No respite in children’s war

Business Day

By Karen Williams

June 27, 2005

THE latest report of United Nations (UN) children’s agency Unicef says that 10000 more children are sleeping away from home every night in northern Uganda — bringing the total of “night commuters” to 40000. For those who have heard of the 19-year war, the night commuters are among the most heartbreaking images of northern Uganda’s conflict: young children who trek every night to shelters, or who sleep on the streets, to avoid abduction by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army.

The UN estimates at least 1,6-million people have been displaced and 20000 children abducted and forced to fight, become porters, servants and sexual slaves to rebel commanders.

The increase in night commuters is not accidental. Recent negotiations broke down after a draft cease-fire was not signed — and the government launched a new offensive against the Lord’s Resistance Army. Since then, there have been regular reports of renewed abductions, murders, foetuses cut from women’s wombs, lips and ears hacked off by the rebels — who are overwhelmingly children, who were themselves abducted or born in captivity.

Children and women tell the story of the region’s war. The reintegration centres (which cater for children who have been rescued, released or escaped from the bush) show the demographics of the war — young children, most barely teenagers, make up the bulk of its population. A significant number of the camps’ children were born in captivity to abducted girls, and these children then graduated to the Lord’s Resistance Army’s fighting ranks. And, with most of the force made up of abducted children, who in turn commit atrocities, the line between victims and perpetrators (often the same thing in northern Uganda) has become fundamental as both the Kampala government and the international community seek to act against the Lord’s Resistance Army leadership.

Last year, the Ugandan government invited the International Criminal Court to launch investigations into the Lord’s Resistance Army, making Uganda a potential test case. But what the international community hopes will stop the war has been rejected by civil society groups in the north — which have repeatedly called on the court to either delay, or drop, investigations.

Although the Lord’s Resistance Army — combining elements of a cult, an insurgency force and a terror group — can be dismissed as a brutal rebel movement, the war in northern Uganda is not apolitical, and the government plays a major role in the conflict. Little is known about the leadership of the Lord’s Resistance Army, which is led by a self-styled mystic, Joseph Kony, who wants to replace the government of President Yoweri Museveni with one based on the Bible’s 10 commandments.

Uganda’s political world is divided into north and south — and, until Museveni came to power, politics and the army were dominated by the north. The Lord’s Resistance Army grew out of earlier northern rebellions against Museveni — including those by former army officers loyal to his predecessor. And, with the war concentrated in the north affecting mostly the Acholi people, in Kampala it is not unheard of to hear people say that the war is an Acholi problem.

Northern civil society leaders often say that northerners feel that not ending the war is a punitive measure against them — to pay for northern repression and misrule of the country. Political analysts hint that Museveni might not be ending the war because it gives him political leverage. And, there has always been a feeling both in Uganda’s north and south that despite sporadic peace attempts, Museveni really wants to finish off the Lord’s Resistance Army militarily.

While much of Uganda is undergoing an economic renaissance, impoverishment and displacement is rife across the north. All this adds to northern suspicion of government attempts to intervene in the conflict. Museveni has repeatedly called for an end to the “terrorists” of the Lord’s Resistance Army, seemingly downplaying the political dimensions of the conflict. And, even if the war ends today, the political schism between north and south will have to be dealt with.

The International Criminal Court says that investigations will be impartial, but because of restrictions on its jurisdiction it will be up to the Ugandan authorities to prosecute government and army suspects. The distinction is crucial because the Ugandan army has been implicated in human rights violations for as long as the war has been going on.

A large part of the region’s population was moved into displaced people’s camps to make them less vulnerable to attack. But that has brought little comfort or security. The camps are frequently attacked by the Lord’s Resistance Army. In turn, the Ugandan Human Rights Commission says most complaints in the north concern violations by the army, the Ugandan People’s Defence Force.

“If the Lord’s Resistance Army know they are going to be prosecuted, why would they come home?” said a UN worker in Gulu soon after the court started investigations. He was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance army as a child and rescued by the national army, and his support for the court dropping its investigations is not uncommon.

Yet within northern Uganda it is not only the threat of increased Lord’s Resistance Army attacks in reaction to prosecution that are behind the calls for the court to hold off investigations. Community organisations have been working for more than a decade to have demobilised rebels accepted back into their communities. And, it is only in recent years that this has borne fruit with communities moving from fearing the children, to seeing them as victims of the war.

“Because most of the Lord’s Resistance Army leaders are young, they don’t know how to engage in dialogue and articulate their demands,” said Betty Omuk Akwero, of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative. She herself has survived abduction, and works in political initiatives in Gulu and surrounding districts.

The peace initiative is suspicious of a justice imposed by Kampala — often pointing out that Acholi culture already has provision for reconciliation (matupot), a process by which a wrongdoer acknowledges the transgression, and is reintegrated into society.

And, she says, the local community finds it hard to accept the International Criminal Court investigations into the Lord’s Resistance Army because the civilian population has been brutalised by the army as well as the rebels. While the government has said it will prosecute its forces implicated in atrocities in the north, it has not said whether army suspects will be handed over to the court.

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