NEW DIRECTION IN UGANDA'S OLD WAR
By Emily Wax

February 16, 2004 – (Washington Post Foreign Service) The despondent-looking man with the smudged glasses moved gingerly through this squalid camp, home to 20,000 people and not a single health center.

In a maze of tightly packed mud huts, smoldering pit latrines and dirt footpaths, children lay collapsed on the hot earth, their bellies swollen and sore from hunger, their hair yellowing from lack of protein, their noses raw and leaking.

An entire generation of Ugandans in the north of the country is growing up in places like Pagak, 200 miles north of Kampala, the capital. An estimated 1.4 million of the country's 25.8 million people are living in camps in northern and eastern Uganda. They fled their villages in waves to escape the Lord's Resistance Army, a guerrilla force that has terrorized the population for nearly two decades.

"We can't live like this anymore," said Lemoi, a community leader who has lived in the camp since 1996. "It's just absolutely shameful. . . . We are beggars now. We can't even sleep in separate areas from our children. All of our traditional pride is withered. How long will we be here? Forever?"

Ugandans call it the war that won't end. In the face of a government offensive called Operation Iron Fist, launched in March 2002, rebels have stepped up their raids on villages -- burning huts, reportedly hacking civilians to death with machetes and axes, and abducting children in increasing numbers.

Across the country there is despair about the war in the north. In response to rebel attacks and the apparent inability of the Ugandan military to counter them, the government has in the last six weeks trained and armed 8,000 civilians. The new militia members were portrayed on state television as heroes, marching through towns like Lira, 40 miles southeast of Gulu, proudly wielding their AK-47s.

Human rights groups have criticized the government, saying that children are being recruited. An even bigger concern is that the groups being armed by the government are members of the Langi tribe, ethnic rivals of the Acholi, who live in the north.

"Arming ethnic militia is a very dangerous idea and is nothing to feel proud about," said the Rev. Carlos Rodriguez, a Spaniard who has lived in Uganda for 20 years and works with the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative, an interdenominational group.

Security officials recommended that Rodriguez be deported, saying he was spreading false information, according to Ugandan newspapers.

In Lira, where piles of trash fumed and hundreds of people were lined up at camps to collect food handouts, those who have joined the militia said there would not be any problems.

Stone-faced and wearing a government-issued green uniform, Nancy Awio, 25, said she had quit her job as a secretary to join the forces. Her father was killed by rebels in November, she said, dragged off by 15 men and beaten in the head and stomach until he hemorrhaged. Awio has 6-year-old twins and said she was worried about the pay the government promised her for being in the militia, but has yet to give her. But she said she is not afraid of death.

"I'm not afraid because I have the techniques to fight in the front lines," said Awio, a bulky woman with serious eyes. "I don't think they can kill me. I was so shocked when I saw my father lying there. It was so painful. That's why I joined."

From his office in Kampala, Felix Okot Ogong, state minister for youth and children's affairs, defended the decision to create the militia, saying it was fine to supplement the army with civilians.

"Everyone wants to join and fight back," said Ogong, who wore a blue pinstriped shirt and said he had just been to see a militia training session. "I don't see any dangers in it. They are not soldiers, they are defenders against the LRA."

The war in northern Uganda began in 1986. The rebel leader is an enigmatic recluse and self-declared prophet, Joseph Kony, who has said he started the uprising to overthrow the government of President Yoweri Museveni and replace it with a government based on the Ten Commandments.

Some observers say that what Kony really wanted was to avenge his ethnic group, the Acholi, who have felt disadvantaged in comparison with people in the richer south since the British protectorate of Uganda was created in 1894.

Because Kony kidnapped children to create his army, his movement quickly lost popular support and he was dismissed as a lunatic. But his rebels were provided with high-tech firepower by the Sudanese government, which was trying to destabilize the area and deal with its own rebels, based in southern Sudan along the border with Uganda.

Kony and other top rebel commanders are allowed to hide in Sudan's mountains. They stage hit-and-run attacks on civilians at night from the hilly jungle. There are no checkpoints and no rebel-held towns. Rebel commanders do not give interviews or hold peace talks.

In radio broadcasts, Kony has denied having ties to Sudan and frequently quotes biblical passages that he says sanction taking children for a cause. He has said he believes his people must be "cleansed" for not embracing his philosophy. Rebels are known for cutting off the fingers and lips of victims and taking young girls -- some only 9 or 10 years old -- as sex slaves.

"Kony does not have a political agenda, and he no more represents Christianity or the Ten Commandments than the bombers in the World Trade Center represented Islam," said Jimmy Kolker, the U.S. ambassador to Uganda.

Recently, peace talks aimed at ending Sudan's civil war brought hope that Uganda's war would wind down. But Sudan broke a promise made in late 2002 to stop supplying weapons to the Lord's Resistance Army, according to John Prendergast, an Africa analyst with the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research organization that monitors global conflicts.

"As yet, there is not enough pressure to make any diplomatic opening possible," Prendergast said. "The U.S. will have to lean heavily on the government of Sudan to cut off its support to the LRA and bring it to the table to talk."

In Kampala, the government has been fiercely criticized by politicians and ordinary Ugandans for its failure to stop the war. In November, 34 members of parliament walked out of a session in protest, saying the government was not sincere about wanting to end the war in the north.

Andrew Mwenda of Monitor FM, the country's most popular radio station, has been an outspoken critic of the government. He points to ethnic tensions between Uganda's ruling elite -- the Buganda and others -- and the ethnic Acholi, some of whom served in the armies of the governments of Idi Amin and Milton Obote, longtime enemies of Museveni.
"The war continues as a sting in the flesh to the Acholi," Mwenda said, sitting in his office amid reams of newspaper clippings. "Meanwhile, the Ugandan army is unwilling to die for Acholi people. I hold these African leaders in horrible contempt. This is the nastiest world I've lived in, and I am just waiting for my ticket to heaven."

The latest bloodshed occurred the night of Feb. 5, when scores of rebels attacked the Abia camp near Lira, tossing hand grenades, torching huts and hacking to death 50 villagers, leaving body parts strewn through the camp. Then, about 13 miles from the scene, the rebels abducted 10 people from their fields.

The men in the camp at Pagak are afraid to leave. They use their savings to buy a local alcohol brewed by wrinkled grandmothers. They laze during the bright days in dark, musty huts.

Every few days, lines form. Chaotic bunches of circular lines snake out into the trampled fields where families wait for small rations of beans and maize provided by the U.N. World Food Program. Their abandoned fields just over the hills are within view on a clear day. Farmers who once grew bountiful crops of sweet potatoes, sugar cane, pumpkins and mangoes are too afraid to plant and harvest.

From: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44489-2004Feb15.html