Fratricide: Finally, Southerners Wake Up to the Brutal War in the North
Email This Page
Print This Page
Visit The Publisher's Site
The East African (Nairobi)
COLUMN
April 19, 2004
Posted to the web April 20, 2004
Joachim Buwembo
Nairobi
At most churches in Uganda, special prayers were offered on Easter Sunday for Joseph
Kony to reconsider his agenda and stop fighting. Having to drop various elderly
relatives off at churches near their localities, I attended several services on
Easter. And the message was remarkably uniform - pray to God to soften Kony's heart
and make him stop slaughtering the people of northern Uganda.
Now this is a departure, or shall we say an evolution of attitude among people from
the peaceful and relatively prosperous south. When the insurgency in the north began
18 years ago, the response in the south was to urge the government to do its job and
crush the "criminals."
But the LRA rebellion was not crushed and, some time in the late 1980s and early
1990s, it began taking on the dimensions of a real war. The people urged the
government to win the war. Then as the '90s wore on, the rebels started operating in
small groups carrying out acts of banditry. The south more or less lost interest,
though people kept talking about the painful episode of the dozens of Aboke
schoolgirls whom Kony abducted and forcibly converted into "breeders" of a new, "pure"
race of Acholi people to repopulate Uganda.
Then, last year, Kony made a violent return. He attacked Teso region and wreaked
havoc. When the Teso leaders organised the local people and managed to drive him out,
he went to Lango, an area that had been peaceful for years, and burned over 200 people
to ashes. Then two weeks ago, he decided to remind the public that he is still the
unspeakable monster he has always been and returned to his old sadistic ways. He did
some cutting off of lips in Lango.
Now if you have never seen a person whose lips have been neatly cut off you may never
realise how important lips are. At a distance, you think the person is grinning
widely. When they approach, you realise what cruelty has been inflicted on them. And
for some reason, Kony prefers to cut off women's' lips rather than men's. When the
poor woman tries to speak, you have to be very stronghearted to keep back the tears.
Try to say three sentences in any language without moving your lips.
Anyway, the news and the pictures from the north are not good. The people in the south
are coming to realise that the insurgency is not proving easy to end. Fighting has
been going on for 18 years. Negotiations used to take place on and off. Even offers of
money were made. Sudan co-operated and allowed the Ugandan army on its soil to hunt
down Kony.
The army has scored many victories, going by the number of reports of rebels killed.
But problem remains. Southerners have now taken the matter to Jesus. You have these
bumper stickers on born-again people's cars. Try Jesus, they say. First they cheered
their army. Then they paid the taxes. Now they want divine intervention.
Kony is the talk of the town. It is as if he started business yesterday. At a city
secondary school last week, teenagers debated whether Kony really exists. They argued
that the picture of his they saw when they were in primary is the same the newspapers
show them now. Is he like Jesus? They asked. Others claimed that the guy must have
stopped fighting long ago and that the war had taken on a life of its own. The man
could be dancing in Kampala discotheques and sending his kids to this very school, a
cheeky boy said.
Relevant Links
East Africa
Uganda
Conflict, Peace and Security
So while we should be discussing boosting foreign trade, reducing HIV infection rates
and putting more computers in schools, Mr Kony refuses to go away. Now impatience with
him is giving way to desperation and finally reflection, people have begun to see the
war in a new light: Kony's entire army is now made up of abductees. The people who are
being recruited from Acholi region to fight them are their brothers. If you sign up
for service, you are being sent to kill your own brother who was forced into the
fight. If you don't join, you will be killed by your brother. It is a no-win
situation. The present appeals to God may, after all, not be such a naive thing.
Joachim Buwembo is editor of the Sunday Vision of Kampala
--------------------------------------------
This service is hosted on the Infocom network
http://www.infocom.co.ug
