If the first casualty of war is the truth, the saying seems to apply with equal force to relatively minor skirmishes.

This became evident last week with the blistering attack launched by elements of Uganda’s security forces led by the army, on the palace of Charles Wesley Mumbere, the revered monarch of the Bakonzo people of western Uganda. The history of the relationship between Mumbere’s people and the state in Uganda is long and complex.

Suffice it say, though, that it has been marked by clashes, some serious and long drawn-out enough to merit the label “war.”

But, precisely because for decades the two sides have been fighting, arguing, negotiating or making up, many Ugandans, even the most diligent observers of the political scene, had stopped paying attention.

Except when things got out of hand, as they did fairly recently, when after the locals voted overwhelmingly for opponents of President Yoweri Museveni and his government during this year’s presidential and parliamentary elections, clashes broke out between the security forces and some people, for reasons the details of which few Ugandans cared to examine in detail.

But social media did produce dramatic images of men armed with no more than knives and sticks, others with nothing at all, attacking police officers who were brandishing automatic weapons.

Well, at the end of the drama, people were counting dead bodies, of which some belonged to police officers and, apparently, soldiers. Many observers concluded that either the lightly armed or unarmed men – almost all of whom fell to gun fire – were extraordinarily brave or foolish beyond belief. But who were they, and what was the issue over which they seemed to have lost all rationality?

As with many incidents of this kind, people quickly moved on, in that now familiar “This is Uganda” kind of way.

And then last Saturday happened. For those who were far away from where the events were taking place, it all started with social media.

Again, images of people, some with gaping wounds seemingly inflicted with sharp instruments, probably machetes, others on the ground, some in police uniforms, others naked or semi-naked, obviously dead. And then the now famous photo of several women, young and not-so-young, some stripped down to their underpants, others stark naked, presumably forced to line up in single file, also started circulating.

Then smoking buildings. Then police and army vehicles; then armed soldiers and police officers patrolling deserted or sparsely populated streets.

It was Kasese, again.

The security forces had stormed King Mumbere’s palace, arrested him and, official sources said, “put out of action” a large number of his royal guards, a collection of mainly peasants whose standard weapon were knives, machetes, sticks, and a few homemade Molotov cocktails.

Public outrage centred on the picture of the naked women.

What kind of man does that, why? Then came more outrage over the fact that some of the dead had been summarily executed. Among them, apparently, were participants in attacks on security installations the day before, during which a number of police officers and soldiers had been killed.

Finally, the whole thing began to make sense, although whether it was justified was a different question altogether.

And the question of justification was one the government and its security forces would wrestle with, as people in Uganda and beyond began to wander at the evident savagery of the operation.

Soon enough, the spinning began. First the death toll.

How many people had been killed? Government sources preferred to start with the number of their own dead, but for some reason seemed not to be able to decide whether it was 14 or 16.

And then the royal guards: Depending whether the source was official, private and neutral, private and partisan, local, or non-local, or opposition, the figures were anywhere between 40 to 100. And what weapons had been found inside the palace that might have justified the “all guns blazing” style of the invaders of the palace?

Photos on social media showed one rifle, several spears and an assortment of knives and machetes. But official sources claimed they had found even machine guns and pistols, of which there were no photos.

These claims were possibly calculated to make the label “terrorists” stick on the dead peasants. Still, they fell far short of justifying the course of action the government and the army had chosen, and its magnitude, at least in the public’s eyes.

But even as all sides conspired in the murder of the truth or at the very least in sowing confusion, one thing remained undeniable.

The attacks on the security forces and the manner and scale of their response suggest a sense of impunity and an enduring belief within sections of Ugandan society in the value of violence as the instrument of choice for settling political differences. Old habits die hard, indeed.

Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: [email protected]