 |
|
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
UGANDA: Civilians targeted by their own people
NAIROBI, 2 April 2003 (IRIN) - Civilians in marginalised northern Uganda have been bearing the brunt of the insurrection by the Acholi rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) for over 16 years.
More recently, observers say the civilians are also bearing the brunt of a questionable military strategy - dubbed Operation Iron Fist - which aims to crush the rebels, but has indirectly created the worst humanitarian situation the region has ever seen.
LRA ENIGMA
Since an LRA unilateral ceasefire announcement on 1 March, attacks, killings and abductions have continued to be perpetrated, including the murder of a Ugandan government peace envoy, which may be attributable to poor command structures, but has also raised serious doubts about the LRA’s sincerity.
The government had responded with its own cessation of hostilities in two locations in Pader District, to allow negotiations to take place with its peace team.
However, the LRA failed to forward a negotiating team, and the killing of Okech Kuru, a Ugandan army officer, at Lapul, a sub-county of Pader District, during a peace mission dampens hopes for a peaceful end to the insurgency.
The Ugandan government strongly condemned the killing. "This action makes us doubt the seriousness of the LRA about the peace talks," the independent Monitor newspaper quoted Betty Akech, Uganda's minister of state for higher education and spokeswoman for the government's peace negotiating team, as saying.
Little is known about the reasons for, or the background to, the LRA's initial apparent peace gesture. Unlike most other African rebel groups, it has neither an official spokesman nor a public relations machine, and its leader, Joseph Kony, makes extremely rare public announcements.
The group, which has its roots in extremist Christianity and local traditional religions, purports to be fighting to overthrow President Yoweri Museveni in order to establish a state based on the Biblical Ten Commandments.
In fact, it has continually turned its weapons on its own people - looting from them, destroying their villages, raping women and abducting large numbers of children as "recruits" - making its real agenda and motivation hard to understand.
Typically, the abductees are taken during guerrilla-style attacks on villages or so-called "protected camps" for displaced people. The vast majority (aged from 8-14) are forced to carry looted food and then released within 48 hours, while the older boys (14-18) are kept as "recruits", and the girls are sent off to rebel bases in southern Sudan to act as "wives" for the combatants.
CONTROVERSIAL MILITARY STRATEGY
In March 2002, the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF) launched Operation Iron Fist, which allowed the army to cross into southern Sudan – for which it had the Sudanese government’s blessing - to root out the LRA from its bases there.
Ironically, instead of rendering northern Uganda safer for civilians, the military operation led to large numbers of the LRA returning to northern Uganda in June and July, with accompanying intensive retaliatory violence, ensuing in a considerably deteriorated humanitarian situation.
Jane Lowicki of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children told US congressmen last month that "many people living in northern Uganda feel the cycle of violence created by Operation Iron Fist is the worst sustained violence experienced in the history of the war".
George Omona, a programme manager in Gulu with the Agency for Cooperation and Research in Development (ACORD), told IRIN that Operation Iron Fist had "escalated the conflict".
Whereas before, the LRA soldiers had camps in southern Sudan and were able to cultivate their own crops, since their return they have had to loot for food, the member of Ugandan parliament for Gulu Municipality, Norbert Mao, told IRIN. This had increased both the numbers of attacks and abductions of children to carry the food, he said.
Last year, about 7,800 abductions were recorded, while the previous year there had been fewer than 100, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) confirmed.
INADEQUATE PROTECTION
In a bid to respond to the upsurge in violence, the Ugandan government in October ordered displaced people in certain areas of Gulu, Kitgum and Pader districts to congregate in "protected camps" – long a feature of life in northern Uganda - within 48 hours. A total of 53 of such camps are currently in existence - 33 in Gulu, seven in Kitgum and 13 in Pader - hosting a population of over 780,000.
Many more people are camping near urban centres at night, and returning to their homes during the day to carry out daily activities.
But many observers note that these camps - which are improvised and have no perimeter fences - are regularly attacked or infiltrated by the LRA. In its latest report on Uganda, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said "the camps provide little or no protection from the LRA, and residents are vulnerable to abuse by the UPDF and individual soldiers".
Many blame the army for failing to adequately protect them. "The thousands of government troops recently placed in the north and in southern Sudan have been largely ineffective at protecting and rescuing children," Lowicki told the US congressmen.
Norbert Mao said the failure was primarily due to a lack of manpower, and widespread corruption. "The rank and file see their senior officers advancing materially, while they do not have basic necessities, and they are de-motivated," he said.
The UPDF spokesman, Shaban Bantariza, told IRIN that since the beginning of Operation Iron Fist, over 6,000 minors had been "rescued" from the LRA. "We have rescued thousands, killed hundreds [of rebels], and over 90 percent of Kitgum District is peaceful," he said. "Operation Iron Fist has been more than 80 percent successful," he added. "People may be hungry and not have enough medicines [in the camps], but they cannot be captured in hundreds and massacred."
But for every "rescued" child, many more have been abducted, Mao pointed out. "The government has failed to stop abductions. It doesn't make sense to talk of the rescued as an achievement," he said.
HUMANITARIAN IMPLICATIONS
Meanwhile, food, health care, water, sanitation and shelter are all in short supply. This is compounded by the fact that almost all humanitarian organisations who were working in the area have been forced out, because they are unable to protect their staff from attacks. "There are more displaced people, there is a higher number of malnourished people, security on the roads has got worse, and people are 100 percent reliant on food hand-outs from the World Food Programme, because they can't cultivate. This is a direct consequence of Operation Iron Fist," Mao told IRIN.
Despite the criticism, the UPDF is persevering with its military strategy, and will probably continue to do so until a bilateral ceasefire has been negotiated.
For now, the child recruits, who are both victims of abduction (80-90 percent of LRA members are estimated to have been abducted) and perpetrators of crimes, are regularly killed in combat. "It is not possible to differentiate between children and adults," Bantariza told IRIN. "Although they are minors, they are armed and shooting."
Other observers note the tragedy of the situation. "Who are these rebels? If you look at them, they are just abductees who are being killed. Ours son and daughters are being killed," said Omona of ACORD. "The army is protecting the population from their own children."
PRESSURE TO NEGOTIATE
Gilbert Bukenya, a minister for the presidency and member of the government peace team, has warned that if Kony does not name his peace team before the expiry of a time frame established by Museveni, then the government would 'have no option but to fight them till we finish them".
But pressure is mounting to find a non-military solution to the conflict in light of the disastrous humanitarian situation. "The whole of civil society is very critical of the military operation," said Omona. "This conflict can only be solved through dialogue." Various MPs, as well as cultural and religious leaders. have publicly agreed with him.
The coming days and weeks will show clearly whether the government will continue pushing for a meaningful peace process, and whether there is any basis for meaningful dialogue with the LRA, as it is currently organised.
Lam Cosmas, the coordinator of the Acholi Religious Leaders' Peace initiative, which has been mediating in the conflict, told IRIN that progress towards talks with the LRA was "slow", but there was room for dialogue. "The challenge is how do we nurture the peace and dialogue," Cosmas said. "The biggest challenge we are facing is trust building at all levels. You can't build it in one month."
[This article is one of a series of reports and interviews that comprise a new Web Special on Civilian Protection in Armed Conflict. In it, IRIN explores International Humanitarian Law and principled humanitarian action, the provisions for civilian protection, the problems encountered in achieving this, and the prospects for the future. See web special at www.irinnews.org]
Themes: (IRIN) Children, (IRIN) Conflict, (IRIN) Human Rights, (IRIN) Refugees/IDPs
[ENDS]
The material contained on this Web site comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post any item on this site, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All graphics and Images on this site may not be re-produced without the express permission of the original owner. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2003
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
