Uganda: Northern situation worse than Iraq’s - NGOs

(ReliefWeb) The rate of violent deaths in war-ravaged northern Uganda is three times higher than in Iraq and the 20-year-long insurgency has cost $1.7b (£980m), said a report yesterday from 50 international and local agencies.

The violent death rate for northern Uganda is 146 deaths a week, or 0.17 violent deaths per 10,000 per day.

This is three times higher than in Iraq, where the incidence of violent death was 0.052 per 10,000 people per day, says the report published by the Independent on-line, a British newspaper.

“The Ugandan government, the rebel army and the international community must fully acknowledge the true scale and horror of the situation in northern Uganda,” said Kathy Relleen, a policy adviser to Oxfam, one of the organisations behind the report.

But yesterday, the army said life and work in northern Uganda was steadily returning to normal and the LRA rebels were decimated and not worth talking about.

In a statement, army spokesman Maj. Felix Kulayigye, said in the last six months, 46 people were killed by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels .
“There are no more LRA to talk about so those who talk about up-scaling our engagements with the LRA are simply daydreaming,” Major Kulayigye said.

Public transport in, out and within the north is very normal and brisk, he said, adding that commercial traffic to southern Sudan and Kotido through Patongo, Adilang up to Abim, was bustling.

Kulayigye dismissed reports that the army killed civilians in Agung displaced people’s camp.

“We escort all civilians to their gardens as well as hunters but these two did not move with UPDF escorts. They could, therefore, have been murdered by LRA,” he said.

The army, he said, is on record for capturing and not killing LRA rebels and wondered why they would kill civilians. He cited the LRA’s Lt. Col. Francis Okwonga Alero who he said was treated for four months by the army.

The report, by the Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda, puts the cost of the war in the north at $1.7b over the 20 years. It said this is equivalent to the US’s aid to Uganda between 1994 and 2002.

“Twenty years of brutal violence is a scar on the world’s conscience. The government of Uganda must act resolutely and without delay, to guarantee protection of civilians and work with all sides to secure just and lasting peace,” Relleen said.

The report was released ahead of the arrival of UN’s humanitarian chief Jan Egeland in Uganda yesterday. Egeland will hold meetings with NGOs, ministers and Uganda-based UN officials.

Northern Uganda death rate higher than Iraq

(ABC News) A report by more than 50 charity groups says the rate of violent deaths in northern Uganda is three times higher than in Iraq.

The report has been prepared by Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda (CSOPNU).

It says nearly 150 northern Ugandans die every week due to the rebellion waged by the group the Lords Resistance Army (LRA).

CSOPNU demands the UN Security Council add its voice to their call for peace talks to end the violence.

"It should express its conviction the crisis ... can only be ended via a process of political engagement, diplomacy, and peaceful negotiation," the coalition said in a statement.

The United Nations coordinator for humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland, says the Ugandan Government must act to stop further bloodshed.

"We now need to see them realise the very encouraging statements that have been there from the Foreign Minister and also very positive signals from President Museveni that a different, renewed more systematic effort of the Ugandan Government to provide security for their own citizens will now take place," he said.

Living conditions Mr Egeland calls the war one of the world's most neglected humanitarian disasters.

Camps in the Uganda's north are home to more than 1.6 million people sheltering from fighting between troops and LRA rebels.

One study last year estimated that 1,000 people died every week in the north as a result of poor living conditions.

In its new report, CSOPNU says the main war victims are children.
Some 25,000 have been abducted by the LRA as fighters and "wives", while tens of thousands more trudge into towns every night rather than risk being kidnapped from their beds.

Half of all camp residents are under the age of 15.

A quarter of all children over 10 have lost one or both parents.
"This is a catastrophe that is fuelled not only by terrible acts of war and violence. It is also fuelled by a shameful litany of failure," CSOPNU said.
Uganda's Government says the LRA has been greatly weakened by a combination talks, amnesty and military operations.

But the aid groups accuse the Government of pursuing a military victory against the LRA at the expense of protecting civilians.

The Government denies the charge.

- BBC/Reuters

The Corrupt Will Inherit the Ugandan Kingdom

"I can't import honest Ugandans" - President Yoweri Museveni

by Charles Onyango Obbo AllAfrica.com

Appearing before the inquiry into the swindling of Global Fund money last week, Health minister Maj. Gen. Jim Muhwezi all but told Justice James Ogoola that Movement leaders were entitled to be corrupt because they "fought".
While most sensible people wouldn't freely choose to live in a country governed by people who think like Muhwezi, the general shouldn't be held responsible for this political line. For those who have forgotten, Maj. Gen. David Tinyefuza said the same thing when he appeared on the Tonight on Andrew Mwenda show at the height of the election campaigns in January.

He said the judges had no business criticising the Black Mamba's armed invasion of the High Court, because their bewigged lordships were hiding under their beds when Tinye & Co. were fighting in the bush. This is a line Ugandans have heard since the NRM came to power in 1986, and Muhwezi and Tinye are not its authors. They are just the messengers.

After the NRM took power, within a year it became clear that it wouldn't deal with corruption. When asked why there was no action on what Kenyans call "old corruption", President Yoweri Museveni would answer that it was better to leave the thieves to continue their business, as it was cheaper for the country than cracking down on them and in the process force them to go to the bush and fund rebellion with their ill-gotten wealth.
In reality, the old corrupt class had wormed its way into the NRM, and they were the closest of friends with the new big men.

When it became clear that NRM leaders were involved in corrupt deals too, the answer from President Museveni was that; "even Movement cadres are from this same corrupt Ugandan society." In one of his more famous comments on this matter, Museveni was to say; "I can't import honest Ugandans".

However, as the economic liberalisation that started in 1988 showed, many Ugandans were growing rich through honest work. It was no longer tenable for even the most blinkered politician to argue that Ugandan society can also thrive through stealing.

So the argument changed, and Mr Museveni would argue that "at least the thieves were investing their money at home, not taking it abroad like they used to do in the old primitive regimes."

In short order, that too became an insufferably ridiculous story. First, if corruption was excusable if the money was invested locally, then everyone in a position of responsibility could steal public funds, as long as they spent it domestically.

Secondly, by the beginning of the 1990s big time embezzlers in the NRM were not investing their money home, but stashing it abroad. And thirdly, and more crucially, why should taxpayers be diligent in paying their taxes if the purpose was so people in government could steal it? Taxpayers would be better off investing the money themselves.

In limbo

At this point, the NRM was sliding in both ideological and moral limbo. So to reclaim the moral high ground, the government threw itself into refurbishing its anti-corruption credentials with the creation of bodies like the Inspector General of Government, and during the making of the 1995 constitution supported giving Parliament committees more authority than they had ever had to probe government expenditure.

However, from 1998 everything went into reversal, and last year's amendment of the constitution effectively stripped Parliament of its clout, and took a few more teeth of out the IGG's mouth.

The practice of invoking the bush war to justify white collar robbery by government leaders and state functionaries and its agents, is now happening as part of the wider movement to reclaim the ground for impunity that the crooks had lost.

Fallout

But there's a difference today from the situation in the late 1980s and early 1990s. For starters, the NRM has grown, and most of its rank and file were people who weren't in the bush. There have also been two major fall-outs in the Movement (in 2001 when Dr Kizza Besigye first challenged Museveni, and last year over the presidency for life project).

The number of people in government who can claim to have fought is easily today less than one-third what it was in 1986. For this reason, while 15 years ago the argument of "we fought" was made to rationalise the exclusion of Ugandans who weren't with the NRM in the bush from the high table, today it's made to establish the "eating pecking order" within the wider NRM. That is why Minister of State Mike Mukula, accused of similar transgressions by Justice Ogoola can't fall back on the "we fought" argument, but Muhwezi can do so comfortably.

Once that order has been established, it means the next people in line (the heirs) to eat both the groceries and politics are not NRM party members, but the relatives of the remaining "fighters" - i.e. their wives, and children. The implications of this for political succession inside the NRM are written on the wall for all those with eyes to see.

© 2006 The Monitor. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com)

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UN: Fear in Northern Uganda

Child Soldiers have created a climate of fear

UGANDA: Too scared to return home

KITGUM, 21 Mar 2006 (IRIN) - Wilson Akera hates living in Padibe camp for internally displaced persons because life is generally unbearable but he is even more scared of the prospect of returning home soon as he believes insecurity is still rife in the villages.

"We are willing to go home and end this cycle of despair, but we are uncertain of our security," Akera said. "The area a few kilometres out of here is a den of the unknown. Groups of rebels still loiter there."

Akera is one of the 1.6 million-plus people who have been displaced by two decades of war between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda. He has lived in Padibe camp for years, relying on aid agencies to survive. The camp is located in the northern Kitgum district - one of the areas worst hit by the rebellion.

Rose Agiro agreed that in spite of the bad conditions at Padibe, returning home, some 6 km away, was not a viable option. "We have no land around here for cultivation. I would prefer to return home and access my field, but there is no security. If I go back, the rebels are there and will abduct my children," she said. Conditions in the camp are tough for Agiro, 46, and her family of six. Water is in short supply, and there are not enough classrooms, creating overcrowding and putting pressure on the few available teachers.

Residents complained that their needs remained great. "More boreholes are needed, more classrooms, provision of agricultural implements is required," said a memorandum read to Dennis McNamara, head of the UN Inter-Agency Internal Displacement Division, who led a team of donors to evaluate the situation between 15 and 17 March. "There is need for the decongestion of the camps and more security," the memorandum added.

McNamara told reporters: "We need to break out of this prolonged humanitarian crisis. The conditions these people are living in are totally below any standards. They are unacceptable in terms of lack of assistance, lack of protection."

Ugandan authorities said the problem of decongesting the camps was being addressed through the creation of "satellite villages". Through this programme, military units have been established and people are encouraged to settle alongside them. However, local residents said the transition was very hard, as not enough supplies were available at the new locations.

Dure camp, further south of Kitgum town, is one new location, where aid workers are trying to cope with the situation. "This translates into changing our operations and increasing the logistics to deliver supplies to these new locations, a change that takes time," said one relief worker at the camp, where the European Union had just set up a solar-powered borehole in response to the water problem there.

Prepare to go home, says government

McNamara warned that any returns of the displaced to their villages must be voluntary. "We can only support that return if it is voluntary, if it is safe and if it is viable. If it is not, we will not be able to support if," he said.

Vincent Okongo, 60, who lives in Dure camp, insisted there had been no guarantee that the rebellion was ending. "Two days ago, we got reports of rebels passing nearby the camps, so we do not know what this means. The only good thing is that many are continuing to surrender to the army," he said.

Ugandan authorities insist that the rebellion is at its end and the displaced should prepare to start going home in April. "The army has defeated the LRA terrorism in the north and the peace prevailing now in southern Sudan has paved way for the return of the displaced persons to their homes," President Yoweri Museveni told a delegation from the United States that visited him over the weekend. He said that only 120 rebel fighters were remaining, and even they had fled from southern Sudan to Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Asked in an interview with the Ugandan Sunday Vision newspaper whether he thought the camps should be dismantled, the president answered, "The IDPs [internally displaced persons] are going home." Days earlier, his government said it would buy 259,000 roofing sheets to be distributed to returnees in the war-affected districts of Gulu, Kitgum, Kaberamaido, Apac, Katakwi, Pader, Kumi and Amuria. Each household would get 30 sheets to rebuild their home – a small start given the number of displaced families living in the camps.

Children most affected

At Padibe, according to 19-year-old Alex Akena, four children who had gone to gather mangoes had disappeared - most probably having been abducted by the LRA - one week before the UN delegation’s visit. They represent only a tiny fraction of a particularly vulnerable group that has borne the brunt of the conflict. Children, perhaps more than anybody else, will live longest with brutal memories of the terror and abuse they suffered as captives of the LRA.

Irene Ajok, nine, is afraid to sleep at night. She said that if she slept, she might be abducted and forced to eat a human being, as her sister was almost made to do when the rebels abducted them. "They killed a person and ordered the freshly abducted children, including my sister, Lillian, to eat the body. They refused to eat that body, and she was made to carry a heavy load of sorghum for a long distance as a punishment," Ajok told IRIN at a night commuters’ centre at a school in Kitgum. She is one of 400 children who seek refuge there every night.

Night commuters are children who, out of fear of LRA abduction, flee their home villages each night to sleep in the relative safety of larger towns. In the morning, they return to their villages. There are an estimated 40,000 night commuters in northern Uganda. The children said life as a night commuter was difficult, but better than living with the cruel treatment meted out by the rebels.

For many former abductees, the memories of atrocities committed by either their peers or LRA rebels torment them the most. Twelve-year-old Walter said he was never tortured or made to kill when he was abducted two years ago, but he had seen people having their heads cut off when they tried to escape. "Their eyes were looking at me," Walter remembered, speaking quickly in a monotone.

Rights groups and relief agencies estimate that the LRA has abducted at least 25,000 children to serve as fighters, porters and sex slaves since the rebellion started in northern Uganda in 1988.

The war drags on

The war, often described as the world's worst forgotten humanitarian crisis, has dragged on despite on-and-off attempts to pursue peace talks. Over time, the Ugandan military offensives have driven the rebels further underground and into neighbouring countries.

Last week, the Ugandan army claimed that LRA leader Joseph Kony had fled from bases in southern Sudan into eastern DRC. If true, said army spokesman Maj Felix Kuraigye, the elusive guerrilla leader's drawn-out violent campaign - ostensibly to replace Museveni’s government with one based on the Biblical Ten Commandments - is waning.

Pressure on the rebels has also grown since 2005, when Kony and four top commanders were indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, among them the "brutalisation of civilians by acts including murder, abduction, sexual enslavement (and) mutilations".

Sustainable Development Network on rights of the poor

In Nairobi, where government-subsidised water is provided by government kiosks, the kiosk operators charge up to 18 times (1800%) more than the subsidised price.

The single most important factor in improving Africa’s water and sanitation problems is to extend a formal legal existence to all poor people.

- Franklin Cudjoe - Imani Institute

19 MARCH 2006, MEXICO CITY -- A new study published this week by the Sustainable Development Network has studied urban water and sanitationissues in Africa. It criticises Africa’s governments for denying the poor basic legal rights which could massively improve their access to water and sewerage services.

“The fundamental problem across urban Africa today is that Africa’s national and local governments do not recognise the legal rights of the poor,” explained Kendra Okonski, co-author of the new study and Environment Programme Director at International Policy Network, a London-based NGO.

Ms. Okonski has been participating in the Fourth World Water Forum in Mexico City. She explained, “Governments deny the poor a legal existence – especially to those people living in slums and peripheral urban areas. These governments then deny the poor water by making property ownership a prerequisite for connection to municipal water systems. At the same time, while cities across Africa are growing, municipal governments refuse to extend their urban boundaries – and thus their public services -- to recognise slums and shanty towns as legitimate dwellings.”

Franklin Cudjoe, co-author of the new study and a representative of Imani, an NGO in Ghana, today highlighted the fact that the small-scale private sector operators are filling the water and sewerage gap caused by governments. “Informal entrepreneurs, operating at the lowest level of society, are addressing water scarcity and lack of sanitation caused by Africa’s governments,” said Cudjoe. “They sell water and sewerage services to their fellow slum-dwellers, in exchange for payment.”

Cudjoe added, “The activities of these informal entrepreneurs show how human initiative and creativity can be harnessed for the benefit of the poor to solve water scarcity and poor sanitation in urban Africa.”

However, he explained that governments are perpetuating water problems in urban Africa: “A fundamental problem is that Africa’s governments consider the economic activities of small-scale providers to be ‘illegal’. Hence, government officials use their political power to exact bribes out of these small-scale businesses, otherwise their owners are fined and their meagre possessions are confiscated.”

Cudjoe concluded that “The single most important factor in improving Africa’s water and sanitation problems is to extend a formal legal existence to all poor people. This means enabling poor people to own their dwellings and property, and allowing them legally to operate small-scale businesses free of the need to bribe government officials and bureaucrats.”

Key facts from “The reality of water provision in urban Africa” -

• Governments have failed abjectly in achieving universal access to water in Africa’s cities. Hardly any African city has a sewerage system.
• Municipal water systems in Africa are failing. Public provision is characterised by poor water quality and thus a failure to recover costs. Thus, municipal systems can barely keep up with maintenance, let alone invest in extending their networks.
• Most of Africa is urbanising. 27% of Africa’s urban population live in dwellings on the outskirts of urban areas – referred to as slums or shanty towns.
• Subsidised water rarely reaches or helps the poor. In Nairobi, where government-subsidised water is provided by government kiosks, the kiosk operators charge up to 18 times (1800%) more than the subsidised price.
• Poor people in slums and shantytowns are not allowed to own their property, yet this is considered a prerequisite by governments to obtain a legal connection to a water system.
• Many people in urban areas have benefited from privatised water provision (in the form of contracts between government and multinational companies). These include Conakry, Guinea and Dakar, Senegal.
• Cote d’Ivoire has had a private water system since 1959.
• A little-known but important phenomenon is that informal entrepreneurs supply water and sewerage services, for a price, to their fellow poor residents of slums and shanty towns in nearly every African city.
• They run small-scale businesses and earn profits, which are generally reinvested in their businesses and local communities.
• Government barriers to doing business prevent these entrepreneurs from addressing water scarcity on a wider scale.
• At the same time, government officials harass informal entrepreneurs and use their political power to exact bribes from these poor people.
• The single most important policy change that African governments could undertake to improve access to water and sanitation is to grant poor people a formal legal existence – including enabling residents of slums and shanty towns to own their property.
• This policy change would effectively enable entrepreneurs to continue to deliver water and sewerage in a decentralised, innovative manner.

CRISIS PROFILE-What’s going on in northern Uganda?

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?

John Bolton calls out Uganda, Rwanda for plunder of Congo

Rwanda, Uganda must help end Congo plunder

By Irwin Arieff Reuters AlertNet

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 15 (Reuters) - U.N. Security Council members pressed Uganda and Rwanda on Wednesday to cooperate with U.N. experts seeking to end the illegal trade in minerals plundered from neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.

Council members "were disturbed that a number of countries were still not fully cooperating with the experts," U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said following a closed-door council briefing on the four U.N. experts' latest findings.

"We think that cooperation is critical," Bolton, the council president for February, told reporters. "We urge the experts and others to do what they can to get cooperation to acceptable levels."

Bolton named no names, but the experts, in a Jan. 27 report, had accused Uganda and Rwanda of refusing to provide them with straight answers about their role in the exploitation of Congo's mineral resources.

Three years after a peace agreement ended Congo's five-year civil war, which drew in most of the vast central African nation's neighbors, some of those neighbors are still believed to play active roles in the illegal export of its resources including gold, diamonds, medicinal barks, cobalt and copper.
Until Congo's industry, mining and transport networks are brought firmly under state control, "it will be impossible to ensure peace and security" in the country, the report said.

Uganda is suspected of facilitating the illegal export of Congolese gold while Rwanda is believed to be helping smuggle out tin ore, the experts said.

When asked about their activities, both countries provided erroneous and unreliable information, they said.

Their responses were "not only erroneous but lack basic logic that cannot be solely attributed to a lack of capacity," the experts' report said.

"A few hours of work by Ugandan and Rwandan officials, for example through the collection of data from the relevant companies involved, would immediately reveal the inconsistencies in the information supplied thus far to the group," they said.

World Vision Thanks Senate for Northern Uganda Resolution

Senate Unanimously Passes Resolution on Conflict Targeting Children in Uganda


WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 /PRNewswire/Yahoo.com -- The president of Christian relief and development agency World Vision thanked Senate members today for last night's unanimous approval of a resolution calling for increased U.S. engagement to end a 20-year civil war in the northern region of Uganda that viciously and deliberately targets children.

Since 1986, northern Uganda has been plagued by a conflict between the Ugandan government and a rebel group called the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). The LRA has become internationally reviled for its practice of attacking civilians and abducting children, forcing them to serve as soldiers and sex slaves within its ranks.

"We are gratified to see this kind of bipartisan attention and action focused on helping northern Uganda's children," said World Vision President Richard E. Stearns. "It's a signal to us, and to other organizations advocating on their behalf, that the political will is there to help end this war."

Sponsored by Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) and co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of 43 Senators, the resolution calls for the governments of Sudan, Uganda and the United States, as well as the international community, to better engage in efforts to promote peace in northern Uganda.

"This resolution is long overdue and is only the beginning," said Inhofe. "I urge President Bush to examine every aspect of his executive authority to relieve the suffering in northern Uganda. I also urge far more action from the United Nations. These significant steps can shed light into the darkness that has cloaked this ongoing tragedy in Uganda and can begin to affect change for peace."

Inhofe visited northern Uganda in April 2005 and toured World Vision's Children of War Rehabilitation Program in Gulu, which has helped nearly 14,000 formerly abducted children recover from their traumatic experiences in LRA captivity.

World Vision is a Christian relief and development organization, dedicated to helping children and their families worldwide reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty. For more information, visit www.worldvision.org/childrenofwar.

Bono & Bush at National Prayer Breakfast

whitehouse.gov
George and Laura Bush met last summer with Bono and Bob Geldof at the G-8 Summit.

Christianity Today talked-up the appearance today of President Bush at the National Prayer Breakfast - but it was really all about Bono:

"After 9/11, we were told America would have no time for the world's poor. We were told that America would be taken up with its own problems of safety. … But America has not drawn the blinds and double-locked the doors." Bono said. "You have doubled aid to Africa. You have tripled funding for global health. And Mr. President, your emergency plan for AIDS relief and support of the Global Fund, has put 700,000 people onto life-saving antiretroviral drugs and provided 8 million bed nets to protect children from malaria. … But here's the bad news. There is so much more to do. There is a gigantic chasm between the scale of the emergency and the scale of the response."

Bono, clearly, is showing no inclination whatsoever of sounding like a politician.

"While the law is what we say it is, God is not silent on the subject," Bono said. "There are the laws of the land, and then there is a higher standard. We can hire experts to write them so they benefit us, so that they say it's okay to protect our agriculture, but it's not okay for African farmer to protect their agriculture to earn a living. As the laws of man are written, that's what they say. But God will not accept that."

Bush, meanwhile, may well have recalled what getting the Bono "treatment" is like from go-rounds on debt relief and health funding, and perhaps measured his words accordingly:

"Over the past five years, we've been inspired by the ways that millions of Americans have answered that call [to love your neighbor just like you'd like to be loved yourself]," Bush said. "After Katrina, volunteers from churches and mosques and synagogues and other faith-based and community groups opened up their hearts and their homes to the displaced. We saw an outpouring of compassion after the earthquake in Pakistan and the tsunami that devastated entire communities. We live up to God's calling when we provide help for HIV/AIDS victims on the continent of Africa and around the world."

Bush has got credibility when he says this - no matter how his critics try to spin. As reported by Newsmax, Bush was not shy in his praise for Bono:

"The thing about this good citizen of the world is he's used his position to get things done," Bush said. "You're an amazing guy, Bono. God bless you."

There's only one thing to say to that: Amen.

United States of Canada?

Maybe it is because my thoroughly American family is replete with Canadian relatives and ancestors, but I have never had trouble differentiating between the two countries. Canadians, it seems, haven't had it so easy. Yesterday's national election in Canada (Election? What election? Ask 99% of the U.S. population) will no doubt stir up the identity-crisis-clinical-depression-induced-paranoia-all-wrapped-up-in-navel-gazing that Canadians call their "relationship" with this country. My Canadian "cousins" were folks that climbed into Sopwith Camels in one war, and fought in North Africa (long before us Yanks) in the next. I have always seen them as heroes. I wish Canadians could discover those elements in their heritage to celebrate.


Sydney Morning Herald

So yesterday there was an election in Canada. A parliamentary election. Meaning the party with the most seats gets to have their leader as premier. Meaning a head of the central government with a few more powers of appointment than an American-style president. If the American president had the kinds of powers of a Canadian premier, the president would hold some of the perogatives of the states' governors and a few of the oversight (advise and consent) powers of Congress. All wrapped up in one leader. From the Conservative Party. By the name of Stephen Harper.

As you can see, the new ruling Conservative Party has a bare majority. The BBC reports, "(i)n the run-up to the 23 January vote, the 46-year-old Conservative leader succeeded in transforming his image, from that of a hardline right-winger to a progressive conservative, and moving his party to the centre."

Meanwhile Michael Moore - remember him? Yeah, that's right, the guy who owns Halliburton stock, can't resist the opportunity to whip up some left wing hysteria:

"These are no ordinary times," Moore proclaimed. "And as you go to the polls on Monday, you do so while a man running the nation to the south of you is hoping you can lend him a hand by picking Stephen Harper because he's a man who shares his world view?" For more, see the article in Newsmax. One can easily see where Moore is going with this, fueling already rampant Canadian sentiment: "Do you really want to help George Bush by turning Canada into his latest conquest?"


NotAColony.ca

The great news is that enough Canadians didn't fall for it. And that enough Canadians see themselves in the same image of how I viewed my Canadian relatives from childhood onwards - and Canada has a chance to move forward in that vein.

Liberal Canadian commentator Anthony Westell describes how it happened:

"For years the Liberals coasted to victory in election after election because the centre-right vote was split between the Progressive Conservatives and the Reform, later Alliance, party. In yesterday's election the position was reversed. The right was unified in the new Conservative party while the centre left was split between the Liberals, the NDP and the Greens –not to mention the Bloc Québécois which claims to be social democratic. It's really as simple as that. Final vote totals will show that the majority of Canadians remain center-left in their politics, and Liberal and NDP MPs will outnumber the Conservatives in the new House. However, government in Ottawa may well remain in Conservative hands until their opponents can get their act together."


FiscalStudy.com

Not to worry, though - a significant enough portion of the Canadian population is into the self-loathing that master manipulators like Michael Moore require in order to make their millions.


NotAColony.ca

But as conservative Canadian columnist Mark Steyn said in his column in The Australian: it is a sad day for Michael Moore. Steyn knows how to unload a sweet rant:

"For the past century, Canada's ruling Liberals have been the democratic world's most consistently successful political party. This time round, mired in a series of scandals that were turning Canada into the G7's first Third World kleptocracy, the flailing Trudeaupians adopted an even more ferocious version of their usual strategy: scare the voters back to Nanny. As the Liberals warned Canadians - or, rather, shrieked at them - Stephen Harper will take away "a woman's right to choose"! The unwanted boys you'll be forced to have will grow up to be Bush cannon fodder in Iraq, and the unwanted girls will be sold as white slaves for Halliburton corporate cocktail parties round the pool at Dick Cheney's ranch."

It sounds like Michael Moore knows where to go for his talking points.