President Donald Trump’s International Stabilization Force (ISF) received much-needed support on Friday when the Ugandan parliament voted to approve the mobilization and deployment of its soldiers to the Gaza Strip.
According to Defense Minister Kiryowa Kiwanuka, American officials approached him and other members of the Ugandan government last month with a troop request for the ISF. Minister Kiwanuka told parliament that soon thereafter, the army, in conjunction with the U.S. embassy in the capital city of Kampala, began preparing plans for deployment. Uganda’s president can deploy the army (the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces, or UPDF) outside the nation’s borders only after first obtaining parliament’s approval. Currently, the UPDF is deployed in Somalia, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic in support of various UN and African Union peacekeeping operations.
The Thursday debate in parliament saw Minister Kiwanuka argue in favor of the deployment on humanitarian grounds, stating that Uganda and the ISF would “protect civilians and allow for increased humanitarian access in the parts affected directly by the conflict.” Legislators belonging to President Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Movement (formerly communist, now a right-wing populist party) voted with the government. In contrast, members of the opposition coalition of liberal and social democratic parties voiced concerns that the deployment of UPDF troops might jeopardize Uganda’s membership in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, or OIC. Although Uganda is over 80 percent Christian, with most belonging to the Roman Catholic Church, the country is home to a sizable Muslim minority that accounts for nearly 15 percent of the overall population. Uganda joined the OIC during the dictatorship of Idi Amin, himself a Muslim by birth, as part of a campaign to “Islamicize” the nation. So far, Uganda is the only Christian-majority nation to commit troops to the ISF.
Ultimately, the parliament voted to approve the deployment, handing President Museveni, who has been in power since 1986, yet another political victory.
President Trump’s ISF, which is the cornerstone of his peace plan for the Gaza Strip, has earned troop commitments from Morocco, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Kosovo, and Albania. Egypt and Jordan have also agreed to a plan to help train Palestinian police officers. Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, who is in charge of the world’s largest Muslim country, pledged the most significant troop deployment with 8,000 or more soldiers.
The news from Uganda comes on the heels of President Trump’s announcement in late July that a deal had been struck for the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas to disarm and for Israel to withdraw its troops from the Gaza Strip. Once this is accomplished, the president’s peace plan calls for the creation of a Board of Peace and multiple, heavily fortified bases for ISF troops. A contingent of Moroccan troops is scheduled to be the first deployed ISF assets in post-war Gaza.
