The forgotten crisis

But although the international community has shown understanding of and concern for the suffering people of the northern Uganda because of ongoing conflict pitting the Lords Resistance Army, LRA and the Ugandan People’s Defence Force, UPDF, the traumatic nightmare of the people remains, haunting hundreds of thousands sowing bitterness and destroying their future.

The nature of the conflict, its protracted duration and the punitive and extremely harsh toll it has imposed on the Acholi population more so the children, has church leaders and members of the international community calling for the need for a negotiated settlement.

Characterised as the world’s largest forgotten crisis by the UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, Jan Egeland, the long running conflict in northern Uganda is one of extreme “brutality and callousness”.

It has recently escalated to engulf huge swathes of the countryside, trapping tens of thousands of innocent people in a seemingly endless cycle of violence and suffering.

The LRA’s resistance represents the latest and longest of the rebellions to have stalked Uganda. But it has in its wake devastated the Acholi, an area close to Uganda’s border with south Sudan and has now spread to the neighbouring sub-regions of Teso and Lango.

The three districts of Gulu, Kitgum and Pader have been particularly hard hit. Death and disease rates are high and food is scarce.

About 80 per cent of the Acholi people have now been forced to live in protected villages and camps for Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, which are often overcrowded and lack adequate water, sanitation and health services.

According to Egland, the conflict in northern Uganda is characterised by a level of cruelty seldom seen elsewhere, it pits not just adults but also children against one another.

“It has excluded vast number of population from participation in any semblance of development. No one knows how many people have died as a result of conflict, but every day schools, homes, villages and families are destroyed and more people abducted mostly children”.

Few schools operate in the North and these are mostly in towns, which are relatively safe. LRA attacks led to the closure or destruction of 136 out of 189 primary schools in Gulu district in 1996 according to one aid agency.

Local officials reported this year that about half the schools in Kitgum and around 90 per cent in Pader had been closed.

Egland adds that because of the war, many have been forced to commit atrocities or look on helplessly as others are beaten, raped or murdered. Abducted children are forced to work as labourers, soldiers or sex slaves.

The war that has ravaged northern Uganda for 17 years since 1986, has left its people battered and bruised, tormented by grief, despair and fear. Civilians have been killed and mutilated. Thousands have been abducted, tortured and sexually abused.

The UN and other humanitarian agencies operating in the area estimate the number of people to have been displaced from their homes to be more than 1.2 million.

“Deprived of their means of livelihood, once proud farmers and their families now depend entirely on the food they receive in camps for internally displaced persons. Access to education, health sanitation and water services have been disrupted”, says Daouda Toure, Coordinator of the UN Humanitarian Assistance for northern Uganda.

Yet beyond its stated aim to overthrow the Ugandan government and its purported commitment to establishing a government based on biblical ten commandments, “the LRA appears to have no clear political agenda”, says Toure.

He adds that for the most part, the rebels choose not to engage the Ugandan army, but target schools, health centres, passing vehicles, IDP camps and refuge settlements.

Child abduction has long been a major feature of the conflict, but the number shot up after he UPDF launched an offensive against the LRA in March 2002.

The rebels kidnapped more than 10, 000 children between June 2002 and October 2003, from 101 in 2001. This brought the total number of the abducted by the LRA since the start of the conflict to more than 20, 000.

Abductees are made to carry heavy loads over long distances. Those who lag behind or fall ill are beaten or killed. Some are forced to kill, maim, beat or abduct innocent victims or look on as such abuses are committed.

Sexual violence against girls and women is rampant. They are used as domestic servants or forced into sexual slavery as LRA commanders’ wives. They are subject to rape, unwanted pregnancies and the risk of infection including HIV.

One of the visible signs of the collective trauma to which the people of northern Uganda have been subjected is the phenomenon of “night commuters’.

These are vulnerable people who fearing abduction, move from the countryside into slightly more secure towns or camps at the end of each day. Most are children who walk up to 10 Km to seek refuge from the threat of abduction and violence.

They gather in schools, hospitals, district offices and NGO compounds-wherever they think they can spend the night in safety.

Many have to sleep in the open, where they are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. The UN has estimated the number of night commuters in Gulu and Kitgum districts at 25, 000.

The conflict that has spawned the humanitarian emergency in northern Uganda is rooted in the country’s recent history, with its complex mix of uneven social and economic development, violent regional conflict and marginalisation of minorities by governments and elite in power.

After president Yoweri Museveni’s NRM/A took over power in 1986, there was widespread fear in northern Uganda especially among the Acholi people that it would take revenge for atrocities committed when the northerners dominated the army.

The initial NRA military actions during which Acholis were abused, tortured or disappeared partially justified these fears, leading many to join rebel movements that included the Uganda People’s Democratic Army and Alice Lakwena’s Holy Spirit Movement.

Lakwena emerged in 1986 claiming to be possessed by a spirit that was guiding her for the good of the Acholi who felt they were being victimised by the NRM government.

The Ugandan army defeated Lakwena’s movement in 1987 but her claim that she had spiritual guidance inspired Joseph Kony who has also purported to be visited by spirits.

He gathered the remnant of the Holy Spirit movement around him and formed the Uganda People’s Democratic Christian Army, which became the LRA around 1994.

But observers say that unlike Lakwena, the LRA has targeted the civilian population-in defiance of the international law committing severe human rights abuses in the process.

In the early 1980s and early 1990s, Kony switched from battlefield confrontations with the Uganda army to kidnapping civilians attacking hospitals and ambushing vehicles.

His group also started mutilating people, cutting off lips and noses, using padlocks to lock the mouths of those they thought might report them and cutting off hands and ears.

Towards the end of 1998 talks between the government and the LRA gave rise to hope for peace. However the negotiations collapsed in early 1994, leading to a dramatic resurgence of violence in Acholiland.

After the collapse of the talks any support the LRA may have enjoyed among the Acholi dried up, according to observers of the war in the north.

This was when the rebels began the mass abductions of children for use as porters, fighters and sex slaves, the observers say.

According to the Acholi people, Uganda’s previous support for the South Sudan rebel group, the SPLA, foreign powers’ use of Uganda as a abase for fighting the Sudan government and lack of trust between the Acholi population and the Ugandan government have kept the war going on.