Uganda Committee : The Conflict in northern Uganda

The background to the ongoing conflict in Northern Uganda is complex and hard to summarise shortly. The reason for the disturbances can be found already in 1962, when Great Britain left Uganda to become an independent country. The development issues by the colonial power was very askew, they had neglected the northern half of Uganda and almost totally directed the efforts towards Southern Uganda. This led to an economic imbalance in the country and in order to get a job the Acholi, the population in the north, joined the army.

Up until 1986, when president Yoweri Museveni seized power, many armed rebel groups emerged, with different ethnic and ideological background. Many of these groups have tried to gain power over the country; four of them succeeded including, amongst other, general Idi Amin in 1971. Another rebel leader was Alice Auma, who grew up on a small farm just north of the town Gulu in Northern Uganda. In 1985 she claimed to have been given spiritual power from several Gods. They gave her the mission to clean Acholi from all sins they have done during all the turbulent years and urged them to follow God’s Ten Commandments instead. Since Alice had this contact with the spirits she got the name Alice Lakwena, which means Alice Mediator. Her first step was to protect, or isolate, Acholi from Musevenis army. She led a bloody war and not until the troops were a few miles away from the capital the governmental troops defeated them. Alice Lakwena fled to Kenya, where she died in January 2007.

In April 1987 a young relative to Alice Lakwena claimed that he had inherited her spiritual power. His name was Jospeh Kony and he started his own movement, which became known as LRA – Lord’s Resistance Army. Just like Alice Lakwena’s, his troops originally consisted of Acholi military, but after a while the LRA started a system where they recruited soldiers by kidnapping civilian villagers, especially easy manipulated children. They were turned into soldiers, carriers and workers. The girls became sex slaves and were forced into marriages with leaders. The children were often forced to kill their parents or carry out other brutal activities and became indoctrinated that the army was their new family. Just like Alice Lakwena, Kony claims that he fights to seize power in Uganda, clean the Acholi people and make the population live according to the Ten Commandments.

LRA is financed and supplied by the Sudanese government to be able to conduct the war. This is denied by Sudan, however there is proof to that this is actually the case. The support to the LRA is an act of revenge against Uganda as Uganda supports the SPLM (Sudanese People Liberation Movement) in Sudan who is fighting the government in order to introduce democracy. This is also denied, by Museveni’s parliament, but of course there are strong evidence for this as well. When the USA in the end of 2001 added the LRA on their list of terrorist groups the support decreased, but didn’t end. LRA’s activities have varied in intensity over the years and they have recently been seen taking an active part in the ongoing conflict in Kongo.

The conflict in Uganda has now been going on for 21 years and there is a temporary cease-fire going on. No one knows if there will ever be a signed peace agreement. The civilians are suffering hard, about 70-80 % of the population live in IDP camps (internal displaced people). They are in a situation where they don’t even dare to cultivate their fields, out of pure fear to be attacked, kidnapped, maimed or killed. The sanitary conditions are often severe and there is a lack of food as well of teachers and doctors. The population are entirely dependent on food deliveries from the UN World Food Programme. The civilians are supposed to be protected by the state army (UPDF; Uganda People Defence Force) but instead the soldiers take advantage of the internal displaced people’s situation.

Many organisations on site work with so-called returnees, i.e. kidnapped children that have escaped the rebels and are returned. The therapy these children get is insufficient, due to the limited resources available. The children also need to re-fit their former lifes in the IDP camps and need to find a source of income. The girls, as former sex slaves and wives, sometimes return with small children. These mothers are particular hard to reintegrate, as the society doesn’t accept the children or the act these children were forced to carry out.

Now, when the cease-fire is relatively stable, the IDPs have started to move to their old villages and are trying to live there; the situation is still complex but there are possibilities for an improvement in the future. Once again having a central core in their lives, the people dare to invest in their future in the same time as organisations can target their aid instead of giving humanitarian emergency relief. Still, many children do not know how to live a life outside the IDP camps and there is a lack of education and employment, which primarily hits the youth.

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