Why do rebels cook people? And what do they do with them after they are
done cooking?
Is this a new incident?
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Subject: ugnet_: War breeds scepticism in Uganda's blighted north
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 15:19:07 EST
War breeds scepticism in Uganda's blighted north
By Matthew Green
GULU, Uganda, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Hopes for peace were fading in
Uganda's
northern town of Gulu, where residents say a government offensive
to crush
Lord's Resistance Army rebels has caused even more suffering.
Guerrillas boiled a man in a pot, hacked dozens of villagers to
death and
abducted an unknown number of children in the past few weeks alone,
the army
says -- sowing some of their worst havoc in years.
In Gulu, which lies at the epicentre of the war, optimism that the
army's
"Operation Iron Fist" would wipe out a movement feared for cutting
off its
victim's lips and noses has given way to jaded scepticism.
"The war has been going on for so long, if they could stop it they
would have
done it long ago," said Charles, 31, recovering on the blue plastic
sheets of
a hospital bed from a gunshot wound in his inner thigh.
"So many people are being wounded, so many people are being
killed," he said,
explaining how he was hit in a gun battle between the army and
rebels outside
town.
The army says the LRA killed 47 people in the past week alone, and
has
accused the insurgents of burning people alive in grass huts or
attempting to
force captives to eat body parts from their victims.
Thousands have been killed, half a million forced into camps and at
least
16,000 children kidnapped for brainwashing as fighters and
concubines since
the LRA began its uprising 16 years ago.
President Yoweri Museveni launched "Iron Fist" in March, hoping to
decapitate
the movement by destroying its bases in neighbouring Sudan, but the
rebels
have since returned to Uganda and stepped up their attacks.
LRA leader Joseph Kony, who makes abducted children kill one
another to
enforce discipline, has in the past said he wants to rule Uganda by
the
Bible's Ten Commandments, but residents say the self-styled mystic
has no
clear agenda.
"People want the rebels to stop the war," said William Ayela, 32,
who fled to
a squalid refugee camp in Gulu under army orders earlier this
month. "People
are dying, people are hungry, why don't they stop?," he said,
cradling his
two-year old son, whose belly has ballooned due to malnutrition.
FORGOTTEN WAR
The army says the rebel attacks are the last kicks of a dying
horse, saying
an agreement by Sudan to stop backing the LRA -- slapped on a
"terrorist
exclusion list" by the United States -- will hasten its demise.
Museveni, himself a former guerrilla leader, has pledged to snuff
out the
rebellion by the end of February.
Many in Gulu, a town trapped in a spiral of war-induced decay, say
peace
talks would work better than bullets and point out the drawbacks of
the
military option.
The army ordered thousands of people into what it describes as
protected
camps earlier this month, turning villages surrounded by ripening
crops into
ghost towns.
Residents say harvests are rotting in the fields, drawing warnings
from aid
workers that 500,000 people might be rendered entirely dependent on
food aid
next year.
As armoured cars bristling with machine-guns kick up plumes of
dust, the
people of Gulu cannot help but feel caught in the middle in a war
few say
they understand.
"The suffering is being caused by both parties," said Macleord
Ochola,
vice-chairman of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative,
wearing a
silver cross over his purple bishop's robe.
"When two elephants are fighting, it's the grass that they step on
that's
being crushed."
10/28/02 04:50 ET
