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Langi and Acholi

By onen estimate 50% of the entire Acholi population – some 300,000 people – were killed in the Uganda civil war. Northern Uganda, or Acholiland as it is often referred to, is comprised of three districts, Gulu, Kitgum, and Pader and spans an area of 28,000 square kilometres, equivalent to the size of Rwanda. Over a million and a half people reside between the three districts, of which 99% are of Acholi ethnicity and 1% other tribes. Acholiland is a vast and sparsely populated area with considerable agriculture and livestock development potential. The Acholi are traditionally a people of agriculturalists and livestock breeders and prior to the conflict, ninety percent of people in the northern region lived in rural areas.

Milton Obote the independence leader, relied heavily on the support of his fellow Luo-speakers - Acholi and Langi - in government. Similarly, General Okello Lutwa who toppled the Obote II regime, was an Acholi. But when Idi Amin over-threw Obote's first spell in power, and when Yoweri Musevini ousted Okello, the Acholi paid heavily for their allegiances. Under Amin's brutal regime, an estimated 300,000 died - many of them Acholi. Similarly, when Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Army (NRA) took power in 1986, there were revenge killings and looting of livestock in the North of the country. In 1986 Alice Lakwena's charismatic Holy Spirit Movement mounted an insurgency in the Acholi region. This has continued in various guises ever since.

During 1985, the Obote II regime appeared to be disintegrating under the pressure of the NRA insurgency, national discontent and international condemnation. In July 1985, Acholi elements in the UNLA, led by Lieutenant General Basilio Olara-Okello, himself an Acholi, overthrew the Obote government. General Tito Okello Lutwa (not related to Basilio), himself an Acholi from Namu-okora (Kitgum District), became President.

President Obote and most of the Langi in the military were expelled and a predominantly Acholi government took power. Ambassador Olara Otunnu, also from Acholi (previously Obote’s representative to the United Nations in New York), was appointed Foreign Minister. According to several observers, including authoritative U.S. Government sources, both Kampala and districts like Apac and Lira, home of the Lango people, were the scene of widespread looting – in many cases by Acholi soldiers – in an environment characterized by a general absence of law and order.

A documentary accusing President Museveni and the Uganda army of genocide against the Acholi people in the north was used to lobby for an end to US aid to Uganda. A Brilliant Genocide by Daniel Nelson argues that Museveni exploited atrocities by a rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), as a cover for his own “reign of terror” against the Acholis. The brutal campaigns by the Yoweri Museveni regime to wipe out a significant part of Uganda’s Acholi people was conducted under the guise of crushing a rebellion by The Lord’s Resistance Army. In 1986, after President Museveni took power in Uganda, the rebel factions that have mobilized to resist this government can be characterized by transitions of increased terror, with Joseph Kony being the craft perpetrator of some of the greatest human rights violations the world has ever seen.

People were placed in what amounted to concentration camps where the death rates from planned neglect exceeded 50,000 people per year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) over a period spanning over a decade. At the height of the insurgency, some 1.8 million people were living in camps in the north. W A Brilliant Genocide is a counterpoint to Kony 2012, which brought worldwide awareness to the crimes committed by the LRA. It shows how the Museveni regime has used Kony as a straw man, enabling the Ugandan government to garner international sympathy and resources in the supposed “war on terrorism” while in fact diverting attention from its own crimes against humanity in northern Uganda.

The Langi and Acholi occupy north-central Uganda. The Langi represent roughly 6 percent of the population. Despite their linguistic affiliation with other Lwo speakers, the Langi reject the "Luo" label. The Acholi represent 4 percent of the population but suffered severe depopulation and dislocation in the violence of the 1970s and 1980s.

The districts of Gulu and Kitgum together comprise an area of 28,000 square kilometers – about the size of New Jersey, Belgium or Rwanda. But in comparison with Rwanda’s population of seven million, the population of Gulu and Kitgum is 700,000 – of which some 90% normally reside in rural areas. Gulu and Kitgum, both located east of the Nile at the Sudan border, comprise 14% of Uganda’s land mass and 4% of the national population. Roughly 70% of its people identify themselves as Catholics, 25% as Anglicans and 5% with other faiths, including 0.5% who are Muslims. The people of Gulu and Kitgum are almost entirely ethnic Acholis, and the two districts are often referred to as “Acholi” or “Acholiland.” Ethnic Acholis are also found in southern Sudan near the Uganda border.

By about the thirteenth century AD, Luo-speaking peoples migrated from territory now in Sudan into Uganda and Kenya. They were probably pastoralists, organized in segmentary patrilineages rather than highly centralized societies, but with some positions of ritual or political authority. They encountered horticultural Bantu-speakers, organized under the authority of territorial chiefs. The newcomers probably claimed to be able to control rain, fertility, and supernatural forces through ritual and sacrifice, and they may have established positions of privilege for themselves based on their spiritual expertise. Some historians believe the Langi represent the descendants of fifteenth-century dissenters from Karamojong society to the east.

Both societies are organized into localized patrilineages and further grouped into clans, which are dispersed throughout the territory. Clan members claim descent from a common ancestor, but they are seldom able to recount the nature of their relationship to the clan founder. Acholi lineages are ranked according to their proximity to a royal lineage, and the head of this lineage is recognized as a king, although his power is substantially less than that of monarchs in the south.

Acholi and Langi societies rely on millet cultivation and animal husbandry for subsistence. In some areas, people also cultivate corn, eleusine, peanuts, sesame seed, sweet potatoes, and cassava. Both Langi and Acholi generally assign agricultural tasks either to men or women; in many cases men are responsible for cattle while women work in the fields. (In some villages, only adult men may milk cows.) An Acholi or Langi man may marry more than one wife, but he may not marry within his lineage or that of his mother. A woman normally leaves her own family to live in her husband's homestead, which may include his brothers and their families. Each wife has a separate house and hearth for cooking.

The pre-Colonial history of the Acholi people includes a warrior tradition which included combat with their eastern (Karamojong), southern (Langi) and western (Madi) neighbors, as well as frequent conflict among the Acholi clans themselves. During the Colonial period, the British Government recruited heavily among the Acholi for the uniformed services (army, police and prison guards). Acholi soldiers participated with the British in World War II in combat theaters throughout the world. Acholi people generally hold the view that the colonizers exploited them for the uniformed services and for unskilled labor, leaving them at the margins of Uganda’s development, while central Ugandans, such as the Baganda, were the beneficiaries of more durable commercial and educational activities.

The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is a Ugandan rebel group currently operating in the border region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Central African Republic (CAR), and South Sudan. It emerged from the Holy Spirit Movement, established by Alice Lakwena, an Acholi prophet. Joseph Kony established the LRA in 1988 with the claim of restoring the honor of his ethnic Acholi people and to install a government based on his personal version of the Ten Commandments.

The LRA has its roots in the conflict between the Acholi tribe of northern Uganda and other tribes in southern Uganda that began during Idi Amin Dada’s regime (1971-1979). Power changed hands between two equally ruthless Acholi leaders after Idi Amin was overthrown, but the Acholi were forced to flee back to the north when Museveni seized power in 1986. Alienated Acholi troops subsequently formed a less extreme Holy Spirit movement to counter the Ugandan government. However, following their defeat in 1988, a more violent movement — the LRA — emerged under Kony.

In early 2008, former Lord's Resistance Army defectors identified Charlie Lakony (a.k.a. Rembo) as the primary mobilizer for a new resistance group called the Peoples' Patriotic Front (PPF). Rembo is a Kenyan-based member of the Acholi diaspora who runs a non-governmental organization, "Friends for Peace in Africa," and travels between San Diego, California and Nairobi. Former Ugandan Government negotiator Betty Bigombe reported that Rembo, who calls the war in northern Uganda "genocide," was behind various attempts to recruit disgruntled northerners into anti-Museveni rebel groups. The group had begun stockpiling weapons in the districts of West Nile. Government operatives uncovered the plot and began a series of sweeps between January and March 2008 that uncovered several arms caches in and around Arua. These sweeps were reported in the local press.

Despite his crimes, Kony can be accepted back into society if he accepts responsibility for his crimes. Acholi society has no death penalty and local residents, government authorities, and traditional and religious officials believe that the Kony's victims have no other choice but to forgive him through traditional rituals.

Cattle had long been the main repository of Acholi wealth. By 1985, their nearly 300,000 cattle (and even more numerous goats, sheep and other livestock), represented not only their savings, but also their contingency reserve for sickness, drought, retirement, education and marriage dowry. Beginning in about August 1987, during the Alice Lakwena period, an event unique in Acholi history occurred: an overwhelming number of Karamojong cattle raiders swept through Kitgum and eastern Gulu and removed almost all the area’s livestock. Those who resisted the rustlers were brutally attacked.

Data provided by veterinary officers indicated that the cattle population of Gulu and Kitgum in 1985 was about 285,000. The cattle raids removed almost the entire herd. In 1997 – ten years after the raids – the combined herd for both districts is estimated at 5,000 head, less than 2% the earlier number.

In an instant, the Acholi farmers were deprived of the milk their cows provided; the additional acreage and higher yields which their oxen permitted them; their fallback for marriage dowries and education; and the savings which carried them through drought, hard time, sickness and old age. The self-respect which attached to cattle ownership and the cultural functions upon which exchange of cattle had relied were disrupted. It was one of the greatest economic and morale blows of the war.