Interesting anniversary today: Today is the 33rd anniversary of the beginning of the Uganda-Tanzania War, in which Idi Amin declared war against Tanzania and sent troops over the Tanzanian border, Tanzania retaliated by mobilizing a paramilitary force and fired Russian Katyusha missiles into Uganda, and Gaddafi got involved in another military misadventure.

Libya under Muammar Gaddafi sent his own troops, including the so-called “Islamic Legion”, into Uganda to support Idi Amin, but they were soon on the front line against the Tanzanians and Ugandan anti-Amin exiles as Amin’s forces retreated.

After the Battle of Lukaya in which hundreds of lives were lost on both sides, the war was more or less an Amin-Gaddafi strategic retreat, and Amin fled Uganda on 10 April 1979; Gaddafi’s troops would flee into Kenya and Ethiopia shortly afterward.

Tanzanian troops stayed as peacekeepers until shortly after new elections were held, but Tanzania had to foot the bill without external support (the then-OAU condemned Tanzania’s invasion). It would not get out of the debt resulting from the war until Uganda paid off the last of Tanzania’s debt in 2007.

The current president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, is a veteran of this war. Gaddafi, who was a major ally of Idi Amin, was killed in Sirte, Libya, after 42 years of rule and international misadventures like this.