By April 1979, the Uganda-Tanzania War had already been decided. Amin's invasion of Tanzanian territory the previous October had backfired catastrophically. Tanzania had mobilized, allied with Ugandan exile groups under the Uganda National Liberation Front, and launched a counter-offensive that swept through the country. On 11 April, Tanzanian and UNLA forces occupied Kampala. Amin's military was disintegrating. Thousands of Uganda Army soldiers retreated eastward, and the dictator himself passed through Jinja and Mbale before fleeing abroad. The Tanzanians needed to secure eastern Uganda -- particularly Jinja, where the Owen Falls Dam generated hydroelectric power for the entire country and parts of Kenya. Reports were reaching Kampala that retreating soldiers were murdering civilians along the Jinja road.

On 15 April, the 208th Brigade under Brigadier Mwita Marwa departed Kampala with 4,000 Tanzanian and 1,000 UNLA troops, accompanied by one T-54 and two T-34 tanks. They shared vehicles among different groups of soldiers as they moved down the two-lane road toward Jinja. Progress was slow, but there was no resistance. Troops relaxed, listened to music on looted radios, and ate sugarcane. Hundreds of civilians from roadside communities -- Mukono, Seta, Lugazi -- joined the column, intermingling with soldiers and helping carry equipment. The assault on Jinja finally began on 22 April with an artillery bombardment. Most of the garrison had already melted away. The 19th Battalion pushed on to Tororo, finding it deserted and looted, its civilians and garrison fled across the border to Kenya. At Mbale, the story was different: 250 renegade Uganda Army soldiers and local residents had organized defenses, keeping the town in good order. The Tanzanians arrived to celebration rather than combat.

The campaign grew more complicated as inexperienced battalions pushed into unfamiliar territory. The 7th Battalion, assigned to capture Soroti, had been recently assembled and lacked combat experience. At the Mbale junction, soldiers who should have been standing guard opted to celebrate in town the night before a planned rendezvous, allowing a group of Amin loyalists to slip past. At dawn, those loyalists ambushed Tanzanian tank crews with recoilless rifle fire, creating momentary chaos before being driven off after a five-minute firefight. Near Bukedea, a near-catastrophe unfolded when faulty coordinates almost caused the 7th Battalion's own BM-21 Grad rocket launchers to fire on friendly troops instead of over the town. A renegade Uganda Army officer named Malinga, who had defected and was scouting ahead in his old uniform, caught the error in time. Separately, Tanzanian soldiers shot up a house on a tip that a feared State Research Bureau agent was hiding inside, only to find three women and nine children who had survived unharmed. The locals had accused the women -- Muslims from the north -- simply because of their background.

The campaign's most enduring consequence played out in the northeast, far from the main advance. When Amin's government collapsed, the Uganda Army garrison at Moroto disintegrated. Soldiers fled, leaving behind modern weapons at the barracks. The Karamojong people, historically pastoral warriors, seized the abandoned arms. Defected soldiers of Karamojong ethnicity taught their compatriots how to use the rifles. The Mathiniko clan, living closest to Moroto, armed themselves first and began raiding cattle from neighboring clans, killing at least 54 people. When police loyal to the old government investigated at Namalu, they were ambushed; 15 officers died. Young raiders drove stolen cattle into the bush, abandoning elders in villages. Traders from other regions stopped traveling to Karamoja, fearing attack. Food shortages followed. The weapons that spilled from collapsing barracks in April 1979 fueled cycles of cattle raiding and inter-clan violence that would plague the region for decades.

At Kumi, the 7th Battalion's commander, Major Mwandetelle, was wounded by shrapnel -- the highest-ranking Tanzanian officer injured in the entire Uganda-Tanzania War. Soroti, the battalion's final objective, fell without a fight. Uganda Army troops had passed through, looted the town, and murdered approximately 50 civilians before moving on. The Eastern Uganda campaign succeeded in its military objectives with relatively few combat casualties. But it exposed the human cost of a collapsing state: looted towns, murdered civilians, and an arms proliferation crisis that no subsequent government would fully resolve. Amin lived in exile in Saudi Arabia until his death in 2003. The people of eastern Uganda lived with what his regime left behind.