Kenya Government Corruption Dashes Hopes of Citizens - Triggers Suspension of Western Aid

Amid Scandals, Kenyans Are Feeling Duped

Public optimism was high at the outset of President Mwai Kibaki's tenure, but charges of graft have undermined his mandate.
Los Angeles Times
By Edmund Sanders, Times Staff Writer



NAIROBI, Kenya — Two years ago, Kenyans ranked as the most optimistic people on Earth.



Residents of this East African nation had just voted out a corruption-riddled ruling party and replaced it with an opposition leader who promised to clean up government graft, boost the economy and approve a new constitution in his first 100 days.


Mwai Kibaki used the image of an "everyman technocrat" to capture the hopes of the Kenyan people

Their exuberance spread to the West, where President Bush welcomed the new president, Mwai Kibaki, to the White House, anointing the country as one of Africa's most promising emerging democracies.

But after a strong start, Kibaki's administration has stalled. High hopes have turned to bitter cynicism. And it's not hard to find citizens who feel betrayed.

"We were conned," Joseph Mwelesa, 32, said from behind the counter of his candy stand in Nairobi. "The [old] times were bad, but Kibaki is even worse."

Graft is so rampant that the nation's widely respected anti-corruption czar, John Githongo, quit in frustration in February and the U.S. and German governments protested by suspending nearly $10 million in aid.

Western observers are concerned that Kibaki's government is displaying some of the same bad habits seen during the administration of President Daniel Arap Moi and appears unable or unwilling to address problems.

"We got suckered in just like everyone else," said one Western diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Some of the corruption began before this administration came into power, but the Kibaki folks slid right into the transactions and demanded their cut."

A deepening fracture in Kibaki's fragile coalition government has crippled parliament and delayed adoption of the new constitution, spurring a leading coalition partner to call for mass anti-government protests. To shore up his power, Kibaki turned to one of the previous government's most controversial power brokers, Nicholas Biwott, whose record and past dealings are so questionable that the U.S. refused to issue him a visa last year.

Kenya's leading newspapers run banner headlines daily about the latest scandals, fueling the perception that even under the new government, Kenya's rich and powerful continue to live by their own set of rules.

Kibaki's wife, Lucy, raised eyebrows this month after storming into a farewell party for a neighbor, the outgoing World Bank director, and ordering that the music be turned down because it was disturbing her sleep.

Newspapers plastered the story across their front pages and accused the first lady of abusing her position. Undeterred, the next day Lucy Kibaki swept into the downtown offices of a leading newspaper in the middle of the night — government security officers in tow — and chewed out journalists for hours, slapping a cameraman who took her picture. When the cameraman pressed assault charges, the attorney general ordered that the case be dropped.

Atty. Gen. Amos Wako, a loyal ally of the president, is facing pressure to resign over his decision to release the scion of a colonial settler who admitted shooting an undercover Kenya Wildlife Service ranger on the family's vast estate in western Kenya.

Tom Cholmondeley, great-grandson of British settler Lord Delamere, was jailed about a month ago in the killing of the ranger, who was investigating alleged illegal game trade on the estate. With Cholmondeley insisting that he believed the man was a robber, Wako dismissed murder charges for lack of evidence and ordered an inquest.

Numerous lawmakers, legal experts and citizens have condemned Wako's actions. Police had to use tear gas to disperse one unruly crowd of protesters in downtown Nairobi.



"The Kibaki government is a total mess," said Nairobi shopkeeper Grace Njeri, 25. "How can there be a lack of evidence? Someone is dead. Someone else has admitted to killing him. I don't understand."

Wako defended his actions last week and urged citizens to wait until the findings of the government inquest were released.

But the string of controversies is taking a toll. When Gallup polltakers returned to Kenya recently, they found the number of people who were optimistic about the future had plummeted to 41%, from 77% in 2003.

"We are today at a very dangerous junction in this country," opposition leader Uhuru Kenyatta told Western business leaders this month. His Kenya African National Union party was ejected by voters in 2002 after four decades in power over many of the same complaints against Kibaki's government.

The ever-smiling Kibaki has tried to steer clear of the controversies, allowing much of the criticism to fall to his aides.


How much longer will corrupt African leaders be tolerated?

Getting To Know The Ugandan Opposition

Opposition Is Very Strong And Organised

by Suleman Mugula
The Monitor (Kampala)

Allow me to respond to Andrew Mwenda's article 'It is not Museveni's job to organise his Opponents,' The Monitor May 15. While I agree with most of the arguments as expounded, I wish to disagree with the latter part of the article where Mwenda asserts that the opposition parties in Uganda today are under organised, disorganised, and very weak.


Ugandans are asking big questions about deteriorating conditions in their country.

It is very difficult to understand which yardstick Mwenda used to evaluate the strength of the opposition. I wonder whether he judged the parties as per regional standards, African standards or world standards. And I wonder if we are to judge the parties by what he expects from them which they have not done.

To begin with, collectively one has to credit the parties for having been so resilient. The UPC leadership with people like Cecilia Ogwal and Rwanyarare, have stood for multi-party democracy since 1986 to date.
It is true UPC has some problems, but UPC was not formed yesterday. Despite the current in-house fighting, it is still a party which is capable of putting its house in order and revive itself.

Similarly the DP cannot be written off and cannot be called dead. It is a party whose leadership was able to attract other leaders from other parties and in 1996 using the multi-party ticket, provided a presidential candidate who nearly took the presidency of the country had the elections been free and fair.

This is the same party which has for three consecutives terms defeated the Movement-supported candidates for the Mayoral post of Kampala. This is a party which has a number of MPs elected on merit by the people on a DP ticket.This is the party which together with other opposition leaders have now and again taken the Museveni government to court and won landmark cases. Yes, the DP has some internal issues yet to be sorted out, but that cannot make us under-estimate the party.


Kizza Besigye is known and respected as a reformer in Uganda

As for FDC, the youngest of the major parties, one ought to be very incautious to underestimate its organisational strength. This is a party many of whose members are credited for being the whistle-blowers who started the Reform Agenda, which culminated in the presidential candidature of Col. Kizza Besigye in 2001 and which candidature overstretched the strength of our President and the NRM and had to resort to un-ethical practices to remain in power. These are the people who from 2001 have joined other Ugandans in and out of Uganda to continue with the struggle for democratic governance in the country. The period 2001-2005 has not been smooth sailing for the NRM testified by the many arrests, harassment, intimidation of members of the Reform Agenda.

Within a few months of opening political space, FDC was able to swiftly organise and fulfil all the requirements for registration and after a protracted struggle got registered. It came out with a platform/ vision for the country which the NRM has not been able to challenge. It came up with the diverse leadership in terms of academic qualification, administrative experience, gender diversity, age diversity.

It has competent personalities to handle defence, Finance, the Judiciary, the Administration and the political development of the country.

These are men and women whose integrity the NRM (ed.: the National Reform Movement of President Yoweri Museveni - which has operated Uganda as a sole proprietorship for over twenty years) has not been able to challenge. Within a few months after her birth the FDC has moved the breadth and length of the country opening branches and giving hope to Ugandans. This is a party which after a meek anti-British/(anti)Geldof demonstration, organised a massive pro-Irish (pro) Geldof/democracy demonstration within a short time. The NRM has felt the unreversable presence of the FDC, so much that apart from the mudslinging and demonising spearheaded by the President himself, the prisons are getting full of FDC members including Members of Parliament of late.

Young as she is, the FDC has been able to win the confidence of the International Community who have come to accept that the country has no leadership deficit.

Given the strength of the opposition, the NRM-O camp is in total panic and so disorganised that it has even lost the way, demonstrated by for example the manufacture of the omnibus white paper, the changing of the voting procedure in Parliament, the Shs5 million saga, the hiring of a PR damage control machine, the bungled referendum debate, the Kalangala 'shame' to mention a few.

I feel all these demonstrate the level of disorganisation under President Museveni being more than what Mwenda attributed to the opposition, If the Opposition was so disorganised and hopeless as Mwenda would like to put it, then the government would not be in such a panic. It is therefore wrong for Mwenda to claim that the opposition is weak. Judged from the environment and times, the opposition has demonstrated more ability than many people's expectations.

Lastly, much as the opposition might be with some weakness, we need to appreciate as Ugandans that we have a duty to help the parties establish their presence. There has been 19 years of demonising them and the campaign is still going on spearheaded by the President. It doesn't help Uganda for respected Ugandans like Mwenda to join the bandwagon to intensify the demonisation of the parties.

It is time for patriotic Ugandans to take a stand and to build our opposition. The country has tested a monolithic system and we have witnessed what it can offer.

Let us built the parties not destroy them.

The writer is is a member of FDC External Secretariat in Johanesburg, South Africa.

Ugandan Media Pushed To The Edge

This staff editorial from the independent (non-state controlled) Ugandan newspaper The Monitor might very well be taken as a cry for mercy from impending backlash by the Yoweri Museveni regime - regarding this report published earlier in the week. That a climate of fear can be maintained by the ruling regime, with little more than back-channel expressions of concern by the western powers that prop up his hold on power, is quite frankly an egregious slap against independent media in Africa. So, what's at stake anyway? The Monitor puts it quite plainly:

We know the risks. We have been arrested, beaten, prosecuted, jailed, denied access and advertising revenue, and shut down.

In an era when Newsweek cannot even decipher that an indecorous report, properly sourced or not, will result in a multi-national body count - perhaps it should come as no surprise that the western media has no particular interest in this story. One thing can be predicted with certainty: the Euro-American media smugness and responsive recrimination against their own governments - when the machete of hate once again do their worst in Africa. Even as independent African journalists risk everything on the frontlines of democracy in Kampala, their pampered colleagues in New York and London blather on (endlessly) about Saddam's skivvies. Some things never change. Obviously no clues were caught from Rwanda - Class of '94.

Don't Blame the Messenger
The Monitor (Kampala)
Posted to the web May 20, 2005

The local media's recent reporting on increasing donor and international concerns about the pace and direction of Uganda's political transition have triggered off predictable responses from the country's officialdom.

Many in government have blamed the media, both in public and in private, for having an anti-government agenda.

When we reported recently that a World Bank-commissioned study that recommended aid cuts to Uganda had warned that the country could be plunged into civil war if President Museveni pressed for a third term, some said it had exposed our lack of patriotism. Others said we want to see the country plunging into anarchy.

While the media's critics, including those in government, sometimes have a point, they often get it wrong. Certainly, they have got it wrong this time.

These are not our views or opinions. They are the views of individuals or institutions that have played a part in this country's recent journey.

We are simply messengers. Sometimes we carry messages that both the sources and receivers do not wish us to carry.

But we cannot abdicate our responsibility to inform the public and bring them the day's intelligence.

We know the risks. We have been arrested, beaten, prosecuted, jailed, denied access and advertising revenue, and shut down. Yet we prod on. Why?

It is our responsibility to provide the public a channel through which they can acquire information and also engage in public debate about the major issues of the day.

There is a point in the life of news organisation when you must ask: What is the value of the news that we report? What is the goal of our journalism?

Decisively answering these questions does not contradict a fundamental tenet among independent journalists never to have preset conclusions about a story.

Instead, these questions bring good and intelligent practices to our functions as news media.

Our goal goes beyond meeting our reader's expectations; past the news event, to informing our readers about why this news is important, and about its likely consequences or resolution.

As a wise man once said, we do not tell people what to think. We tell them what to think about.

Urbane Follow-up: Particularly given the dynamics of the situation, that was an incredible editorial. I hope it wins The Monitor a Pulitzer. This is precisely the reason that the 1970's Amin-Obote horrors will not be repeated. Those tyrants shut off Uganda from the rest of the world. Independent media, if supported, are the guarantors that will not happen again. African journalists know the risks. Do we? As for the Pulitzer, I won't hold my breath. As for the people of Uganda, I will continue to pray.

The Beeb: Hill and Knowlton to "sell" Museveni

Museveni was once the darling of western leaders

Western PR company to sell Uganda

(BBC) The Ugandan government is to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote its image abroad after growing criticism.

Details of the move emerged a day after President Yoweri Museveni released a statement asking foreign donors to respect his country's sovereignty.

The UK recently cancelled £5m ($10m) of aid, saying not enough had been done to establish fair multi-party politics.

A growing number of critical reports have appeared in the western media.

The foreign minister said on Wednesday that the government would be spending about $675,000 to improve their image.

The London-based company, Hill and Knowlton (H & K), will also be working with the government to try and improve relationships with human rights groups like Human Rights Watch.

The PR company itself been criticised in the past for aiding countries like Indonesia and Turkey, whose human rights records have also come under fire.

Since President Museveni came to power 19 years ago, Uganda has operated a unique political system which severely restricted political parties.

The political landscape will soon change, with multi-party elections expected next year.

Critics accuse President Museveni of using these changes to push through other constitutional changes to allow him to run for president again.

Rock star and Aid campaigner Sir Bob Geldof recently accused Mr Museveni of wanting to be president for life.

Urbane Analysis:

'Ole H & K may soon regret this unfortunate assignment - and clearly this hire has made hackles rise over at The Guardian.

Meanwhile, back in Uganda, Parliamentarians say that the expenditure was an illegal use of funds.

The lawyers on this one, it would appear, are bumbling fools.

Hiring H & K is a major gaffe, an outfit already known for attempting "extreme makeover" public relations for tyrants.

Meanwhile, clients (and others) of the New York law firm Hunton & Williams (which has also been retained to represent the Museveni regime) might want to voice their displeasure regarding the firm's involvment in manipulation of the dictator's public image. And if they don't respond, then talk to their clients (no doubt you do business with one or more of them).

If they can try to manipulate us, then it is a two-way street, right? All's fair, as they say...

One can predict that "all the King's horses and all the King's men" will not be able rebuild Museveni's reputation again. And... Museveni will look even more the buffoon for the slick PR spit & polish treatment slathered on him by H & K.

Museveni has clearly lowered his country to "banana republic" status - what sad irony it is that his supporters wave banana leaves.

Note that Museveni's own personal website, recently launched and sporting a passive-aggressive slap to George W (with loving reference to Clinton) is a commercial url, a telling indicator of the President's perception of his role in Ugandan society - given all the evidence of Museveni's plunder of Uganda.

World Bank Report Warns of Uganda Civil War

World Bank Report Warns of Uganda Civil War

The Monitor (Kampala)
Posted to the web May 18, 2005

Alex B. Atuhaire
Kampala

A World Bank commissioned report says Uganda may be plunged into a civil war if President Yoweri Museveni pushes for a third term.

In what could increase donor pressure on Mr Museveni's continued leadership of the country and intentions to stay on after 2006, the report has recommended aid cuts to Uganda over the next three years, warning that extreme prudence is required because of the country's increased risk to political uncertainty and violence.

"Though not etched in stone, it would appear that President Museveni has decided to press on with his effort to secure a third term as a price for his country's transition to multiparty politics. Should this be his final decision, the likelihood of greater violence than that which accompanied the 2001 elections is very high," the report said.

"This could in turn be highly destabilising, and, in the worst case scenario, result into proliferation of armed insurrections if not outright civil war in selected areas of the South - in addition to violence that is already occurring in the North," reads the report titled "The Political Economy of Uganda - The Art of Managing a Donor-Financed Neo-Patrimonial State".


The World Bank asks: will Uganda lurch into insurrection?

The report adds: "The president would retain the power, but the popular base of the regime would be a shadow of what it once enjoyed. Uganda will have morphed into a Moi-like system of increasingly corrupt and repressive authoritarian rule". (Moi was president of the once prosperous Kenya from 1978 until his corrupt Kanu administration was overwhelmingly rejected in the December 2002 elections).

Parliament is expected to amend Article 105(2) of the constitution, which would enable Museveni, now in the final term of his two-constitutional terms to seek re-election in 2006 and stay on.

The World Bank report, commissioned to establish the risk of lending programmes in Uganda, recommends a move back to closely monitored project lending in the ongoing three-year aid programme up to 2008, largely because of Museveni's third term push.

The study headed by Prof. Joel Barkan of the University of Iowa and a Senior Consultant on Africa Governance conducted last year, warns the bank to be extremely prudent, recommending a "low case" lending programme in Uganda during the period of the forthcoming Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) and rethinking of the appropriateness of continued budget support to the country.

"We regret that we cannot be more positive about the present political situation in Uganda, especially given the country's admirable record through the late 1990s," the 66 - page confidential report reads.

Other members of the World bank study team, included Jack Titsworth, Africa Governance Consultant for the World Bank, Prof Njuguna Ng'ethe of the University of Nairobi and Sallie Simba Kayunga, a political science lecturer at Makerere University.

Reacting to the concerns raised in the study, the Prime Minister, Prof. Apolo Nsibambi, told The Monitor yesterday that there was no need to press the panic button in view of the recommendations of the report.

"This is not the position of the World Bank. It's just a study by a researcher and the World Bank has not adopted it," Nsibambi said by telephone.

"We have a very good relationship with our financial partners including the World Bank. If there was any indication of any problem, the lady [World Bank country representative Grace Yabroudy] would have met me or the president to raise the concerns but she hasn't met any of us," the Prime Minister said.

Nsibambi said despite recent indications that major donors including Britain may cut aid to Uganda; there was no evidence that the donors are getting jittery over the country's democratic process.

"There is no cause for alarm," he said. "The donors are asking for clarifications and we clarify to their satisfaction as we have always done," Nsibambi said.

But Mr John Nagenda, President Museveni's senior adviser on media and public relations, said the World Bank should be mindful of the wishes of the majority of Ugandans.

"I can assure you that whether you and me like the third term or not, by all indices, it appears it will go through because that is what the majority of Ugandans want. Who says that there would be a civil war because the majority want Museveni?" he asked.

"If Museveni stands in 2006, the majority, if they don't want him - he will be shown the door. That is democracy," Nagenda said on telephone.

Nagenda said the World Bank should be democratic.

"It should use its people on the ground to discover what Ugandans want. It would be tragic if the World Bank uses its financial power to punish the majority of Ugandans. We are also asking the rest of the donors why they think they should speak for Ugandans," Nagenda said.

The report expresses worry about the militarisation of politics and the increasing influence on Uganda's military matters by the Presidential Guard Brigade (PGB), President Museveni's elite guard whose members have been reportedly recruited by Museveni's brother, Lt. Gen. Salim Saleh, and his son, Maj. Muhoozi Kainerugaba.

Kainerugaba is a commander in the PGB.

"The PGB is a classic praetorian guard, i.e. a military unit apart from the regular army whose sole purpose is to ensure that the head of government remains in power.

"While its exact size and equipment is a subject of speculation, the fact that it is big and well equipped, including such weaponry as battle cars, tanks, and armoured personnel carriers is not in doubt; nor does the government deny such," the report says.

"Whether the purpose of the PGB is to protect the regime against any potential intervention into Uganda's politics by the UPDF, or to suppress other opponents is unclear, but the raison d'etre (purpose) of the PGB is not the defence of Uganda borders," the report says.

"Observers knowledgeable about Uganda's military note that several senior officers from the PGB, including Muhoozi, have been redeployed to the UPDF to enhance its capacity and loyalty," the report says in a critique of the PGB formation. allAfrica.com

Urbane Analysis: This China People's Daily report is telling, inasmuch to the extent it shows how China cannot help displaying a contrarian impulse whenever western powers become united on any issue. Clearly the major donors are working together:

Last week the donors in the country under their umbrella organization, Donor Democracy and Governance Group (DDGG) wrote to Ugandan Prime Minister Apollo Nsibambi seeking a meeting to discuss growing donor concern over the political transition, human rights violations and grand corruption. The donors in DDGG include Austria, Belgium, Britain, Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United States of America as well as the United Nations Resident Representative.

Perhaps most telling is this disclosure:

Makerere University Professor of International Relations Elijah Mushemeza recently observed that the country may play politics but the move of dismissing donor aid is impossible. He noted that donors have a direct say in Ugandan politics because they are the ones with the financial muscle. A financial expert in the country's ministry of finance, Keith Muhakanizi recently said that the government would not last for more than 6 months if all donor aid is cut off.
The aid freeze would force the country's central bank to dig deep into the country's foreign reserves, which at 1 billion dollars are awfully inadequate. "We have only 6 billion dollars worth of imports, goods and services. We can only go for six months," said Muhakanizi.

The obvious follow up is: then what?

Spring Check Up With The Bicycle Doctor

Seattle's own legendary Kenny Hamm "Doctor of Bikeology" made a housecall today to bring our bikes up to snuff for summer riding. Great guy, cool truck, call him: 206-789-7336
Check out the Bicycle Doctor on the web at www.bicycledoctor.com
And, as the doctor says, "Always wear a helmet, I fix bikes, not people!"
And you know the older kids would enjoy a "bring your bike" themed birthday party...

NGOs Begin to Voice Rage Over Uganda Situation

Oxfam Slams U.N. For Failing To Act On Uganda War
By Daniel Wallis

KAMPALA, May 11 (Reuters) - The United Nations has failed again to act decisively to end war in northern Uganda, despite being briefed on "intolerable" humanitarian conditions in the troubled region, British aid agency Oxfam said on Wednesday.

Violence has increased in the north since government negotiations with rebels stalled in February. Aid agencies working in Uganda have long called on the Security Council to put pressure on both sides to restart the talks.

On Tuesday, U.N. aid chief Jan Egeland briefed council members on the conflict, which pits government troops against rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and has forced 1.6 million people from their homes.

Emma Naylor, Oxfam's country manager in Uganda, said she was disappointed that after the meeting the Security Council -- which has never issued a resolution on the north -- agreed only to encourage both sides "informally" to return to talks.

"Nearly two decades of horrific human suffering have passed, and the security situation is getting worse, not better. Atrocities against civilians are increasing, as well as abductions of children in Uganda and Southern Sudan," she said in a statement.

"Yet the Security Council have once again failed to take any concrete steps in support of a peace process. We would have at least expected a presidential statement urging both sides to restart peace talks and setting out what future measures the council will take."

Oxfam has called on the U.N. to ensure the protection of civilians and to urge Uganda's government and rebels to call a new ceasefire and recommit to fresh peace talks.

Fighting intensified after landmark talks -- including the first face-to-face meeting between government and rebels for a decade -- stalled in February with the surrender of the LRA's top negotiator. Uganda's military says it killed 84 LRA fighters last month alone, and the rebels have stepped up attacks on refugee camps, shooting and hacking their victims to death.

Ugandan commentators say the government would prefer a military victory over the rebels, but its helicopter gunships have been unable to stamp out small groups of fighters moving swiftly on foot through thick forests and rolling grasslands.

Joseph Kony, the LRA's self-styled prophet leader, is believed to be hiding in lawless southern Sudan with some of the thousands of children kidnapped by his cult-like group to serve as fighters and "wives". His movement, which Egeland said was possibly the world's most brutal, has never spelled out a clear list of demands.

"Week by week the security situation is getting worse and hundreds of thousands of people cannot even sleep safely in their own homes," Naylor said.

"But the Security Council has never done more than offering a few words of sympathy. We are wondering just how bad it has to get before they will actually take action."


Urbane Analysis: Some brave (and usually careful) international organizations have dropped the pretense of diplomatic jargon, and have put the situation quite plainly. Do we (once again) need to see the immoral justification of "confrontation by camera lens" in order to compel the court of public opinion? Conditions on the Ugandan-Sudanese-Congoese border are just so dicey that not even the most hardened adrenaline-junkie war correspondent dare venture into the vicinity of the LRA.


Click here for more photos published this month by the BBC regarding the situation in the southern Sudan.

The world is tolerating a holocaust in the Congo-Sudan-Uganda triangle. World Vision: when will you weigh-in on this situation? Those who clearly have a moral conscience must be compelled to speak, in order that those who follow your example, may be so empowered. As long as you are silent, the world presumes that there is no crisis.

UN Security Council Faces Humanitarian Crisis in Uganda

RTE News (Ireland)

UN Humanitarian Affairs Head Urges UN Security Council to Tackle Uganda Crisis

The UN's senior emergency relief official has urged the UN Security Council to tackle the crisis in northern Uganda, where a rebellion against the government has been continuing since the late 1980s.

The head of the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Jan Egeland, said that around 1.4 million people have been displaced as a result of the uprising by the group known as the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

However, Mr Egeland said there was a historic opportunity to end the atrocities following recent contacts between the rebels and the Ugandan government.

Urbane Analysis: Betty Bigombe, don't you think it's time to visit the White House?


World Bank Official Betty Bigombe negotiates with LRA terrorists in northern Uganda

Uganda, Congo, Sudan: Worst Humanitarian Situation on the Planet

A War On Children

National Catholic Reporter
Rebels with no agenda terrorize Uganda's north
By CHRISTOPHER D. RINGWALD
Gulu, Uganda

In a field covered with high grass in northern Uganda, a teenage boy half mad with hunger and exposure and the experience of forced service to a band of killers removes his camouflage uniform and gum boots and drops his rifle. He crawls until he passes out.

At dawn, he awakens but cannot move. His sister appears, having heard of his escape to this spot. She builds a fire, then washes him, cooks porridge and spoons it into his mouth. Then, inexplicably, he prepares to return to his former captors in the Lord’s Resistance Army. “I got my gun and my shoes,” said John Otim, soft-spoken and 6 feet 2 inches with dead eyes set in a gentle face. “I was ready to go back. But my sister fell on me crying. She said, ‘You’re not going back, you’re not going back.’ ” For years, his captors had told him that the Ugandan army would kill any who escaped back home. Now, in this clearing in the bush, he chose to believe his sister -- “that those coming back, nothing happened to them.”

If and when peace comes to northern Uganda after 19 years of insurrection by a gang that mutilates women, kidnaps children and has no clear purpose, it may come in such small steps as a sister hugging her long-lost brother. And not letting go.

The insurrection has ruined lives, families and villages. In the three districts of Gulu, Kitgum and Pader, more than 1.6 million people have left their fields and villages to avoid violence and the killings that have left 100,000 dead. At least 20,000 children have been kidnapped by the Lord’s Resistance Army, which brutalizes them into becoming little fighters. Their leader, the charismatic if deranged Joseph Kony, says he wants to cleanse northern Uganda of sin and restore the Ten Commandments.

The fighting is by, with and against children. Thus the region’s “night commuters” -- 40,000 children and mothers -- leave their homes each evening and walk miles to towns where they hope to sleep safely. Among northern Uganda’s Acholi people, who often name a child for the circumstances of its birth, many are now tagged “Watum,” which means, “We are finished.”

Now there is hope: Rebels are surrendering under an amnesty, negotiations have picked up, and church and civic groups are rebuilding civil society and helping former abductees regain their childhood.
Uganda, in east central Africa, has 26 million residents. The size of Oregon, it is surrounded by Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Congo. After independence from Britain in 1962, Uganda suffered through two dictatorships, including Idi Amin, before Yoweri Museveni seized power in 1986. He won an election in 1996 and is near the end of his second term, the constitutional limit. The nation is debating allowing him a third bid.

There is relative stability, a free press and a contentious opposition despite limits on political activity. A government campaign slashed the AIDS/HIV rate, though 1 million Ugandans still are infected. The country has good soil and rainfall. Literacy is high, and the people struck me as soft-spoken, gracious and thoughtful.

In all, Uganda should prosper.

Instead, there’s John Otim. He was abducted twice. Like thousands of others, he was forced to fight, often barehanded. During his second captivity, he was marched to a Resistance Army camp near Juba in southern Sudan where “the Arabs” trained him to use an antitank gun and plant mines. He then trained others. All feared death if they resisted. “We planted mines in Sudan and Uganda, along roads and where people would be going for water,” Otim said quietly. “I saw many of my friends in the LRA lose their hands or eyes in mine accidents.” He also spent time near Kony, who entered trances and spoke in different voices. “When the spirits come, people fear and respect him,” Otim added.

Then he was assigned to guard duty when some Acholi chiefs and Gulu Archbishop John Baptist Odama met with Lord’s Resistance Army commanders. “I realized fighting was useless,” said Otim. He dreamed his sister needed him to harvest a field of sesame, and he made surreptitious contact through intermediaries.

Eventually, Otim was received back into the community in the tribal “Jolo” or “welcoming back” ceremony, administered by the Ker-Kwaro, or chiefs’ council, representing 50 Acholi clans.

In it, Otim and other returnees stood outside a settlement. With the right foot he stepped on an egg, symbolizing reborn innocence and community acceptance. Otim then walked over a pobo tree branch, indicating that the rough will become smooth, and a forked branch of the type used to open a village’s granary. “This means the children will be fed by their parents,” said Justo Obita, a council member.
Jolo is an ancient Acholi ritual revived to meet the new and vast need for reconciliation. That welcome distinguishes the Acholi, described by all as a forgiving people. It gives hope in a land of misery.

Almost monthly, thousands of people watch groups of 40 to 60 or more returnees step on the egg and over the branches and into a village, followed by talks and a feast. “Jolo allows them to feel free, like children who were never abducted,” said John Samuel Okello, a youth leader.

Otim agreed. “Before the ceremony, I was not settled. I had flashbacks. After, no more.” His former neighbors and one-time victims have accepted him unevenly. “Some have, fully, some have not,” said Otim, who lives with his brother and is studying to be a mechanic.

Nighty Aceng, 24, went through Jolo after eight years with the Lord’s Resistance Army. During that time she was beaten, saw friends killed for escape attempts, given to a man as his 23rd “wife” or sex slave, and had a child. One day she tied the baby on her back and escaped with five other teenage mothers from a rebel camp in Sudan. They crept back to Kitgum. In her village she was cleansed and feted in the ceremony. Only a brother attended; her parents had been killed in rebel attacks. She now makes public presentations encouraging fellow Acholi to welcome former abductees.

Uganda suffers from its location amid lands of conflict: Rebels, gangs and military forces cross back and forth from Burundi, Rwanda and Congo. For years Sudan supported the Lord’s Resistance Army while Uganda aided rebels in southern Sudan. In 2002 both agreed to cut off these proxy battles, though Kony is rumored to still hide in the mountains of southern Sudan.

Who is paying attention? In March, a Reuters poll of international experts rated Uganda as the world’s second biggest forgotten emergency. Congo was first, Sudan third. All contrast with the deluge of donations for victims of the Indonesian tsunami. “Sudan at least fits into the lens of the war on terror,” said Ben Phillips, the country representative for Catholic Relief Services. “Uganda doesn’t. It’s not one ethnic group fighting another, not one religious group fighting another. There’s just these crazy men running around up there, killing people, kidnapping children and burning villages. People don’t get it.”

Women and children suffer most, said Jotham Musinguiza, director of Uganda’s population secretariat. “They are the ones who are killed; they are the ones who are kidnapped; they are the ones who are raped.” Women found in the fields routinely have their lips, breasts, ears and often limbs sliced off, causing widespread panic. Kony has cited the Biblical “eye-for-an-eye” passage and says his cause justifies bloodshed against his fellow Acholi for their lack of support. Unnervingly, Kony issues random commands -- don’t cross the Nile, don’t bicycle or drive, don’t farm on Fridays -- enforced with random brutality.

Having been scared off their land, most Acholi live in huge, squalid camps without land to till for food. Here alcoholism, fighting, wife-beating and prostitution flourish. “The men spend most of their time drinking because there is nothing to do,” said Gilbert Komakech, a displaced farmer now living with his wife and six children in a camp north of Gulu.

Hardest hit are children kidnapped from their homes and forced to fight and often to kill their neighbors, relatives or parents. Most were beaten at some time and forced into battle barehanded. Horrors were psychological as well. “You can’t show you are sad because then they will beat or kill you since they think you’re going to escape,” said Aceng. Of the 20,000 abducted, half were killed or became dedicated, if brainwashed, Lord’s Resistance Army members. These amount to 80 percent of the rebel force. Half of the abductees have escaped. Many are welcomed back but others confront fearful families, hostile neighbors and bad memories.

Alice Atoo’s daughter and 15 other children were kidnapped from her village of Lagwimg. Five were killed, the rest returned over time. The villagers fled to a sprawling camp near Gulu.

“These children, now, are not easy,” said Atoo, sitting outside her hut on a low wooden bench. “They find it difficult to live with the rest of the children.” Most bear wounds and chest or stomach ailments. Her daughter was beaten, her head injured, and dumped. “She was just left there, in the bush, so she crawled home. After, she had terrible fears that those people would follow her here to the camp. So we sent her to town, a government shelter in Gulu. She feels a little better there.”

Luckier than most, Atoo can walk the two to three kilometers to her family’s fields in Lagwimg where they grow cassava, peanuts, sorghum, beans and sweet potatoes. They till for a short spell before hurrying home before dusk. “We’re scared of the rebels.”

So are the night commuters. In Gulu, about 10,000 children and some parents troop into town nightly carrying bedrolls and homework. Most of those sleep at Lacor Hospital, a sprawling complex that converts daily from a bulwark against disease -- a doctor and 12 nurses died fighting the Ebola virus in 2000 -- to an open-air motel. Adults settle in on verandas and in courtyards; children retreat behind a gate to several long buildings and walled tents. They sleep in groups based on age and sex.

“Last year the LRA came through my village,” said Johnson Olom, 13. “They wanted to abduct me; they wanted to get our chickens. They took some of my friends. They killed them.” He sees his parents only on weekends. Jennifer Ayoo, who is 12 and lost a sister to the Lord’s Resistance Army, said she did not know when she would return to her village. “Most of the village children are here,” she said, sweeping her eyes over the crowds around her.

Desperate for peace, religious leaders have ventured into the bush to meet rebel representatives several times since 2003. They face danger on both sides.

“It’s hard to be neutral after you’ve seen people killed in the worst way,” said Fr. Carlos Rodriguez Soto, executive secretary of the Justice and Peace Commission for the Gulu archdiocese. “But if you speak up, the LRA negotiators say we’re against them.” Similarly, he added, “the government says they are behind us, then they say we are collaborators.” In August 2002, the army attacked a clandestine session it had earlier approved, wounding Rodriguez and taking him and others captive. He’s seen one payoff: Many of the LRA who attend these meetings later escape, including Sam Kolo, the former rebel spokesman.

The overtures also led to an official Ugandan delegation, which met rebel leaders Dec. 28, 2004. The group included Betty Bigombe. Former minister for northern Uganda, now with the World Bank, Bigombe almost made peace in 1993-94 before being undercut by Museveni.

Rodriguez said the rebels have promised peace in 2005. Another meeting took place Jan. 17. Many hope Bigombe can champion these negotiations at home and abroad. At least, said Rodriguez, “we’ve broken the myth that you can’t talk to the LRA.” Other factors have pushed peace forward. A government amnesty instituted in January 2000 attracted 5,000 returnees and the rebels lost their Sudanese sponsor. Still, internal politics intrude.

Opposition politicians charge that Museveni’s government has used the conflict as an excuse to persecute critics and increase military spending. Jemera Rone, a Uganda expert at Human Rights Watch, said that opponents take up arms since they are frozen out of politics. Further, the donor nations that provide half of Uganda’s budget have not pushed Museveni to make peace, said Phillips of Catholic Relief Services. Others claim the Ugandan army commits atrocities it then blames on the rebels -- which the government denies.
Today only about 400 Lord’s Resistance Army fighters remain, based on the estimates of returnees. But guerilla armies are difficult to defeat. “Why should they stop?” asked Komakech, the farmer who was kidnapped twice and made to haul loads for 14-hour days. “In the bush they have free food, they don’t have to work, they just loot and take women when they want. They don’t have to buy anything.”

Citing rebel arms caches, Rodriguez said, “This can go on for a long time.” Museveni’s government may be ready for peace talks, he added. “With the presidential elections coming up and other pressures, the time may be right.”

To make peace nationally, Museveni should legalize opposition parties and share power, said Rone. Northern Uganda needs serious peace talks and comprehensive reconstruction.

But the violence goes on like a low-grade fever. In the last few days I was there, the kids of the Lord’s Resistance Army struck over and over: Wednesday, kidnapping 26 children and adults from Kamdini; Thursday, 50 children on the highway to Kampala; Saturday, mutilating three women and taking several others in Kitgum. “Kony says he will fight until he overthrows the government,” said Otim, the former abductee. “It won’t end until there are peace talks.” On the ground, the Acholi are ready to hope or to wait.
“Even tomorrow I would be pleased to go home,” said farmer Komakech, standing under the canopy of a jacaranda tree near his borrowed field. “It is difficult to predict when we will come back home.”


Christopher D. Ringwald is a journalist in Albany, N.Y., and a visiting scholar at The Sage Colleges.
His e-mail address is ringwald@capital.net.

At a glance: Uganda should be coasting in a league with Ghana, Tanzania and a handful of other African countries with democratic aspects, good resources and functional economies. But rebellions fester here, the longest and deadliest being the Lord’s Resistance Army in the north. Negotiations have been hard since the Lord’s Resistance Army has no political agenda. “Some commanders say they are fighting to overthrow the government,” said Dennis Okello, 17, who was abducted at age 10 and forced to fight for the rebel group. “Others say they are just fighting.” Without its magnetic, dreadful leader, Joseph Kony, the boys of the Lord’s Resistance Army would likely drop their guns and go home. Meanwhile, church, civic and tribal leaders keep extending a hand to the rebels and to returnees like Okello, while working to restore homes and lives.

National Catholic Reporter May 13, 2005

Museveni Corruption Now Out In The Open

Why 'Unwanted' Donors Won't Leave Soon
Simwogerere Kyazze
The Nation (Nairobi)

COLUMN
May 8, 2005
Posted to the web May 9, 2005

Question: If Ugandans are to a woman, man and child fed up of donors and their money, why can't these good people leave the poor country alone? Answer: Because they can't.

Or at least not just yet, is another possible answer. The donor community, it seems, doesn't have many friends in Kampala these days. The media and academic types blame them - with good reason - for nurturing such an unsustainable level of dependency that if they were to suddenly withdraw their dollars and euros, the Ugandan economy would likely suffer cardiac arrest. Politicians of all shades are also fed up of the donors, but each group has its reasons.

Inside government, donors have been demonised for constantly running interference with Uganda's internal affairs. Just last month, Britain suspended a 5 million Pound Sterling (Sh 490 billion) loan facility, citing Kampala's failure to stick to its own targets concerning the transition to multi-party democracy.

Tony Blair's government has come under intense domestic criticism for hobnobbing with pseudo democracies like Uganda, and this could be a one-off event to reclaim some credibility. But viewed in the context of similar comments from the US and other development partners, Britain' criticism of Uganda's lack of commitment to democracy has taken a definite pattern. President Museveni was so upset that he penned one of his usual missives (this one started as a May Day speech read for him by his deputy and ended up as an opinion article in the major newspapers).

The president boasted that the Uganda Revenue Authority can now collect enough taxes to dispense with "these so-called donors."

"If we achieve the tax/GDP collection ratio of 24 percent," the president said "we shall not need the ignominious practice of dealing with the so-called donors whose meddling is partially responsible for the perpetuation of terrorism in Northern Uganda, the present load-shedding of electricity and the removal of tax holidays for investors that somehow affected our investment tempo."

The politicians who want to take Mr. Museveni's job can't stand the donors either. They blame the World Bank and IMF for basically helping the government to perpetuate itself in power by subsidising such expensive undertakings as healthcare and Universal Primary Education. By unburdening the government of these money-guzzlers the opposition argues, donors allow Mr. Museveni to pour domestic tax revenues into wasteful expenditure and on shopping for more sophisticated instruments of coercion. These guys would also like to see the back of the donors.

But the the long-suffering peasants is probably the reason why some of these donors stay. I mean look at Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe has been demonised everywhere and he has demonised everyone back over his land-grabs, strident demagoguery and his anti-democratic stance of recent years. Yet world bodies like the World Food Programme have just issued another appeal to Bwana Bob to allow them back into the country so they can feed his starving countrymen and women. Indeed, the entire African continent is dotted with small, disparate but vital pockets of foreign expertise in healthcare, civil engineering, nutrition, education and other areas where people do some amazing things for Africans whose names they cannot pronounce, in exchange for abstract concepts such as heaven.

Uganda has a few of such fellows. But like Ghana in the 1980s, Uganda is also so wrapped up in the mythology of donor-driven growth and development that our friends in Britain and the US cannot afford to see it fail. With Flt. Lt. Jerry John Kwasi Rawlings riding roughshod over colleagues and minions in the West African country (once even boxing his very old and frail vice president), Ghana had the 'fastest' growing economy in Africa in the 1980s. The World Bank and IMF helped Rawlings & Friends set up a string of white elephant projects and for a while, there was a measure of growth.

President Museveni is just a latter-day Lt. Rawlings-a dashing soldier-cum-politician with the donors' ear whose country has done marginally better than others in similar situations, but whose policies make sustainability impossible. When he talks about expanding the tax base for example, the president is not really going to use some of that money to establish a social security system that gives a stipend to Ugandans without jobs. It is not to buy hi-tech heart equipment at Mulago Hospital, or for a massive adult literacy campaign.

Indeed, the profligacy of Uganda's political class has grown in proportion to the amount of money collected. When Uganda's coffers were empty, way back in 1986, Mr. Museveni said he did not need to shop from Europe or North America and suggested he would wear a sack-cloth if his wife chose it for him. Revenue collections soon picked up, and the president's wardrobe likewise improved (no doubt Janet Museveni was now shopping at Harrods and Saks Fifth Avenue). He now has some expensive toys too (including at $38 million presidential jet, spanking helicopter and soon, a brand new state house).

He also jacked up a personal bureaucracy that serves at his beck and call. His personal bodyguard is now the size of a small national army, his ministers are over 60, the parliament has over 300 MPs, the districts are 56 (they have been sub-divided so many times that most are unviable), he has a cortege of Presidential Advisors, District Resident Administrators and security chiefs all paid from the public purse. Add on officials from the politburo-like Movement secretariat, and you have one of the most wasteful public administration systems in Africa.

Has the president pledged to cut down his own profligacy to finance a Medical Aid scheme for Ugandans over 60? Instead, not too long ago, he ordered the Bank of Uganda to pay off the debt of a local businessman whose biggest claim to fame is a gaudy spendthrift lifestyle. Cost: U Sh 20 billion (Sh 800m). He also decided (on his own) to pay the school fees of his former vice president at Harvard University at the incredible cost of U Sh 2.5billion (Sh 100m). And these are the 'chits' we know of.

Of course the donors tolerate this because Mr. Museveni (and Uganda) is still riding the same triumphalist wave Ghana rode 20 year ago. But as Baba Daniel arap Moi found out in 1992, these donors can be as mean as snakes. They cut him off without a penny, and set in motion the events that eventually propelled Mwai Kibaki into power in 2002.

Mr Museveni should be careful what he wishes for.

He might get it.

Urbane Analysis: This from Kenya. And when stated plainly in this way, is absolutely galling. It clearly demonstrates the enormous depths of corruption and greed in the Museveni regime. As noted earlier, Britain has "called the question" on Museveni's severe addiction to the rake. When are we going to hear from Condoleeza Rice about how the U.S. will respond to this situation - we need a coherent policy that "kneecaps" corruption, yet avoids untoward harm of the fragile food lifeline, health care infrastructure, and education initiatives (no one can call it a system in Uganda). American initiative is needed that does not inflame passion or violence, but taking a chance on violent outbreaks while doing nothing is an option that the U.S. cannot afford. Uganda is next door to Rwanda, after all. As this report from the National Defense University states:

Coping with Africa's disorder and stagnation will usually be attempted through active diplomacy and assistance for long-term development, but from time to time, sanctions and at least the credible threat of force will be required.

The U.S. has "propped up" the Museveni regime with more than cash: many years of Special Forces military training adds to the burden of managing responsible outcomes. The war on terror means Africa cannot be relegated to some "minor" problem desk deep in the State Department. As Colin Powell has adroitly noted on many occasions, the outcome of our struggle against radicalized jihadist Muslim extremists is no more (or less) a function of how well WE (the U.S. and Europe) partner, and succeed - against war, illness and malnutrition - particularly in Africa, where conditions are worst. Killing bad guys is tactically important, but a strategic side show. Defeating conditions that allow bad guys to look like heroes is the real challenge. Now, when can we finally get started? Pulling out the props on Museveni, without further delay, is job one.