Uganda People’s Democratic Army
Most of the former Acholi UNLA soldiers who retreated from Kampala (fighting the NRA as they withdrew) continued north during March 1986 and finally crossed the international border into Sudan. Sudan provided refuge and a base from which to re-reorganize but, according to most reports, did not provide military assistance. Several Acholi asserted that, in fact, Sudanese authorities confiscated their weapons when they entered Sudan and returned them when they crossed back into Uganda. According to some reports, senior Acholi officers began actively planning their military campaign against the NRA almost immediately.
A Makerere University study asserted that the anti-government Uganda People’s Democratic Army (UPDA) was established in Juba in March 1986. One knowledgeable interviewee asserted that in May 1986 key Acholi military leaders, at a meeting in Sudan, identified locations throughout Gulu and Kitgum which the UPDA would attack in mid-August. If these reports are generally accurate, it appears that the UPDA was organized just as the NRA arrived in Gulu, and that its battle strategy was determined during a period in which almost all of the assessment’s interviewees characterized the NRA’s conduct as exemplary.
According to most reports, there were three categories of potential UPDA participants: (a) Former UNLA soldiers who had taken refuge in Sudan, and who were among the group determined from the outset to continue the armed struggle against the NRA forces; (b) Former UNLA soldiers who had returned to their villages, buried their weapons and ammunition, and awaited developments; and (c) young men who had never served in the UNLA but who were potential UPDA recruits in those villages.
UPDA activists in Sudan who were organizing the insurgency sought ways to induce those in categories (b) and (c) who remained in Uganda to join them. The Makerere University study and numerous interviews indicate that after the NRA consolidated its authority, it ordered former UNLA soldiers to surrender their weapons and that many did so. At some point before August 1986 it also ordered all former UNLA soldiers to report to the NRA. Many refused, in part because they may have feared a recurrence of the massacre of Acholi soldiers conducted with a similar prelude by Amin forces in 1971. To avoid arrest by NRA units, they joined the UPDA ranks in Sudan.
The UPDA enjoyed overwhelming popular support among the civilian population of Gulu and Kitgum. Most recruits joined voluntarily, and civilians shared food, livestock, intelligence and other support with these forces. It appears that although the UPDA was unable to capture and control towns and trading centers, it controlled extensive portions of the countryside and regularly attacked NRA positions. Operating in a hostile civilian environment, the NRA reacted in an angry and brutal manner against the civilian population.
During certain stages of the 1986 - 1991 period, its conduct included the execution of suspected collaborators and prisoners and the killing of groups of victims, harsh beating during questioning, widespread destruction of granaries, mass detentions and other such practices. Rape was also a frequent complaint.
As a result, particularly during the 1986 - 1988 period, relief workers report that civilians fleeing army operations frequently sought protection in rural areas under predominant UPDA control. However, nothing learned during this assessment suggests that the frequency and magnitude of these periodic NRA abuses were in any way comparable to the large-scale mass murder and brutality that characterized UNLA operations in the Luwero Triangle in 1983/1984.
In the process of a rather unsuccessful military operation, however, the UPDA's arms and ammunition dwindled, and by late 1986 its forces were increasingly demoralized. Into the vacuum created by this slump arrived a figure who transformed and revitalized the Acholi resistance movement.
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