Richard M. Kavuma tells the story of Betty Bigombe, the woman who tried to carry the head of the elephant to Acholi
March 28, 2004
Musevenis minister
meets with Kony
Part 5:In our continuing series to mark President Yoweri Museveni last Constitutional term in office, Richard M. Kavuma reports about the forgotten six months, when the war in Gulu was considered over and Kony rebels stopped buses not to loot and kill, but to chat with the passengers.
On February 1, 1994 President Yoweri Museveni went to Koc Goma, 22 kms west of Gulu town. Accompanied by the man he toppled, Gen Tito Okello Lutwa, Museveni was opening a health centre ahead of the anniversary of the visit of Pope John Paul to the district.
The next day, on February 2, 1994, a groundbreaking agreement was to be signed between the government of Uganda and Lords Resistance Army rebels.
The text of The Gulu Ceasefirehad been agreed. Cabinet minister Betty Bigombe, the NRAs 4Division Commander, Col. Samuel Wasswa and LRA Field Commander, George Komakech Omona, were ready to sign. The venue, Lacekocot village in Gulu, was set.
Then Museveni dropped the bombshell. He gave the rebels seven days to surrender or be killed. Levi Arweny, one of the elders working for Bigombes peace team, recalls the chaos that followed Musevenis ultimatum.
Bigombe, who was at Koc Goma with Museveni, hastily rushed to Gulu try to salvage the peace process.
Betty
Bigombe
Betty Atuku Bigombe is renowned throughout
her native Acholi as a great mobiliser for peace. For five years, when
she was minister of state in the Office of the Prime Minister in charge
of Northern Uganda (Resident in Gulu), Bigombe perfected the two-pronged
strategy that is today favoured by the government to end the war.
In 1992 she encouraged the Acholi to form a militia armed with bows and arrows to thwart rebel attacks on villages.
But she was not satisfied. Billie OKadameri, who was a journalist in northern Uganda at the time, says Bigombe in June 1993 sent a former rebel collaborator, Yusuf Okwonga Adek, with a letter to Kony.
She wanted the LRA to talk peace.
After a week, Adek returned with a letter from Kony acknowledging receipt of Bigombes letter and indicating that he needed to receive guidance from the Holy Spiritand would respond if Adek returned in three weeks,OKadameri wrote in Acord Journal.
Together with UPDF 4 Division Commander, Col. Sam Wasswa, Bigombe secretly exchanged letters with Kony. When later, she informed Museveni of her initiative and the progress she was making, he gave it his blessing.
Bigombes team of negotiators that included elders and religious leaders met with the LRA late in November 1993 at Pagik, Aswa County, in Gulu.
Kony sent a recorded message to the meeting and commanders Jenaro Bongomin, Jackson Achama, Yardin Tolbert Nyeko and Cirilo Jurukadri Odego represented the LRA.
We organised several meetings with Konys delegation at medical school [Gulu School of Clinical Officers] here in Gulu. Arweny says there was always tension between LRA and NRA commanders because the government soldiers were perceived as arrogant.
We requested the army to look after them. They were sleeping in the barracks. They came without guns. Says Arweny: From August 1993 to January 31, 1994 there was total peace in Acholi.
The rebels were seen freely moving here in town and even in the villages. They would come to town to buy things from shops and go back
In these six months, the rebels sometimes stopped buses - not to loot and kill, but to chat with the passengers.
During the talks, the rebels said they wanted amnesty; and did not want to be blamed for earlier atrocities. They wanted army uniforms, reasoning that they were now part of the NRA.
OKadameri says that during the talks Kony asked for six months to gather his troops from the bush.
Press reports at the time showed that people, even in Gulu, said the six months was an unreasonably long time.
When a return meeting was organized in the bush in December 1993, the rebels also requested that if the army wanted to meet Kony they should not even go with a pin.
The army refused to disarm and the talks nearly stalled until Bigombes team decided to meet Kony without the army. Some soldiers went along with the team to the venue (where), about seven kilometres in the bush, from the main road.
They arrived after 7 pm. Arweny: We were welcomed by church choirs in the bush. All these eight miles we were walking through LRA soldiers sprinkling water on us.
And then were taken to the home of the third commander. We felt we were in a bush city, seeing torches in the radius of one mile in all directions.
The commander wanted the team to spend the night but Bigombe refused. She said the elders were too old to sleep in the bush and that the President was waiting for her.
So 30 armed rebels were assigned to escort them back. Let them guard you,Acord quotes LRA Field Commander George Omona Komakech as having said, because we do not want anything to happen to you and then we are blamed. There are many people who are not pleased at what we are doing.
The team returned to Gulu after 10 pm. Curious people lined the roads to welcome them. Arweny says that a rumour was already making the rounds that the peace team had been killed in the bush.
The following day Bigombes team returned to the bushes of Pagik. Arweny: Kony addressed us for three hours, and then organised another meeting for selected people.
We went some 100 metres away. We took Konys son along. He carried his son on his lap and talked, agreeing in principal to end the war.
He gave an assignment to the elders to go and cleanse our landin the traditional way.
He asked the elders to tell government that when they came out they should not be restricted in one area and that when we come home there should be guarantees that there shall be no finger-pointing at us.
Arweny recalls that during this time, the rebels had started moving in large numbers very happilyto assemble at Lacekocot trading centre, 35 miles on Gulu-Kitgum road where the war was supposed to be ended on February 2.
There was genuine belief at the time that the war was all but over.
On February 4 1994 The Monitor published an interview with minister Betty Bigombe. The article was titled: Talks, not blood and Iron ended northern war - Bigombe.
The interviewer asked Bigombe: Now that the war is over.... What is next for you?Bigombe answered. Well some people have said I have worked myself out of the job. But there is a lot of hope in the Northern Uganda Rehabilitation Programme.
But Museveni repeated his ultimatum in Gulu town and at Awac in Aswa County. Meanwhile, Bigombe sent Okot Ogony, the co-ordinator of the process, to reassure the LRA and tell them not to be bothered by Mr Musevenis ultimatum. She said she would talk to Museveni again.
Everything would be all right. Arweny says Ogony spent that night with Kony. He says the rebel leader was calm. He even ordered his men to warm water for Ogony to bathe.
Then, Arweny says, Kony gave his response to Ogony. Tell Bigombe,Kony reportedly said, that we shall not be the first to shoot at the NRA. They will do it first, and then the whole world will know our power.
Go and tell Bigombe not to bother anymore.That, says Arweny, was the end of Bigombes peace mission.
Infighting
David Westbrook of the Online Journal of Peace and Conflict Resolution (OJPCR), writing in a recent article, says that the Bigombe talks collapsed partly because of infighting over who should take the credit.
During the talks, Bigombe was quoted saying people within government were trying to sabotage the talks.
One member of Bigombes team says that some influential people said that Why should a woman be the one to bring home the head of the elephant?
Besides being a woman, Bigombes political weight was also reduced once she married outside Acholi. According to Acholi culture, her home was now in Kigezi (home of her late husband) in southwestern Uganda.
The government, however, insists that the talks collapsed because Kony asked for six months period to disarm as a way of buying time to get arms from Sudan.
The demi-god Analysts also point to the spiritual element of the conflict - a mixture of traditional religion, Islam and Christianity, which has given rebel leader Joseph Kony a multiple personality.
It becomes very difficult to deal with that kind of rebel leader who is the centre of everything. Even his commanders are said to find it difficult to influence him,says Omona, who has years of experience working with former LRA child-soldiers. Communication with him is just one way - He is some kind of demi-god.
People close to Kony believe he has supernatural powers and can detect anyone planning to deviate from his will.
Asked about Konys alleged powers, Bishop Ochola says that it is hard to fight peoples beliefs. People, he says, believe that Kony has those powers.
Chiefs killed
The collapse of the Bigombe peace process devastated the Acholi elders.
For two years they rued the missed opportunity. At the earlier meeting, Kony had said that the elders had sent the rebels out to fight but abandoned them.
His brutality against the civilians increased until in early 1996, the traditional chiefs tried to restart the peace process. After travelling to Rwakitura and getting Musevenis nod to talk to Kony, they made contact.
Kony refused to talk. He would talk after the national elections.
Arweny says around this time, Museveni went to Gulu and asked the chiefs to draw up a budget for the government to fund the peace process.
He assigned his staff to make sure the budget was ready in one night.
We came out with something like four million shillings but the president said that was too little.
Then we came out with something like seven million but the president said this is too low.
Arweny says, finally, they came out with a budget of around Shs 52 million, which they gave to minister Bigombe.
And then, before we knew it, a newsman picked it up. The next day the whole thing was in the papers that elders are demanding 150 million,says Arweny.
The state owned New Vision newspaper, on June 6, led with the story Acholi Elders Demand 153m/= for Kony talks. The story did not say the president insisted on the big budget.
We were torn a part. We became immediately the enemy of the rebels,Arweny says. They thought that we were only looking for means of getting money and that we had been bought by the government to get them killed.
Around that time Kony sent a message that he wanted to meet Okot Ogony, a coordinator with the Council of Chiefs and Rwot Achana the leader of the Acholi Chiefs.
Arweny says that some elders urged Okot Ogony not to meet him and Maj. Gen. Salim Saleh sent Brig. Chefe Ali to ask Rwot Achana to stop him.
Ogony refused to listen.
Ogony and Olanya Lagony, brother to senior LRA commander Otti Lagony went to Pagik in Eastern Gulu on June 8, 1996. Gersony says the two were last seen in the company of notorious LRA commander Beba Beba [carry- carry].
Arweny believes that Beba-Beba killed them on Otti Lagonys orders.
Their bodies were discovered in the Cwero area.
However Gersony writes that another theory suggested that the UPDF, who did not support the peace process, found the two elders bathing at a river and killed them.
Betty Bigombe
- Attended Gayaza High School and Makerere
University
- Holds a BA (Arts).
- Worked as a lecturer in Uganda and Japan from 1974-1976
- 1976-1980: worked for the Uganda Foreign Service in Japan.
- 1981-1984: Corporation Secretary of the Uganda Mining Corporation.
- 1984-1986: Co-ordinator in the Ministry
of Finance for all projects financed by the African Development Bank.
- 1986-1988: Deputy Minister in the Prime Ministers Office in charge of Economics, Finance and Trade
- 1988-1995: State Minister and Cabinet Member, Resident in Northern Uganda (Gulu)
- 1995-1996: Minster in the Presidents Office in Charge of Northern Uganda
- 1999-2001: Minister in the Office of the
Vice-President
- Currently: With World Bank
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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
