Uganda, 1974 — military coup attempt
Event Summary
On 23 March 1974 senior officers of the Ugandan army attempted a coup against the regime of Idi Amin, the most serious internal military challenge Amin had yet faced. The rising was led by Brigadier Charles Arube, the army chief of staff, a Kakwa officer like Amin who had grown alarmed at Amin's erratic and murderous rule and at the growing influence of foreign, especially Sudanese and Nubian, soldiers in the army. Arube's forces attacked in Kampala, seizing points in the city and moving against Amin loyalists, and there was heavy fighting around the capital.
But the coup failed, and Brigadier Arube was killed, either shot in the fighting or, by some accounts, dying in a confrontation with Amin himself. Amin survived, purged the officers involved, and tightened his grip through the security agencies that terrorized Uganda. His brutal rule continued until he was finally overthrown in the 1979 war with Tanzania and Ugandan exiles.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
Cross-Reference
Datasets agree. At least two of the three reference datasets we check against carry this event, and none of them disagrees about its date or its result.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
50003231974- Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-500-1974-03-23
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Idi Amin crushed the March 1974 Arube coup attempt and remained in power until 1979.
Baseline coding: Coup attempt failed to remove the incumbent. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
CSP
Luttwak
New York Times
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →