A Brief Introduction to the Conflict in Northern Uganda

The nation of Uganda has for over two decades been hailed as one of the African continent's greatest success stories - in the words of many international onlookers, "a model of democracy and development" (Branch, 3). During this same period, however, the country has also been home to a vicious civil war, a conflict that former UN Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland in 2003 christened "the most forgotten crisis in the world" (Allen, 73). [1]

While southern Uganda has largely flourished, much of the north [2] has been ravaged by the ruthless attacks of the Lord's Resistance Army, a semi-spiritual rebel group ostensibly committed to overthrowing the Ugandan government and ruling the nation by the ten commandments, but which in practice has spent the past two decades preying on the very people it claims to represent (HRW: The Scars of Death, 4). Since the early 1990's, when its initial civilian support base began to dwindle, the group has sustained itself through the brutal abduction of the local population's children [3] (Branch, 15). The army is infamous for its bloody massacres of entire villages and for the cold-blooded way in which it dehumanizes its abductees, turning them from carefree children into brutal, unquestioning killers: LRA abductees are often forced to hack their own families to death with machetes and made to beat to death fellow child soldiers who disobey orders; they must either kill or be killed, and the ruthlessness of the acts they are forced to carry out serves to psychologically sever them from their families and pasts.[4] In addition, the group is known for terrorizing civilian populations through the severing of limbs, slicing off of ears and lips, gouging out of eyes (Branch, 16-7). [5]

According to Human Rights Watch, the actions of the LRA constitute "a blatant violation of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949," which establishes the minimum constraints on the conduct of all parties in an internal conflict. In particular, the Article requires the humane treatment of non-combatants; specifically forbidding murder, mutilation, torture, or the taking of hostages. (HRW: The Scars of Death, 3)

It is tempting to begin an explanation of the war waged in northern Uganda by the LRA, sometime in the mid-1980's. It is more tempting still, to describe the conflict as the case of a deranged cult of rebels inexplicably turning on their own tribe. The true roots of the situation, however, are not nearly so simple - they run both deeper and more tangled than anyone might at first glance suspect...

Riding the bus from the capital city of Kampala to the northern Ugandan town of Gulu, you can recognize exactly where the prosperous southern part of the nation ends and where Uganda's northern regions begin. Sometime during the fourth hour of the journey, the frothing white waters of the Nile River unfurl before you and you find yourself facing the Karuma Falls Bridge. As your bus trundles its way towards the opposite bank of the river, you can already feel the road beneath you beginning to change - the pavement giving way to potholes, ditches, and in some stretches, simply ragged, dusty earth.

And then you are in the north, and immediately, things are different. There are few towns, almost no farmsteads, and what houses you do see are run down and - in some parts - abandoned, or worse, burned to the ground. Even the people you pass on the road are different: dark skinned, with striking cheekbones, flat noses, and almost slanted eyes. They look nothing like people you meet on the streets in Kampala, with their brown skin tones and soft features. At your first stop, as hawkers flock to the sides of the bus you hear that the language has changed too: now full of dipping nasals and muffled affricates, it is utterly undecipherable to anyone accustomed to the clear, easy sing-song of the nation's southern tongues. [6]

The cultural and ethnic gaps between these two regions are age-old. In part, they are the result of several centuries of separation by geographical barriers (primarily the Nile River). The discrepancies in development and quality of life, however can be traced back to British colonial methods of administration and the repercussions they have had since the end of British control, in 1962 (International Center For Transitional Justice, 44).

The British were the first to treat the two regions as a single polity, taking ethnic groups that felt no connection to one another and placing them under a single system of administration (Sonnenberg, 5). Within this system, southerners were promoted to positions of low-level civil service in governing institutions, while northerners were forced to serve as foot soldiers in military units. As a result, the major urban, industrial, and educational centers developed in the south, while the north remained largely uneducated and entrenched in a lifestyle of manual work and subsistence farming. (Okello Lecture) The trends set down under colonialism continued after independence and up to the present day - contributing, among other things, to contemporary southern notions of northern backwardness and inferiority (Sonnenberg, 6).

In the decades since independence, Uganda has witnessed a veritable ping-pong match of regional power grabbing. As political control has bounced back and forth between the northern and southern parts of the country, groups on all sides have suffered in a dizzying cycle of ethnic repression and retribution. (Sonnenberg Lecture)

During the first half of the 1980's the country was ruled by two northern presidents (Milton Obote, a Langi, and later Tito Okello, an Acholi).[7] Both presidents faced major opposition from southern resistance groups. Obote reacted with a severe crackdown on the Luwero Trinagle - a region known to harbor and support several rebel groups. (Allen, 29) Using the army (still largely composed of northerners,[8] as it had been in colonial times), they massacred as many as 500,000 southern Ugandans (Sonnenberg, 7).

In 1986, Okello was overthrown by southerner Yoweri Museveni (Ugandan president to this day), who proceeded to retaliate by driving all soldiers of northern background back to their home territories, and even as far as Sudan (Allen, 29-30). Although there was at this time no consolidated rebellion against the new government, Museveni persisted in a quest to smother what he viewed as potential for northern revolt. In this manner, as Adam Branch puts it, the government's "counterinsurgency [...] brought forth an insurgency": feeling abused and threatened by government forces, many Acholi civilians initially supported the burgeoning Lord's Resistance Army (still known then by a host of other names). It was only with time, as people started to see that this rebel force was not in fact succeeding in protecting them from government assault, that their support began to wane. (Branch, 19) By then however, the LRA had gained strength and momentum. Considering any Acholi who did not actively support them an enemy and government collaborator, the rebel group proceeded to turn on its own people.

In 1996, the Ugandan People's Defense Force (or UPDF, as the Ugandan national army is more commonly called) began relocating Acholi civilians into Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps (Branch, 19).[9] Though ostensibly established for the population's safety, the camps created dire problems of their own. Protection tended to be inadequate and humanitarian conditions within the camps soon deteriorated alarmingly. By the early 2000's the rate of preventable deaths among the IDP camp inhabitants reached 1,000 a week (Finnström, 133), yet the threat of LRA attacks and abductions remained so great that no one could risk returning home.

In December 2003, with the conflict in the north of his country about to enter its eighteenth year, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni turned to the International Criminal Court (ICC) with a plea for help (Allen, 1). Unable to bring an end to the atrocities of the LRA, Museveni requested that the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) "investigate the situation concerning the Lord's Resistance Army" (Allen, 1).

Although, established in 1998, the jurisdiction of the ICC had only actually been in effect for a year and a half [10](Allen,1-2). The institution was designed to hold individuals, rather than states, accountable for three types of crimes: crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide (Sonnenberg 12). And the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), with its founder Joseph Kony and a small group of co-commanders at the helm, was believed to have engaged heavily in at least two of these three.[11] It was therefore seen as a suitable subject for ICC investigation.

Thus, on January 29, ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo appeared at a joint press conference with President Yoweri Museveni. Together they announced the International Criminal Court's intention of investigating the situation in northern Uganda [12] (International Center For Transitional Justice, 18). It was to be the ICC's first ever case (Allen,1).

In July of 2005, after a period of research, the ICC issued warrants against Joseph Kony and the top four commanders [13] of the Lord's Resistance Army (Allen, 182-3). A full discussion of the ICC's subsequent role in this conflict would constitute a fairly large detour. To date, the case remains open, with no suspects apprehended, and the Court's conduct in the area continues to be the subject of much passionate and heated debate. Controversy aside, however, the ICC's involvement in northern Uganda has certainly drawn attention to the region and its plight. In addition, it was a probably a factor in the launch of the most recent peace process between the government of Uganda and the LRA - though it may also have contributed to its ultimate dissolution.

On July 14, 2006 the government of Uganda entered into a round of peace talks with representatives of the LRA. The talks, which were held in Juba under the mediation of Southern Sudanese vice president Riek Machar, were by no means the first attempt at a peace process between the rebels and the central government. They did, however, appear to be the most promising. On August 26 the warring parties signed a ceasefire and agreed that LRA troops would begin to assemble at two designated points along the Sudan-Uganda border. The agreement led to the longest lull in violence since the war's outbreak, two decades earlier.[14] It also set the stage for negotiations concerning a long-term ceasefire, disarmament, reintegration, and accountability. (Nyakairu "Counting the gains, losses of Juba peace talks")

The talks lasted for over two years but eventually broke down after Joseph Kony failed, repeatedly, to show up for the signing of the final agreement. Though he cited fear over the ICC indictment as his reason for withdrawing from negotiations, it is unclear how strong his commitment to the peace process had ever truly been.

Following the dissolution of the peace process, LRA troops withdrew into several remote areas in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In December of 2008, Ugandan, Congolese, and South Sudanese military forces embarked on a joint campaign against the rebel army. The offensive failed to yield many positive results and the LRA retaliated with brutal attacks on civilian populations in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo. In a set of attacks now known as the Christmas Massacres the army killed hundreds of villagers (HRW: DR Congo: LRA Slaughters 620 in "Christmas Massacres"), and forced 20,000 more to flee their homes (BBC, Christmas Massacres "Killed 400"), in a matter of days.

As of late 2009 the LRA remains highly active. In the past several months it has committed numerous atrocities (including widespread abductions and massacres) in parts of Southern Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic. Recent reports indicate that it may also be expanding its reach into Chad (Press TV: LRA fleeing to Chad: Ugandan army). While northern Uganda is experiencing a period of relative calm, the conflict is far from over; Kony shows no inclination towards further negotiations or surrender; and peace is still a long way off.