Interventi internazionali --> Uganda --> Coinvolgimento delle NP

18 April 2004

The eighteen-year-long conflict in northern Uganda is one of the world’s most complex and most cruel. The rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has waged a campaign noted for its savage atrocities. Of the three-to-seven thousand strong LRA force, 85% are estimated to be children, 9- to 17-years-old, almost all abducted and forced to act as porters, servants, sex slaves and child soldiers. Every night now 15-to-20,000 children walk up to six miles into the protection of the towns, fearing to sleep in the countryside, worried they will be abducted. Throughout the region over one million people have been displaced from their villages, many of them forcibly removed by the Ugandan government during the last seven years into densely-packed camps for internally-displaced people (IDP).

The LRA has not formulated a coherent political strategy and has been unwilling and/or unable to seriously negotiate with any of the several governmental and non-governmental envoys who have attempted over the years to do so. LRA leader Joseph Kony claims to be guided by direct instructions from God and originally the LRA’s only political platform was "the Ten Commandments". Kony is rumored in the meantime to have converted to Islam. He was last contacted in person by outside mediators in 1994 when the Carter Center visited him in Sudan. Since then he has talked via telephone, including on "talk radio" in northern Uganda.

In any case, the LRA rebellion follows a pattern established since Uganda’s independence in 1962 – the same pattern of armed rebellion that secured current Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni his control of the government in 1986. Since then the country has been moving towards civilian control, with President Museveni having stood for elections twice. However it is only now that a multi-party democracy is being allowed to re-emerge.

Further complicating matters, the Ugandan Army is distrusted by much of the civilian population in the north and has itself been implicated in human rights abuses (though not, by any measure, on the scale of the LRA). The government that Museveni ousted eighteen years ago was under the control of a member of the Acholi tribe, the people of the north. Museveni’s tribal group is from the west and the army he led to victory eighteen years ago is still regarded with suspicion by many Acholi. Some army officers are credibly suspected of corruption; its enlisted soldiers are poorly-paid and under-supplied. The army is accused not only of incompetence but even of deliberate malfeasance by some officers, for their own financial gain, in failing to vigorously pursue the LRA.

Some members of Parliament, as well as the representative of the European Union, have recommended that northern Uganda be declared a disaster zone. (The EU representative rebutted charges of meddling in Uganda’s internal affairs by pointing out that the EU provides much of the 53% of Uganda’s budget supplied by donor nations.) President Museveni’s refusal to declare a disaster zone is perceived by the Acholi as further proof that the ruling government does not want to seriously address the situation. Another point in this regard is President Museveni’s recent indication that he will reverse his previous promise not to seek a third term of office – which, if he follows through, would require re-writing the constitution and is already sowing political confusion. Furthermore, any possibility of negotiations are greatly hampered by the personal animosity between Museveni and Kony, as exemplified in recent months when a Presidential negotiating team failed to engage even lower-rank LRA commanders. (According to government sources, the LRA does not have negotiators competent enough to engage in peace talks.) In any case, all of this is seen by the northerners as indicating lack of political will on the part of the government to end the conflict.

Until recently the Sudanese government has unofficially supported the LRA by supplying arms and by providing safe haven in southern Sudan. Conversely the Ugandan government has been unofficially supporting the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) against the Sudanese government in southern Sudan. Currently the SPLA and the Sudanese government are engaged in serious, but fragile, peace talks. Perhaps in consequence of those talks and a desire for wider international acceptance, the Sudanese government has given permission to the Ugandan army to attack and pursue the LRA in southern Sudan. Once before, in 1996, the Sudanese government also gave such permission but this is the first time they are also allowing the Ugandan air force to enter Sudanese air space to attack LRA positions. It must be noted, however, that the previous 1996 agreement -- the Ugandan "Operation Iron Fist" against the LRA in southern Sudan -- resulted only in increased LRA attacks into northern Uganda. In any case, if Uganda and Sudan do conclude a solid peace agreement, it will mean that the LRA will lose its base.

In the last two months, the LRA extended its operations outside of the north to attack IDP camps to the south and east. This has led to conflict with other tribal groups and has prompted some leaders to warn of the possibility of another Rwanda-type, tribally-based genocide. There have been two main responses: the establishment of local defense units or militias; and concerted efforts by traditional chiefs and religious leaders to avoid exacerbating tribal animosities. It seems that, for the time being, the more serious danger is the longer-term consequence of arming militias without proper training or direction.

At the same time as the Ugandan government pursues its military campaign against the LRA – regularly claiming that the war will be successfully concluded "soon", "within weeks", "at the end of next month" – it has established an Amnesty Commission which offers complete amnesty to all LRA commanders, including its top leaders! The amnesty period is of limited duration but has been extended several times. The current amnesty period runs out in mid-April, but is expected again to be extended (perhaps eliminating the offer of amnesty to LRA leaders). The leaders of the LRA, however, deeply distrust the Ugandan government and they cite instances of previous false amnesties (by Idi Amin and others) when rebel leaders who gave themselves up were subsequently tortured and killed.

Despite the government’s amnesty offer, a couple of months ago President Museveni successfully persuaded the recently-established International Criminal Court (ICC) to bring its first prosecution against the leadership of the LRA. The Court is currently investigating the case and has also decided to include investigation of charges against the Ugandan army. The Ugandan government has agreed to fully cooperate with the ICC.

Many people of the north, probably most people, are opposed to the ICC investigation. Since it is predominantly their own children who compose the LRA, they are afraid that if the leadership of the LRA is given no way to safely surrender, their children may be murdered en masse. Furthermore the Acholi place great faith in their traditional reconciliation and "cleansing" ceremonies. Their tradition excludes the death penalty and provides ritual mechanisms to re-integrate even the most vicious of former criminals.

Given this situation and despite Museveni’s off-and-on proclamations that military victory is the only way, the government of Uganda is under pressure both internally and externally to seek a negotiated settlement to the war in the north. There is much to be learned from the experiences of third-party intervention and support for peacemaking in countries such as Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mozambique and others. It is in this area that most people indicated Nonviolent Peaceforce might contribute.

Finally, it is worth noting that, other than agriculturally productive land, there are no mineral resources or other highly-valued material in the region. Root causes of this war do not include huge economic gains to be had as the result of controlling territory. The history of independent Uganda is a continuing battle among geographically-defined ethnicities. In fact, the war in the north is seen by much of the rest of Uganda as only a problem for the north. Much of this attitude is the legacy of arbitrary, colonially-established national borders, as well as the result of tribal animosities generated and heightened by divide-and-rule colonial strategies. Uganda is still, as a nation, forming its identity.

Behind the Violence: Causes, Consequences and the Search for Solutions to the War in Northern Uganda (February 2004), Refugee Law Project Working Paper No. 11 <http://www.refugeelawproject.org/>

Northern Uganda: Understanding and Solving the Conflict (14 April 2004), International Crisis Group Africa Report 77 < http://www.crisisweb.org/>

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