http://www.ugandaconfidential.co.ug/news_detail.php?myId=316
As Kony terminates his people
Luwero ghosts haunt Acholi
Jane Namudu (not her real names), in her 40's, is a lady with many accomplishments. A good job with a happy, middle class family. She boldly tells Uganda Confidential she does not care about the Kony war in the North, and that she does not even bother to read the many atrocity stories on the front pages of the newspapers.
To her, the northerners, mainly the Acholis, are paying for the savage, murderous crimes they meted out on the people in the South. Namudu's views are widely shared by many people, but they do not dare express them. And those views are not pedestrian. Five years ago, an American researcher Mr. Robert Gersony published a 107-page report, commissioned by United States Embassy (Kampala) and USAID Mission (Kampala). In that report, titled Anguish of Northern Uganda, Mr. Robert Gersony wrote a chapter he titled, The Ghost (of Luwero) that haunts Acholi.
The chapter is very relevant to today, as many people continue to wonder why Joseph Kony, an Acholi, would murder his fellow Acholis in the most savage and babaric manner. The chapter so far: By 1984, the UNLA had made little headway in the �Luwero Triangle� against the NRA insurgency, which had strong support among local civilians. Frustrated by its inability to defeat the NRA forces, it exacted reprisals against the area�s unarmed Baganda (and Banyarwanda) civilian population through large-scale murder and purposeful mass starvation, and through the looting and destruction of undefended farming communities. One army massacre in which scores of civilians were killed took place just outside the Triangle in mid-1984 near the Namugongo Christian shrine, east of Kampala.
At times, victims were reportedly brought into Luwero from other areas to be killed. Acholi soldiers returned home from Luwero with stolen property and in some cases with young girls as abductees. An August 1984 Washington Post article exposed the situation in Luwero, which was described by the then-U.S. Assistant Secretary for Human Rights, Elliott Abrams, as �horrendous.� By August 1984, some 100,000 or more persons were estimated to have been murdered. The State Department�s assertive public denunciation and the human rights advocacy of the then-U.S. Ambassador Alan Davis, are still recalled by many Ugandans. A recent overview of Uganda by author Thomas Ofcansky asserts that ��the UNLA conducted its operations with little regard for the rules of warfare. As a result, terrible human rights abuses occurred against pro-NRA communities in the Luwero Triangle. In January 1983, [Milton] Obote launched �Operation Bonanza� in this area, during which UNLA troops destroyed small towns, villages, and farms and killed or displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians� After the war ended in 1986, the International Committee of the Red Cross claimed that at least 300,000 people had died in the Luwero Triangle and that officials had failed to account for half to a third of the region�s population.�
UNLA forces in Luwero were sometimes referred to as �the Acholis,� because of the large number of Acholis who comprised its officers and enlisted corps. The NRA conduct, by comparison, was observed by international witnesses to be generally disciplined and correct. Summary execution of prisoners and suspected UNLA collaborators and other abuses almost certainly occurred. But the NRA appeared to rely more on a program of political outreach to civilians, upon whose support it depended. After the Luwero conflict ended, the ghosts of Luwero continued to haunt the Acholi. By 1987, Acholiland itself was consumed by war. The Catholic Bishop of Gulu and Kitgum, the late Msgr. Cipriano Kihangire, in his April 1987 Easter homily, addressed the question, �What has caused this difficult situation?� Speaking to his Acholi parishioners about Luwero, he observed: �Many joined the army with the hope of getting rich overnight, and were used by unscrupulous political leaders who sent them to carry out �operations� in areas of political unrest. These operations involved atrocious acts of violence against innocent civilians, including children and women, who were subjected to unspeakable mistreatment. A lot of looting was done� When the loot was brought home, parents and relatives welcomed it in their homes, knowing that it was looted. Instead of correcting their children and condemning their actions, many parents had only praise for them� We can now see that these present suffering are the result of our own sin.� At the time these atrocities were being committed, beginning in about 1983 and in the years which followed, some Obote II spokesmen denied they were taking place at all. Those who acknowledged them alleged that the massacres were conducted by NRA forces disguised in UNLA uniforms. Still today, when the subject is raised, some Acholi offer the same explanations. Moreover, those Acholi who acknowledge that many atrocities took place dispute the estimate of 100,000 dead. Is the attribution of events in Luwero exclusively to the UNLA�s Acholi elements justified? The Acholi were only one of several ethnic groups prominently represented in the armed forces. Acholi forces in the army appear to have been generally subordinated to senior officers of President Obote�s Lango tribe, a source of continual friction within the military. During some of this period, the UNLA was rudderless, operating without a permanent Chief of Staff. Powerful figures in the security apparatus who influenced military policy, such as National Security Agency Director Chris Rwakasisi, were of non-Acholi backgrounds. The army relied upon North Korean technical advisors in its Luwero operations. All of these factors had a bearing on the UNLA�s conduct in Luwero. Moreover, before and since independence, abuses and indiscipline in the armed forces had been ignored or tolerated, contributing to an increase in such lawlessness. Amnesty International recounts one illustrative example of the origins of what some refer to as the military�s �cultural of impurity:� "In 1962, shortly before Uganda�s independence, Lieutenant Idi Amin of the Kings�s African Rifles commanded a platoon which killed a number of Turkana prisoners in northwest Kenya. Sir Walter Coutts, the British Governor of Uganda, vetoed any criminal proceedings against him on the grounds that he was one of only two black officers in the Ugandan army and a prosecution would be politically undesirable just before independence.� The vast majority of Acholi civilians in Gulu and Kitgum participated in no way, were remote from events in Luwero, and had no immediate reason to be concerned about them at the time. Despite all of these mitigating factors, many Ugandans hold mainly the Acholi responsible for the Luwero atrocities because of the high proportion of Acholis in the armed forces at that time. While almost all Acholis deny such responsibility, a few Acholi elders nonetheless assert that the time has come for a dialogue with Baganda leaders, with the aim of reconciling what had occurred there. In a way which way difficult to pinpoint, they believe such a dialogue might help create conditions to end the current war in Acholi, even though the present conflict does not appear to directly involve the Baganda people. A few Acholi were said to believe that the spirits of some Luwero victims � for example, of a pregnant Baganda woman who was killed and mutilated in a particularly unspeakable way � are exacting revenge by causing or prolonging the current Acholi war.
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