Monday, August 11, 2003
CHARLES ONYANGO-OBBO
Neither Uganda Nor Sudan Can Stop the LRA
On August 21, it will launch a campaign to break what it calls "an international conspiracy of silence" on the horrors of the 16-year rebellion in northern Uganda. Based mostly in the area where the Acholi live, the brutal rebellion, led by the incongruously named Lord's Resistance Army, has left nearly 800,000 in squalid "protected villages."
The LRA is a cult movement, and its hallmark is terror and abductions. In a statement last week, CMS said "More than 20,000 children, some as young as seven, have been abducted by the cult for use as soldiers, pack animals and sex slaves. "CMS was founded 200 years ago by the abolitionists, but child slavery is still with us in this particularly horrifying way."
Among other activities, the church will host a six-week national tour by the Bishop of Kitgum, the Rt Rev Benjamin Ojwang, whose diocese is the worst affected by the war. Bishop Ojwang's own six children were abducted last year.
Last month a grouping of Roman Catholic, Protestant, Greek Orthodox and Muslim leaders slept for days on shop verandahs in the streets of Gulu where thousands of people from the outskirts flock to spend the night to escape attacks by rebels. About 10,000 children, many unaccompanied, sleep on the Gulu verandahs.
The conflict in northern Uganda has caused deep divisions. In the north, the view is that the government of President Yoweri Museveni is not doing enough to end it, and some even accuse it of doing so to exact revenge on the people of the north because of opposition to his government from the region.
The Museveni government blames some local leaders for fanning the conflict and not campaigning enough to undermine the LRA. It has also fingered Sudan for continuing to secretly support the rebels in spite of commitments to cut links with them.
After various peace deals between the government and LRA failed to work because of deep suspicions, the churches have been thrust into the centre of the conflict as peacemakers. However, the rebels have many times threatened religious leaders with death, and the government has often been hostile to some of their initiatives.
Because of this deadlock, some people are beginning to contemplate taboo recipes for peace. n the early years of the Museveni government, the north-south divide was so raw, many in the south were suggesting that the troubled part of the country should be "cut off" and become part of Sudan if it wished.
Many were horrified by these sentiments which still occasionally pop up. However, the The situation might also have entered a stage where the Kampala regime no longer has the means to end it, and has run out of the political will to invest further in a negotiated settlement. And the LRA has created a situation in which it can't come to terms with the Museveni government. An end to the conflict requires that both the LRA and the Kampala government cease to be dominant factors in it. In the desperation, therefore, there are voices that see a solution that horrifies many people – autonomy for northern Uganda. They argue that because of the credibility of the church leaders among the people, a civilian authority created in consultation with them might have the acceptance neither the Museveni government nor the rebels have.
In addition, it seems the only force that will uproot the LRA from southern Sudan is not Khartoum, but the south Sudanese rebels.
An independent southern Sudan, in confederation with northern Uganda, would probably bring peace to the region quicker than anything else can right now.
This solution is totally unacceptable to Kampala and Khartoum, of course. Therefore the conflict is likely to continue because the belligerents might have lost the means to end it.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is managing editor in charge of media convergence at the Nation Media Group.
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