Massacre: Where Did LRA Get Guns
THE EASTAFRICAN
WHILE THE Uganda army says it is puzzled by the source of the northern LRA rebels' arms and other supplies, humanitarian agencies say the war zone is becoming so saturated with automatic rifles that "among farmers in northern Uganda, the AK47 is replacing the spear."
Oxfam, Amnesty International and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), which are running a campaign to stop proliferation of small arms and light weapons, warned that, with such weapons in the war zone it would be harder to bring the conflict and violence to an end.
Lords Resistance Army (LRA) rebels reportedly used heavy weapons including anti-aircraft guns, anti-tank and anti-rocket guns to overrun an army detachment before attacking a camp housing about 5,000 people displaced by the war, killing an estimated 200 of them at Barlonyo in the northern Lira district on February 21.
The rebels denied massacring civilians, saying they got caught up in the crossfire between their fighters and government troops.
The massacres at Barlonyo has finally drawn international attention to the conflict.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan urged the parties in the war to find means of speedily ending it, while the International Criminal Court, the world's first permanent war crimes court, announced that it would investigate the massacre.
Amnesty International said, "The Ugandan authorities should show their commitment to the basic principle of protection of civilian populations by taking effective measures to boost security at all existing internally displaced people's camps in northern Uganda."
"The source of these heavy arms (which the rebels are now using) is our concern and that is what we want to find out," said army spokesman Major Shaban Bantariza. "We know the source of the LRA used to be Sudan, which gave them enough arms in the past decade."
He added, however, that as far as Ugandan authorities were aware, Khartoum had stopped supplying arms to the insurgents. The rebels are now wearing uniforms similar to those of militias recently created by the army specially to fight the LRA, which makes it easier for them to infiltrate villages. But some observers said the fact that hundreds of guerrillas could get hold of the uniforms, which the army only a few months ago gave to the militia indicates they have active sources of supplies.
The army says that early in February, the rebels wearing the new uniforms killed 42 civilians at a camp for displaced people at Abia in Lira district. The killings came shortly after army commander Maj Gen Aronda Nyakairima had announced that the rebellion was over and the army was conducting mop-up operations to smoke out a few remaining guerrillas.
Major Bantariza says it is possible the rebels had stashed some of the arms Sudan gave them inside Uganda. But independent said indicated the insurgents were more likely to have got the new supplies from their Sudanese bases.
"But the fact that the rebels can move around with such big guns over distannces of many kilometres casts doubt on the efficiency of the army and even makes one wonder whether the rebels are as weak as the army says they are," said one observer.
Museveni's government has many times given deadlines for defeating the rebels led by self-styled spiritual leader, "Lieutenant General" Joseph Kony, but each has passed without the rebellion being brought to its knees.
The new arms and equipment the army has bought in the last two years � including helicopter gunships; and deployment of more troops and recruitment, training and arming of local militia in rebel-infested areas, are among the factors that had apparently given the army the impression that they at last held the upper hand over the elusive insurgents.
The army says it is set to send more troops to neighbouring Sudan, where Kony has bases to which his fighters reportedly retreat for reorganisation and supplies whenever they receive a setback in Uganda.
Last week, the opposition Reform Agenda led by exiled former presidential candidate Colonel Kizza Besigye said Sudan should help explain the arms the rebels are using, but Sudanese diplomats in Kampala reiterated that they had cut off links with the rebels long ago.
Legislators said the army's laxity led to the Barlonyo massacres, and that government troops tried to cover up the killings by burying bodies in mass graves shortly after arriving at the scene of the killings. Museveni, who gave a death toll of 80 (compared with over 200 by local leaders and humanitarian agencies), conceded the army was "slow" and recalled the commander of the brigade in the area. Defence Minister Amama Mbabazi said the bodies would be exhumed to establish the true number of the dead.
Though many of the LRA's Sudanese camps were destroyed in 2002 and a large cache of arms recovered, the rebels maintain bases in that country, and Kony himself is said to live almost permanently in Sudan.
Under an agreement with its former enemy Sudan, Uganda has pursued the rebels inside the Sudan since March 2002, destroying many of their bases and capturing big caches of arms that were supplied by the Sudan government. Kampala and Khartoum made peace in 2000, which later saw the Sudan government stop arming and training the LRA. But Mrs Ruth Nankabirwa, the Ugandan Minister of State for Defence, says certain elements in the Sudan army continue supplying arms to Kony's fighters.
The army claims big successes against the rebels but the Coalition for Human Rights and Justice Initiatives for Northern Uganda, a non-governmental organisation, says that since the army took the campaign against the LRA to Sudan, it has failed to stop the abduction of 10,000 more children by the Kony rebels.
"In the first year of the operation, abductions skyrocketed. More than 10,000 children have been abducted from June 2002 to date. This figure accounts for 45 per cent of the total abductions of children in the conflict," says John Baptist Odama, archbishop of the Gulu Catholic Diocese.
Besides, he said, the number of internally displaced persons has risen from 450,000 to 1.2 million, 920,000 of whom live in inhuman and unhygienic conditions in 62 camps in the sub-region. Humanitarian agencies say the latest rebel attacks have pushed up the number of displaced people to over 1.4 million.
The LRA have abducted thousands of children, whom they have forced to join the rebel army, or to become wives to rebel commanders. Some have been used as human shields. The International Court of Justice announced in February that it would investigate and prosecute the group for gross human rights violations.
The rebels have traditionally operated in the Acholi districts of Gulu, Kitgum, and Pader, but for the first time in several years, in 2003, they extended their rebellion to Soroti and Katakwi districts in Teso region as well as parts of Lira districts. But local militias trained and armed by the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF, the national army) coupled with massive deployment by the army helped to rout the rebels from most of these districts. The army says it scored key successes against the rebels in 2003, and this year. Last week, it said, an offensive mounted by gunships killed 35 rebels. It claims to have killed over 30 rebels in the first three weeks of January and captured an assortment of arms from the insurgents. The army claims that up to 40 senior LRA officers, including "Brigadier" Charles Tabuley � a top commander � were killed in Teso.
Major Bantariza says during 2003 the army killed 824 LRA fighters and captured 279, while another 434 surrendered. Some 4,632 abductees were rescued from the LRA. The army also claims to have captured several weapons from the rebels, including 552 submachine guns, 71 grenades, 72 mines, 397 bombs of varying sizes; as well as 35,212 rounds of ammunition and three boxes of 127mm gun ammunition.
By comparison, the army says it lost 87 soldiers in action, while 137 were injured and four are mission in action. In addition, Major Bantariza says they lost 13 submachine guns, one light machine gun and one pistol. He says the arms were not lost to rebels but swept away while soldiers were crossing a river.
Uganda was in February forced to extend for six months the duration of an amnesty law under which surrendering rebels are pardoned and resettled by the state. Officials of the statutory Amnesty Commission established to handle surrendering rebels advised the government to extend the life of the amnesty law beyond January 17, saying it would help bring the rebellion to an end.
When he spoke in Lira three days after the killings, Museveni blamed donors who fund 48 per cent of his national budget for stopping him from raising the defence budget, which he said had made it difficult to end the war. The donors do not allow Kampala to spend more than two per cent of the national budget on defence.
But the donors' group in Kampala denied Museveni's accusation. "We reject the assertion that donors' restrictions on defence expenditure have impeded the UPDF's capacity to defend citizens from such attacks," they said. "Donors agreed exceptional increases in defence spending last year that were related to combating the LRA."
The donors added that while they acknowledged the difficulties the army faced, "we wish to once again urge the government to explore all avenues to resolve this conflict, including helping to create a climate in which a negotiated solution might be found."
The Ugandan army said on Saturday that it had it killed 30 Lord�s Resistance Army rebels last week, including 15 believed to be behind the Barlonyo massacre.
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