----- Original Message ----- 
From: Chris Opoka-Okumu 
To: [log in to unmask] 
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 7:47 PM
Subject: Mao on Northern Uganda




 
February 20, 2004 |  Opinion 
Forget Iraq: Uganda is a festering wound


BY NORBERT MAO

One would expect that the travel advisories from most Western embassies in Uganda's capital, Kampala, telling their citizens not to travel to northern Uganda would raise more questions than eyebrows, but they seldom do. No one wants to know what problems lurk there. 

     
In a continent as messy as Africa is, the bright spot that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has presided over since his guerilla army took control in 1986 has dazzled the Western world. His economic liberalization program and bold anti-AIDS campaign have won him well-deserved praise around the world. Following the bloody regime of Idi Amin and the anarchy of Uganda's first post-colonial leader, Milton Obote, all that Museveni has touched has glittered in the darkness of Africa. 

This glitter, however, has eclipsed his biggest policy failures: his inability to reconcile the country, especially the North and the South, and his failure to offer security and protection to hundreds of thousands of civilians in the North. 

Since 1986, various rebel groups have unsuccessfully challenged Museveni's claim to legitimacy, and the Lords Resistance Army (LRA), led by a self-proclaimed prophet, Joseph Kony, continues to wage war. Over the years, the LRA has abducted at least 26,000 children and brainwashed, trained, and armed them with the help of the Khartoum government before unleashing them against civilians in northern Uganda. The LRA's cult-like bloodletting has resulted in thousands of deaths. 

In 1996, government forces, unable to offer protection, decided to force the civilians into camps. These camps, in which almost a million people now live, are dens of misery. There is virtually no access to basic amenities. School-aged children are crowded into makeshift schools. Health centers are empty structures lacking medicine and qualified medical personnel. Food is in short supply. Humanitarian agencies, like the World Food Program (WFP), that would bring relief food to these displaced people are hampered by insecurity along the roads. 

In addition, the situation in northern Uganda threatens to undermine Uganda's sterling record in combating AIDS. Despite the falling rates of HIV/AIDS infection in the rest of the country, a recent sampling of pregnant women in the northern town of Gulu found that 30 percent of them were HIV positive. 

Then, in the middle of 2002, the government launched Operation Iron Fist. Touted as the final solution, in which Ugandan forces were permitted by the Sudanese government to battle the rebels in their territory, the operation turned into a disaster. The main casualties were child abductees in rebel custody. In reprisal, the rebels made indiscriminate attacks on civilians in the North. In one instance, they chopped up about a dozen civilians and boiled their remains in pots at a road junction near a government military outpost. Faced with this challenge, the army forced even more people into camps. To date, 90 percent of the population of Acholiland, a territory the size of Belgium and the heartland of rebel activity, has been displaced. 

The government has rebuffed all calls to involve third parties, like the UN or even another government, to mediate the conflict. Museveni is obsessed with a military solution, and even though Parliament has passed a resolution urging peace talks due to the overwhelming number of abducted children in the rebel ranks, he insists that they are terrorists and must be crushed. 

Imbibing the anti-terrorism rhetoric of Museveni, the West has largely been uncritical of his costly military campaigns. At $1.3 billion so far, the war now costs an average of three percent of Uganda's GDP each year. It has slowed down Uganda's economic growth, undermined tourism, and threatened the unity of the country as the southern-dominated government of Museveni is seen as lacking the political will to solve the problem. The war now threatens everything for which Museveni received accolades in the past. 

It is important that the world challenges Museveni on his policies that have clearly failed to reconcile Uganda. In addition, it is time to realize that pure militarism has failed and that a peaceful resolution to the conflict should be sought. What worked in Mozambique to stop the brutality of RENAMO could also work with Uganda's LRA. The world must act and act now. 

Norbert Mao is a Member of the Ugandan Parliament and currently a Yale World Fellow. 


      © 2004 The Yale Herald
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