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Matek Opoko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Send in troops, evacuate the IDP's in the north Sam Akaki Hidden within acres of idle reports and comments that have been made over the years about the tragedy in northern Uganda, there is one statement by the Catholic Archbishop Jean Baptist Odama, also the Chairman of Northern Uganda Peace Committee. It summaries the charge sheet for criminal inaction by the UK, USA, EU and the donor community in Uganda.
On 25th February 2003, the Archbishop reportedly told the United Nations Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN):
"We've been crying, we've been shouting, we've tried everything to get the international community to listen, and we hear nothing in return. Do they really care about what's happening in the north at all?"Two years after the Archbishop's tearful plea, and 19 years since the war started (and while the donors readily intervened in the more recent wars next-door in Ituri and Darfur) they chose to pursue half-hearted, vested interest-driven efforts to "assist" President Museveni to end the war in the north by military means and by negotiation. They must now recognise that these strategies have failed.
The list of strategies to end the war is long. There was the 1994 Bigombe One, the current Bigombe Two and several "initiatives" before and since. They include UPDF's scotched-earth operation in the 80s and 90s, the forceful driving of 1.8 million men, women, children into the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps, a euphemism for concentration camps, Operation Iron Fist, which only succeeded in flushing Joseph Kony from the Sudan back into Northern Uganda.President Museveni also diverted 23% of all departmental budgets including education and health to defence, trained and armed of tens of thousands of lawless and unpaid tribal militias called Arrow Boys, Amuka and Frontier Guard. Add to this the ineffective decision by the US to designate the LRA as a terrorist organisation, the decision by the ICC to start investigating the LRA leaders against the advice of the regional elders and the self-serving peace negotiations from which Museveni instantly recruited Brigadier Kenneth Banya, for years labelled by the government as the LRA's mastermind.
All along, the Opposition has been completely excluded from the negotiations.To underscore the failure of these approaches, in recent weeks there have been sharp increases in deaths through the intensification of ambushes, rape, starvation and suicide.
Sadly, Museveni has announced his intention to revisit the same failed strategies. He has asked the Sudan to allow the UPDF to re-enter their territory and for the umpteenth time, promised that the end of the LRA is around the corner.Why should the UK, USA and other donors trust that any of these strategies will end the war in the north?
If the donors are truly committed to ending this war and its attendant human tragedy, here are some practical steps:
Firstly, the UK as a former colonial ruler should sponsor a resolution in the United Nations Security Council, calling for the northern region to be declared an international disaster area. This would allow the inflow of the much-needed humanitarian assistance.Secondly, the UK should use it influence as the current president of the European Union and send an EU Rapid Reaction peace keeping force. This force should be deployed in two strategic locations: along the Uganda/Sudan boarder, forming a wall to block any attempts by the LRA to enter or exit Uganda; and within and around every IDP to provide both security and humanitarian assistance.
Thirdly, as a matter of urgency, all the major donor countries should each take a share, and evacuate all the commuter and IDP children to the safety of their countries, pending the pacification of the north.There is a precedent for this. On 19th June 2002, the French News agency (AFP) reported that "Next week, nearly 12 000 Bantu Somali refugees, will be transferred from Dadaab, Hagadera and Dagahaley in the east to Kakuma refugee camp in north-western Kenya to await resettlement in the United States." Mercifully for the children, thousands of them and their parents have since been resettled in California and other neighbouring states in the USA where they are rebuilding their shattered lives.
In July 2005, CNN showed a programme on 6,000 Southern Sudanese children who were evacuated to the USA in the 80s and 90s.
Why can't the UK, USA and other donors take the only credible action and bring in their peace-keeping troops, demolish the camps and send the children home with their parents, or evacuate them?
Is it part of the job incentive for their Kampala-based and visiting diplomats to travel to the north and view, for entertainment, the harrowing spectacles of the commuter children and those in the IDP camps, which have become human zoos?Sam Akaki
FDC External Co-ordinator UK
London__________________________________________________
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