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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

UGANDA: Recruitment of Karamojong warriors to fight rebel group

KAMPALA, 9 September 2003 (IRIN) - The Ugandan army has said it is recruiting Karamojong warriors as a militia force to fight the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group in eastern Uganda.

"There is nothing special in this," Brig Kale Kaihura, special military assistant to President Yoweri Museveni, told IRIN. "Karamojong are as much threatened as anyone and they know it's in everyone’s interest that we protect Uganda from these thugs."

Tens of thousands of Karamojong warriors are to be mobilised and armed, according to military sources. Kaihura said the first recruits would be from the "Anti-Stock Theft Unit", a local group used to combat cattle-rustling. "But we are recruiting a whole load more on top of that," he added.

Some of the warriors are to remain in Karamoja while others will be deployed to Teso district, recently attacked by the LRA.

Karamoja has long been the scene of banditry and unrest due to a glut of semi-automatic weapons there causing widespread lawlessness and increased cattle-rustling. At the same time, the region has never been successfully infiltrated by the LRA because the Karamojong warriors have managed to repel rebel advances.

Local organisations working with the Karamojong fear the move to arm them could reverse work done to defuse the gun culture in the region. "This is again militarising them when we have already tried so hard to show them another way to live," said Jackson Owine, head of Amelok, an organisation working to promote peaceful dialogue between Karamojong clans in Kotido and Moroto districts.

"This is a war between the government and the LRA. We don’t see why the Karamojong [should] get killed for this," Owine told IRIN. "The politians see them as [having] good fighting techniques. But eventually they will just start using these weapons against themselves."

Themes: (IRIN) Conflict

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