for a cover-up man.

Meanwhile speculation swirled about how the pilots had deviated from their flight path — that the helicopters might have been lousy East European second-hand affairs; that the pilots were green, and even that a rogue Kenyan officer deliberately misled the Ugandans into flying over the treacherous Mount Kenya zone so that they could crash.

My sense though is that, in appointing Saleh, Museveni had made the matter very personal. To what purpose, we shall soon find out.

On August 25, he issued a statement of condolence to the families of the seven Ugandan soldiers who died in the crashes.

On close reading, the statement is very revealing. He said he had little to say because he was “indignant and disappointed.”

Then he addressed a wider regional audience, suggesting that if anyone in Somalia or East Africa thought the loss of the helicopters had weakened his forces, they needed to think again.

He said the UPDF is now a strong force of “tens of thousands of officers, fighters and technical cadres.”

He also spoke to a fact that is often ignored in discussions of the Uganda military: That it easily has the largest reserve force in East Africa. Museveni said the country had “millions of reserve fighters.”

He then passed an early verdict: “I cannot listen to stories of bad weather on the mountain. Mountains are clearly shown on maps. We never fly over mountains with helicopters, especially the combat ones.

“Whenever I am going to Bundibugyo, my pilots always fly around the Rwenzori; they never fly over the Rwenzori. When we operated over the Imatong hills in South Sudan, we used an MI-17, which has a higher ceiling [6,000 metres i.e. slightly above 19,685 ft, depending on the weight of the aircraft].

“Therefore, mountains cannot be a factor to serious operators. Weather can also not be accepted as a serious factor. If the weather is bad, you do not fly”.

With that, Museveni basically narrowed the possible causes of the accidents to two.

First, wrong judgement by senior Uganda military forces who, he said, “once in a while, act negligently or high-handedly resulting in unnecessary losses.”

Or, second, sabotage. Still, even if someone in Kenya had sent the helicopters on a dangerous path as an act of sabotage, that should nevertheless have been figured out by the Uganda Air Force.

This is going to get nasty.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group’s executive editor for Africa & Digital Media. E-mail: [email protected]. Twitter: @cobbo3