Saturday, November 15, 2003
PETER MWAURA / GIGIRI NOTEBOOK
Uganda�s war grabs world attention
The unholy war, which began in 1986, has intensified in the past 12 months, managing to grab world attention, including that of the United States, the world�s only superpower, which now classifies the LRA as a terrorist organisation.
A donors' meeting in Nairobi on November 11 indicated the Western community is ready to consider funding the effort to quell the humanitarian crisis.
The crisis is, by all accounts, worse than Iraq's, which, at a day�s Madrid meeting recently, attracted pledges totalling $33 billion from the donors.
Last year's attempt by the Ugandan army to wipe out the LRA by raiding its rear bases inside southern Sudan succeeded only in pushing the fighters into northern Uganda. There, they continue to butcher and mutilate innocent civilians, looting and burning villages.
Attempts to achieve a peaceful settlement of this little understood conflict have also come to naught and it is now widely believed the Ugandan government is interested primarily in a military solution.
Nelson Ojok, a teacher in northern Uganda, speaks of the hopelessness of the situation: "The rebels are killing their own brothers and mothers. We are killing ourselves. We are confused. The only thing is to sit down and negotiate
"With fighting, this war will take another 18 years. You can see the number of soldiers. They are very many, and yet they cannot eradicate the rebels. They are increasing more soldiers, but the rebels are still killing."
Lacking popular support, the LRA has for the last 18 years been routinely abducting children to turn them into fighters and sex slaves. Every night as many as 1,000 children are abducted. And every night thousands of children, known as night commuters, leave their houses to sleep in the bush or at urban centres where they feel safer from the threat of abduction.
In one year, more than 800,000 people � 80 per cent of the local Acholi population � in the three northern districts of Gulu, Kitgum and Pader have been forced from their homes and are living in camps, with little food and poor sanitation.
Some 1.2 million people have been displaced as a result of the conflict and a major humanitarian crisis faces the country. The great majority of the LRA fighters, responsible for the mayhem, are children.
The organisation is led by a shadowy figure known as Joseph Kony, a mystic who thinks he can overthrow President Yoweri Museveni and rule Uganda according to the biblical Ten Commandments.
Kony was once a follower of the prophetess Alice Lakwena, who led a rebellion against Mr Museveni�s government after he overthrew a military regime which had itself just overthrown President Milton Obote.
After Lakwena's defeat, Kony, a man many say is insane, founded his own rebel group.
The point, however, is that the humanitarian crisis is now set to receive international attention and possible donor funding. Acholiland will be one of the 21 emergencies around world (17 of them in Africa) that will receive donor attention in a fund-raising meeting on November 18.
The meeting comes in the wake of a four-day visit to northern Uganda (November 7-10) by the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Mr Jan Egeland, to assess the crisis. Appointed in June, Mr Egeland was making his first visit to the region.
"It is a moral outrage that the world is doing so little for the war victims, especially children," he said. "I cannot find any other part of the world that is having an emergency on the scale of Uganda's, and it is getting such little international attention."
Mr Egeland said the UN should play a greater role in scaling down the violence by having a more sustained presence in northern Uganda. The government, in turn, should promote good governance.
That, coupled with increased world attention and donor funding, will go a long way towards defeating Kony.
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