By Prof Dani W. Nabudere
Nov 9, 2003
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A national conference was recently organised by the Human Rights and Peace Centre (HURIPEC) of the Faculty of Law, Makerere University to release and launch a research report: THE HIDDEN WAR: THE FORGOTTEN PEOPLE in Acholiland. It was held in Kampala to draw attention to the tragedy of the continuing war in Acholiland and to emphasize its ramifications for peace and security in Uganda and the neighbouring countries, especially Sudan, in view of the widening of the conflict to the east of the country and the progress in the peace process in Sudan. The conference was attended by over 50 persons, mainly from the districts of Pader, Kitgum and Gulu of the Acholi sub-region in addition to a sprinkling of participants from the new Adjumani district located on the east of the Nile river. Nevertheless, the two participants from this region added the required seriousness to the debate that was dominated by the discussants from the Acholi sub-region itself.
Government absence What was most regrettable was the fact that the Uganda government failed to send in a representative to express its views on the report. The Speaker of the Uganda Parliament who had accepted to open the conference did not turn up � with no apologies offered. The minister of Local Government, who had been invited to discuss the report after its presentation by the principal investigator, Prof. Dani W. Nabudere, also failed to show up, also with no apologies. This was despite the fact that a representative of the United Nations Development Programme, the European Union Ambassador, and the Danish Ambassador found time to attend and indeed make contributions to the discussions. Many participants in the conference felt belittled and disregarded by this attitude of their government, which exhibited a lack of concern for the suffering people in the war affected areas. What the war is about The conflict in northern Uganda begun on August 20, 1986 and has now gone on for the last seventeen years without any end in sight. Whereas the earlier conflicts in Teso and West Nile were brought to an end, the conflict in Acholiland has continued unabated creating a feeling in the minds of many people in Uganda, and those in Acholi in particular that there is some hidden agenda on the part of some high ranking leaders in the government of Uganda whose objective is to destroy the people of Acholi, their culture and society. However, the war has now spurned Acholiland and has assumed a regional and even a global dimension across the Sudan border and beyond and has begun to spread internally to new areas where peace was said to have been achieved and maintained, such as Teso region. The report was well received by the participants. What was significant about the report was that it reversed the explanations that had hitherto been given to the effect that the war in Acholi was the extension of the war of the �Luwero Triangle� because of the atrocities that were committed there allegedly by the Acholi soldiers in the Uganda National Liberation Army-UNLA under Obote II. The report has instead postulated that the �sculls� and the atrocities committed there were themselves the consequence of an ethnic-oriented war that was initiated by the NRM and its army-NRA in the �Triangle� against the `northerners� who were accused of �dominating� Uganda�s post-independence politics and that this had happened because of their control of the Uganda armed forces. The war was intended to end this `domination.� Thus the objective of the war was for a certain clique of politicians led by Yoweri Museveni and Prof. Yusuf Lule (RIP) to seize political power and impose a new one-party dictatorship on the country by exploiting the ethnic factor. Other important factors The report has argued that this ethnicisation of politics in Uganda had in fact obscured other more important contributors to the conflict in the north. The first was that it obscured the regional and global dimension of the conflict. The report points to the existence of ample evidence to prove that the support given to the Joseph Kony�s Lords Resistance Movement (LRA) by the governments of Sudan, which is given as one of the reasons for pursuing the war, was itself a response by Sudan to the support given by Uganda to the Sudanese Peoples� Liberation Movement and its army (SPLM/A) among other considerations. The report points out that this regional aspect was part of a wider conflict in which the US was advancing its global agenda in the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes Regions. At the time, it wanted to combat the existence of the Islamic Fundamentalist regime in Sudan. The US also supported Uganda�s �Operation Iron Fist� inside Sudan as a result of its change in policy, but as the report shows, this has complicated further the conflict within Uganda. The report also reveals that the events of 9/11 have added a further dimension to the Acholi conflict in that the Bush administration has designated the LRA to be a �foreign terrorist organisation.� This has had the effect of categorizing the bulk of the Lords Resistance Army-LRA, which is composed of 85% of the abducted children, �international terrorists�! This implies that children who were abducted against their will and are fighting as unwilling agents can be so categorised when it is the duty of the Uganda government to protect them from the abduction in the first place. Other complicating factors The report points to other complicating factors to the conflict in northern Uganda, including the corruption in the armed forces and the existence of �ghost soldiers� on the army pay-rolls as a perpetuating element to the war, apart from others. These include economic factors, social and cultural factors, political factors, metaphysics, external factors, arms trafficking as well as the US post-9/11 anti-terrorism strategy. The report argues that the war in Acholi has gone through a transformation in that Alice Auma �Lakwena�s� Holy Spirit Movement is said by the report to have been a peasant uprising. Alice Auma Lakwena tried to cleanse the old soldiers and change the direction of government to a moral institution. Her resort to metaphysical interpretations of the conflict was the result of the uncertainty and complications that prevailed in the country at the time. The report points out that Alice Auma can therefore be a relevant factor in ending of the conflict and can contribute to the reconciliation process that has to follow because she is the only Ugandan who can �ideologically� engage Joseph Kony since the latter claims to have inherited the spirit of �Lakwena� from her. The report looks at the LRA in a new light and gives evidence to show that Kony�s war was infected by elements from various sources, including Islamic spiritual adaptations on top of the Christian and traditional elements, which he claims. Kony claims to have been traditionally `blessed� to fight the war and yet wages war against the traditions; he also claims to have inherited Auma�s �Lakwena� spirit and at the same time commits crimes against the people, which Alice Auma�s movement did not do. He also claims to be fighting to `restore� the Ten Commandments of God and yet his movement attacks the churches and threatens to kill �all priests.� These transformations point to the increasing complexity of the conflict in Acholiland. These complexities have to be unlocked at some point and hence the report puts forward a four-pronged comprehensive strategy for ending the war. The first is the need to involve the international community to prevail on the parties to agree to a ceasefire and appoint a third party mediator to act as a go-between the parties to initiate the talks. The second is the need to hold a political and constitutional national conference to be attended by all the political parties and other stakeholders, including civil society organisations, representatives of the Church and traditional institutions. The third step is the need to embark immediately on the resettlement of the displaced population in their villages and the dismantling of the internally displaced persons� camps. No time should be lost and as talks begin, the IDPs, the returning abductees and former LRA soldiers should find anew life in their villages, which they abandoned due to insecurity. However, this alone will not result in amity in the communities, and hence the need for a fourth step. This is the facilitation of the communities to embark on lower level reconciliation processes. Reconciliation at a national level will not cure the trauma suffered by the communities unless this is combined with local reconciliations between individuals, families, clans, religions and the communities at large. Community reconciliation should support the transition of communities from conflict situations to that of sustainable peace and minimise the re-occurrence of conflict by healing local wounds. - Full Report can be obtained from HURIPEC, Makerere University. |
� 2003 The Monitor Publications
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