Tim Large Reuters AlertNet
Some 25,000 children forced to serve as soldiers and sexual slaves. Gruesome massacres and mutilations. Up to 2 million people driven from their homes into camps where they live in fear and squalor.
Few horror stories rival the humanitarian crisis in northern Uganda, where a cult-like rebel group has been terrorising local people for a generation. It’s a tale of astonishing suffering and massive displacement – and all taking place in a country hailed as one of Africa’s development success stories.
Yet northern Uganda’s nightmare has been largely ignored by the international community, even as the humanitarian crisis in neighbouring Sudan generates hand-wringing worldwide and a steady flow of headlines.
In an AlertNet poll of experts conducted in March 2005, northern Uganda emerged as the world's second-worst "forgotten" humanitarian hotspot after Democratic Republic of Congo.
Extreme brutality
For almost 20 years, a religious group called the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has been waging war against the Ugandan government and carrying out horrific attacks on villages, towns and camps for the internally displaced.
The group’s modus operandi is to abduct thousands of children, forcing them to fight, carry supplies and serve as sex slaves to LRA commanders in camps across the border in neighbouring Sudan.
Rights groups say the children live in constant fear for their lives. Many are forced to perform terrible acts of cruelty, including the slaughter of other children, or be killed themselves.
About 25,000 children have been kidnapped to date. Child soldiers are estimated to make up 80 percent of the LRA’s fighting machine.
It’s not only the children who live in fear. In addition to battling government forces, the rebels are targeting the wider Acholi population, the largest group in northern Uganda. Sexual violence, mutilation and massacres are common. Up to 100,000 people have been killed in attacks since the conflict began.
In its war against the rebels, the Ugandan army has ordered almost 90 percent of the population of Acholiland – made up of the Gulu, Kitgum and Pader districts – into camps. The camps lack food and clean water and are vulnerable to LRA attacks.
In this way, between 1.6 million and 2 million people have been uprooted from their homes, according to aid agencies. That's about the same number as are displaced in Sudan’s Darfur region.
No clear objectives
Aside from trying to overthrow the government, most analysts say the rebels have no clear political objectives.
The group is led by a former altar boy and self-proclaimed prophet named Joseph Kony, who managed to turn resentment towards the national government into an apocalyptic spiritual crusade that has sustained one of Africa’s longest-running conflicts.
But there’s more fuelling this disaster than far-out religious beliefs. Take Sudan’s involvement. In 1994, Uganda’s northern neighbour began backing the LRA with weapons and training and letting it set up camps on Sudanese soil.
It’s probably safe to assume Khartoum had little interest in Kony’s spiritualism, which, according to a report by relief group World Vision International, superficially blends elements of Christianity, Islam and traditional Acholi beliefs to psychologically enslave abducted children and instil fear in local people.
Sudan’s real interest lay in getting back at Uganda for allegedly supporting southern rebels during its own 20-year civil conflict, which came to an end in 2005 with a fragile peace deal.
In October 2005 the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Kony and other LRA leaders, accusing them of multiple war crimes. Since then, Sudan has allowed Ugandan troops deeper into its territory in pursuit of the rebels.
LRA commanders have also sought refuge in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, renewing historic tension between Kampala and Kinshasa.
Hopes for peace
The LRA has long targeted the Acholi people despite the fact that the group’s leaders are themselves Acholi. Flash back to 1986 when President Yoweri Museveni, a southerner, seized power at the head of a guerrilla army. The northern conflict actually started as a response to the coup and loss of Acholi power on a national level.
But it didn’t take long for the LRA to lose local support. Analysts say rebels then switched focus from fighting Museveni to targeting the Acholi population as a whole, both to discredit the government and force local people into submission.
Ugandan held its first multi-party election for 25 years on Feb. 23. Museveni won, extending his two-decade rule.
He will have few options for restarting peace talks with the rebels now that the ICC has issued arrest warrants, although a Ugandan government amnesty remains in place.
Many analysts say the “iron fist” approach adopted by the government in recent years has done more harm than good.
In 2002, Museveni launched a military campaign aimed at wiping out the LRA for good. Rebels responded by scaling up child abductions and attacks on civilians. Some 10,000 children were seized in about a year. The number of displaced people more than tripled from around 500,000.
It was around this time the phenomenon of “night commuting” came into being. Relief groups estimate that every evening some 50,000 children, fearing abduction, walk from rural areas to towns such as Gulu to find relative safety in bus shelters, churches or on the streets.
Humanitarian disaster
There’s no doubt the humanitarian crisis has worsened since the launch of “Operation Iron Fist”. More than 800,000 Ugandans in government-run camps now rely solely on aid from groups such as the World Food Programme and Médecins Sans Frontièers.
Almost 1,000 people die every week as a result of violence, disease and poor conditions, according to a July 2005 survey of internally displaced people in Gulu, Kitgum and Pader districts by Uganda’s health ministry, New York-based aid agency International Rescue Committee and several U.N. agencies.
In January, Olara Otunnu, a former U.N. representative for children in war, described Uganda as the worst place in the world to be a child today.
Meanwhile, the enduring conflict, which has spread to the east, threatens to undermine gains made in Uganda after the bloodshed and economic chaos of the Idi Amin and Milton Obote years.
At stake are Uganda’s dramatic reductions in poverty and HIV/AIDS rates, and possible instability in a part of Africa with no shortage of destabilising forces. HIV/AIDS rates in war-affected areas are almost double the national average, while malnutrition rates are soaring. World Vision estimates malnutrition rates among displaced children at 7-21 percent.
Some analysts say Museveni has used the conflict to subdue political opposition in the name of “the war on terrorism”. Here’s how Belgian-based thinktank the International Crisis Group (ICG) put it in a recent report: “As long as the situation in the north is dominated by security matters, the monopolisation of power and wealth by southerners is not put into question.”
At the end of 2005, several foreign donors cut development aid to Uganda amid growing concern about the waning democratic credentials of Museveni, once a darling of Western governments. Britain slashed $26.1 million of aid and redirected it to humanitarian relief efforts in the north.
Museveni banned political parties in 1986 but under international pressure, lifted restrictions ahead of the Feb. 23 elections.
In the run-up to the poll, support was running high in the north for the opposition, particularly Kizza Besigye’s Forum for Democratic Change.
In November 2005, Besigye was charged with treason for conspiring with rebels, including the LRA. He denies the allegations.
Spilling over borders
Kampala has long maintained it was close to defeating the LRA, but the massacres and abductions by the rebels have continued.
Both sides stepped up attacks following the breakdown in early 2005 of landmark peace talks aimed at ending the conflict.
Uganda’s military says recent attacks on LRA camps in southern Sudan have forced Kony to cross the Nile and head for the jungles of Democratic Republic of Congo, where he may be trying to rejoin his deputy, Vincent Otti.
In January, eight Guatemalan soldiers on a secret U.N. mission to catch or kill Otti died in a four-hour battle with LRA rebels in eastern Congo.
Meanwhile, aid groups say the government has not done enough to protect civilians in northern Uganda. They accuse Ugandan forces of using gunships indiscriminately and failing to rescue rather than kill children abducted into LRA ranks.
Human Rights Watch says the Ugandan army and allied paramilitary groups have recruited children as fighters and arrested and tortured civilians on suspicion of collaboration with the LRA.
Analysts say it’s hard to know whether killing or capturing Kony would end the conflict. ICG says Kony’s centrality to the LRA’s tactics and purpose, along with reported leadership tensions, means the insurgency could perhaps be split if he is isolated or removed. But World Vision’s recent report warns that a new leader could easily take his place, accessing secret weapons caches.
Further reading
For health and mortality figures for internally displaced people in Gulu, Kitgum and Pader districts, see a July 2005 survey by Uganda’s health ministry, the International Rescue Committee and several U.N. agencies.
A web special by IRIN News on life in northern Uganda, When the sun sets, we start to worry, gives good multimedia coverage of the plight of more than a million children, women and men.
The International Crisis Group’s Northern Uganda: Understanding and Solving the Conflict provides a comprehensive overview of the conflict and makes concrete recommendations to all parties.
Human Rights Watch provides essential background and rights reports in its Uganda section.
For a focus on children, see the International Rescue Committee’s Children Targeted in Uganda’s Horrific, Overlooked War.
See also the World Food Programme's Huge numbers facing food shortages amid violence in northern Uganda.
World Vision’s new report, Pawns of Politics details the historical roots of the conflict and examines the human and economic costs of the crisis.
Read more:
EXPERTS TALK: Nightmare in Uganda
Uganda donors urged to turn up pressure for peace
EYEWITNESS-An aid worker's diary in northern Uganda
FILM: 'Rebels Without a Cause'
PHOTOS: Northern Ugandans terrorised by conflict
PHOTOS: Life goes on for Uganda's displaced
QUIZ: What do you know about northern Uganda?
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