By Richard M. Kavuma
March 28, 2004
Tiberio Okeny Atwoma speaks with the sadness and naked anguish of a battle-hardened warrior of peace.
In October 1986, when the 18-year long rebellion in northern Uganda had just started, Okeny led a five-man team to meet the rebels in the bushes of Gulu.
They had President Yoweri Musevenis permission to meet the Uganda the rebels who called themselves the Uganda Peoples Defence Army (UPDA).
Earlier in August 1986, Museveni had called Okeny to Kampala and talked about the need for peace.
Later the mission for peace came down to Acholi elders: - Leander Komakech, Peter Odok, Celestino Adyera, Paul Okwera and Okeny.
The 78 year-old, who was part of the Lancaster team that discussed Ugandas independence Constitution in London, says the suffering of the people inspired the elders to talk peace with the rebels.
They went up to Juba and talked to the former soldiers of the UNLA, led by Odong Latek. They [rebels] agreed to come back but they set some conditions,says Okeny.
(R-L) MP Michael Ocula, Bishop Baker Ochola, MP Okumu Reagan and Archbishop JB Odama meeting rebels in Gulu (File photos).
One of the things they wanted was for Museveni to apologise for breaching the Nairobi agreement.After nearly five months, the team handed its Goodwill Peace Missionreport to Museveni.
When we handed over our report, it looked as if he was in favour,Okeny says, but it was never really acted on. Okeny says that once, when the peacemakers went to see Museveni and were staying at State House Entebbe, the President sent an aide, Lt col. Serwanga Lwanga, to fetch him, alone.
Okeny says Museveni said his experience could be useful to the nation and offered to make him a minister.
Okeny says he thanked Museveni but declined the offer, saying the issue of resolving the conflict was more important.
If I had accepted that post, I would not be talking to you now,the old man says. May be the rebels would have killed me. May be they would have burnt my house.
UPDA talks
Later in 1987, President Museveni instructed Salim Saleh to start negotiations with the rebels as recommended by the Okeny team. The talks opened on March 17, 1988 at Acholi Inn in Gulu.
Saleh, then NRAs Chief of Combat Operations, led the government team while Lt Col John Angelo Okello led the rebelsdelegation.
Maj. Mike Kilama and Mr Charles Alai accompanied Okello but the UPDA overall commander; Brig. Justine Odong Latek did not take part.
Emerging from the talks on March 21, Saleh is quoted to have said that as soldiers, they had sorted out their differences and would not allow politicians to confuse them.
In an article published in Acord journal last year, freelance journalist Caroline Lamwaka quotes Kilama as saying that the UPDA had not surrendered but wanted to work with the NRA to rebuild the country.
After more negotiations and draft agreements Salim Saleh flew by helicopter to the UPDA bush-base and met with Latek, who reportedly said he supported the peace process.
But in May, the UPDA replaced Latek with Angelo Okello, who had been commander of Division One in Gulu. On June 3, 1988 Okello signed a peace agreement with Museveni in Gulu.
Suspicious deaths
Much to the disappointment of the thousands of people who packed Pece Stadium to witness the signing, the agreement did not mark the end of the bloodletting.
Brig. Odong Latek and his inner circle continued fighting. In February 1990, Maj. Mike Kilama who was instrumental in negotiating the peace with the rebels was killed. Some people accused the NRA of murdering him. The army denies it. It says Kilama was shot as he tried to escape to Sudan.
It is believed by some that he was shot because of his opposition to NRAs brutal tactics against the population. Kilamas was the second suspicious death. Another UPDA soldier, Lt. Steven Obote, was accidentallykilled by the NRA in March 1988, as he organised a peace meeting with NRA commanders.
And this adds to the mistrust. People know that the nearer you get to Museveni, the more careful you should be,Okeny says. He adds: Now those who signed (peace agreements) like Angelo Okello, Mike Kilama - where are they now? They have all gone, under mysterious circumstances.
According to Gersony, who travelled widely in Acholi, Obotes relatives believe that he was killed deliberately. But Okeny says the mistrust dates back to 1985 and the Nairobi Peace Agreement that Museveni signed with then president, Gen. Okello Lutwa. The rebels claim Museveni violated the agreement by capturing power.
Musevenis attitude
President Museveni has never hidden his distaste for peace talks with the rebels. Even when he has allowed government officials to talk peace, he has said that he does not believe in peace talks. Our work is to kill these people,he said in 1996.
Museveni and his government officials say the LRA are not rebels, just bandits without political grievances or a political agenda. But Bishop Ochola and Gulu Municipality MP, Mr Norbert Mao who have met or talked to LRA commanders, say that it is possible to talk peace with them.
Government also says that when the rebels called ceasefires, atrocities continued to occur, casting doubt at the seriousness of the rebels.
However, people say not all atrocities in the northern war are committed by the LRA. The UPDF and organised groups of thugs and highway robbers are also suspects.
Okeny blames the failure of peace talks on the deadlines and other conditions that Museveni gives to the rebels.
The one [peace process] of Bigombe was nearly completed when from nowhere this man gave the seven-day ultimatum. So they disappeared,said Okeny.
Recently when they wanted to hold talks, he said I have given you five days.
A thing that has lasted 17 years and you want to end it in five days? That is really an order of surrender.
Like many people interviewed for this report, he says the war has persisted because there is a design to subjugate the Acholi people.
First there was a general call for people to come back. But those who came back were rounded up, tied three piece, and then the Naam-Okora incidents,he says.
That is why I have been contemplating how to reach the Security Council. Only the means to do it are lacking,he said when we met at his friends house in Kitgum town.
And they (government) have made sure that they cut us off economically. If we If we had cattle as before, each family would have given a bull and that would cater for three delegates to go to America.
Otherwise we have tried. Even the religious leaders are almost giving up. Because it is useless to speak to someone who does not listen.
Okeny is not alone in asking for foreign, United Nations intervention to end the war.
Military option
Atubo, who was his minister of State for defence, says Musevenis belief in military victoriesis part of the reason why the peace process has not been genuine.
In June, Col. Pecos Kuteesa reports in Acord , that Kony wrote to him requesting to be included in the peace process because he did not want to see more people dying.
This was soon after the government and the UPDA finalised the peace deal, and groups of Joseph Kony, Philip Ojuk and remnants of Severino Lukoya merged.
But the NRA mobile forces reportedly attacked Kony before the talks could begin shutting the door on peace talks. Writes Lamwaka: An Anglican priest, Abel Okumu, who attempted to broker dialogue at this time, was labelled a traitor by the HSM and killed shortly afterwards.
It appears that Konys wrapping of his ideology in religious fanaticism did not give the NRA cause to worry; they thought Kony would be easily crashed like Lakwena and her father Severino Lukoya.
Atubo says the international community supports Museveni against Kony. It brands Kony a terrorist who must be wiped out.
Owiny Dollo says the terror-tag has isolated made it difficult for settled Ugandans abroad to identify with Kony.
Kony is facing that problem that who can come out and say I belong to Kony political wing let us negotiate with Museveni? And of course Kony himself cannot get out of Uganda or Sudan without being arrested.
Yet says George Omona: the main concern of the LRA leadership is their safety and security when they come out. As long as they dont feel that they will be safe, they will just fight on until may be they all die.
But even before the US declared Kony a terrorist, its policy on Uganda was supportive of Musevenis position.
It is, frankly, difficult to imagine a negotiated settlement with a group like the LRA,Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Susan Rice told Congress in July 1998.
The Sudan factor complicates the process further. Firstly, as former President Carter pointed out on several occasions, the Clinton Administration went out of its way to ensure that the Sudanese conflict continued,says Dr David Hoile, a visiting professor of Political Science at Khartoum University. This was part of its regional policy aimed at destabilising Sudan.
Sudan has long been known to give Kony support. Recently, the Equatorial Defence Forces, a southern rebel group has also been arming Kony.
In southern Sudan there no permanent enemies - just permanent interests when,says George Omona As long as Kony can still get arms from any of those sources in Sudan, Kony will never come to any negotiation table. This war will just continue.
Atubo agrees: I am sure Kony cannot negotiate fully without taking into consideration the interests of Sudan.But in 1999 when Uganda and Sudan agreed to re-establish diplomatic ties, Kony was said to have developed some alliance with elements in the SPLA. The SPLA denies it.
Kacoke madit
Since the collapse of the Bigombe initiative, no effort has come any closer to a peace deal between government and the rebels. Acholi in the diaspora, government officials and the LRA in 1996 held a Kacoke Madit (Acholi meaning big meeting).
A Rome-based organisation, the Community of SantEgidio, that tried to broker peace was specifically interested in the release of the girls who the rebels abducted that year from St.Catherine Aboke, a secondary school.
Writing in Accord, Dr James Obita, former Secretary for External Affairs and Mobilisation for the rebels, says the initiative progressed and he exchanged letters with Museveni in November 1997.
A Uganda government delegation comprising Foreign Affairs state minister Amama Mbabazi and ESO Director David Pulkol met with representatives of the LRM in Rome in December.
The two teams agreed to meet again in January 1998. But the LRM side did not turn up. Hardliners in the rebel ranks talked Kony out of the negotiations.
Obita says that Kony accused him of taking money to betray the organisation and had him sentenced to death. Kony arrested him when Obita flew to Sudan to brief him about his meeting with then minister in charge of northern Uganda, Owiny Dollo in London. Obita was released unharmed.
Another peace effort funded by a British organisation Comic Relief also collapsed for the same reason.
Later Kenya-based Sudanese university lecturer, Dr Leonzio Onek contacted the then minister for the Presidency, Ruhakana Rugunda who assured him government was willing to talk to the rebels.
UN intervention?
Westbrook urges that part of the problem of the peace process in northern Uganda is the lack of a powerful third party. He argues that a person of the stature of former American President Jimmy Carter, perhaps with the backing of the US government, would wield more power and would be able to close gaps in the peace process.
Omona agrees that the experience required to mediate in such a complex conflict is lacking. Okeny questions the venues where recent peace talks have been held.
Can the rebels, he asks, talk freely when they know they could be attacked by the UPDF any time? People go to meetings when there is a lot of fear of attack first of all by the LRA themselves. Other people fear that the government or UPDF will sabotage,says Rwot Onen Achana II.
The government has, however, dismissed calls for involvement of a powerful third party like the United Nations. Others say that even if the UN were to come inthey would not do much if the rebels did not have anyone to speak for them.
In addition, past efforts to talk to the LRA outside Uganda have all been fruitless. Says the Ugandan ministry of Defence: President Jimmy Carter himself through the Carter Foundation offered to broker peace between government and LRA, the latter has never seized the offer.
Government also appointed a Peace Committee headed by Hon Eriya Kategaya where Okumu Reagan and Norbert Mao and other Acholi MPs are members, LRA has never appointed its side and has dodged to meet them.
Komakech, worked with an American PhD student, Mr Adam Brant, in Gulu when that Presidential Peace Team was appointed in August last year.
He recalls that Brant said the team would not achieve much.
Why, Komakech asked. Because the two sides - LRA and government - do not have anything to bargain over; that the government does not know what to offer Kony to persuade him to come out of the bush.
Brant had been in Acholi for only five months.
Today it is accurate to say the PPT did not even take off.
Not serious
The rebels and the government are not even talking about the peace talks. MP Omara Atubo says both Museveni and the rebels have not been genuine in their search for peace.
He says that there have not been genuine peace talks because the rebel-threat has not been serious enough. That pressure exerted by rebels where Museveni sees himself in danger of losing state power unless he negotiates has never been posed by any rebel group,Atubo said in an interview.
Many recall what Museveni told a press conference in Kampala in 1996 about peace talks with Kony. Using the analogy of diseases, Museveni said that while you can have a peace conferencewith cancer because it is coming to take away your leg, you cannot have a peace conference with flu or malaria.
The message is clear: Kony has to become more lethal threat if he wants the government to talk peace with him. Ultimately however, it appears that the questions about the peace processes are thrown back to President Yoweri Museveni and his Sudanese counterpart Hassan el Bashir.
If Sudan and Uganda were serious about peace, they should have thrown out each others rebels,said a programme coordinator of an NGO in Gulu. In the interest of the people of northern Uganda and southern Sudan, both leaders have to be sincere to each other.Betty Bigombe, the peace icon of northern Uganda was not available to give her opinion on the way forward.
� 2004 The
Monitor Publications
Ochan OtimNB: I hope you will find time to read and sign a petition to stop the Northern Uganda carnage at: http://www.petitiononline.com/savacoli/petition.html
