Dear Tingasiga:
My letter of August 4 titled Northern Killings Bring Out Racism of Ugandans has, quite understandably, generated a lot of passionate debate.
I have received numerous e-mail messages from Ugandans, especially from northern and north-eastern Uganda, expressing complete agreement with my submission.
Others on some Internet discussion groups have offered very considered opinions about the terrible tragedy of the war in the north.
Of course one or two who labour under the burden of ethnic narrow-mindedness read anti-Buganda sentiments in my letter, where none existed.
No doubt it was a tiny minority of readers who suffered such parochial reading of a fairly elementary essay. I am sure the majority of Ugandans, and certainly most Baganda, understood the essence of my commentary, namely, a condemnation of the UPDF's killing of innocent unarmed civilians in Acholi and Teso, as well as the absence of a collective outrage against these incidents.
For the record, my condemnation of the crimes of the soldiers who killed innocent citizens was not a rejection of my long-held position with regard to fighting Mr Joseph Kony.
Kony is a terrorist through and through, devoid of a programme or cause that is worthy of consideration by civilised people. I will say that again: Kony has no justifiable cause or political programme, besides turning his homeland into the heart of darkness.
His group's savagery against the children, women and men of Acholi, Lango and Teso is clear evidence of this fact.
That is why I have disagreed with the idea of negotiating with him. I remain in complete agreement with President Yoweri Museveni that Kony and his senior commanders must not be forgiven their crimes.
Thus I still support, in principle, a hard-nosed military approach against these terrorists, though of course I totally reject, and will continue to condemn, any violent act by the UPDF directed at unarmed people.
The UPDF's failure to end Kony's terrorist rebellion, the misconduct and criminal activities of some government soldiers, and the derailed political leadership of Mr Museveni and the NRM do not exonerate the brutal rogues of the LRA and their sponsors.
Images of mutilated bodies of children, women and men, and persistent reports from independent sources about the LRA's crimes against humanity inform my opinion on this matter.
Having said that, three realities that are worth reflecting on:
First, the Kony terrorist rebellion is not about to end. While Lt. Gen. Museveni and some of his senior commanders have declared, for the umpteenth time, that Kony is finished, blood continues to flow in an ever-expanding killing field. Not even Museveni believes the official deception.
Second, the UPDF has been made to fail in its mission to protect the people of northern Uganda.
Notwithstanding the claims of the Ugandan President and the presence of written guidelines, the UPDF is not organised and managed as a disciplined force.
Well-informed sources in the army tell us that the force is guided and run on impulse. Recruitment, training, promotion and administration do not follow any standards and procedures. All this has killed the morale of the fighting force.
Furthermore, the extreme corruption in the army, which makes the civilian version of this scourge sound like child's play, has killed the fighting spirit of what was once a respected and disciplined force.
The northern rebellion has been a financial windfall for some powerful military officers who have become so rich that they are not eager to risk their lives and comfort in the defence of poor peasants.
While there are many excellent and committed UPDF soldiers and officers, the fact is that the army has become dysfunctional and therefore ineffective in its mission.
It has not escaped one's attention that the president himself is actively building his own parallel army, the Presidential Guard Brigade [PGB], a powerful commentary on his view of the regular force.
None of this is good news for those of us who had hoped that the UPDF would perform its constitutional duty and deliver a knockout punch to the terrorists and secure peace and safety for millions of Ugandans in the northern region.
Third, many people from Acholi and others better acquainted with the situation on the ground than I am, have made well reasoned arguments in favour of negotiations with Kony and his LRA.
To be sure, the notion of negotiating with Kony is akin to swallowing hemlock. I remain unconvinced, for I see him as an identical twin of the recently deceased Foday Sankoh of Sierra Leone.
Sankoh, you will recall, was the leader of the Revolutionary United Front [RUF,] a vicious rebel group that employed machetes to hack off limbs, lips and ears of Sierra Leonean civilians, gang-raped girls and women and turned their land into the heart of darkness.
In 1999, the government of Sierra Leone negotiated a power-sharing arrangement with Sankoh, in the hope of securing peace. He returned the favour by continuing his murderous programme, while in government, until cornered by a justifiably enraged crowd of Sierra Leoneans in May 2000.
He was saved from lynching by British and Sierra Leonean government soldiers who took him into custody, where he spent his last days manifesting major signs of clinical insanity, haunted by the ghosts of the thousands of innocent people he had murdered in his quest for power.
I believe that Kony and his LRA would behave exactly like Sankoh and his RUF, and Museveni is right not to trust them.
In the ideal world, Kony ought to be dealt with militarily.
However, in the absence of a disciplined and committed government force to successfully fight these terrorists, and in the absence of a credible political leadership in Kampala with the political will to secure a peaceful resolution to the conflict, we need to find an alternative way of saving our country and our people.
There is an urgent need for a roundtable conference of representatives of all Ugandans, not just between the Kampala government and representatives of Acholi, and certainly not just between Museveni and Kony.
The conflict is a Ugandan problem and all Ugandans must be represented at the table.
The politics behind the terrorism, the crimes of the terrorists and the government forces, and the fundamental causes of the vicious cycle of violence in our country must be acknowledged and addressed by society in a sober and deliberate manner.
The process of building institutions of democracy and of managing the transition towards real democracy and the rule of law must be a centrepiece of the national dialogue.
The conversion of the army into a neutral, national, professional and effective force must be high on the agenda.
No doubt the President believes that any dialogue must be on his own terms and under his supervision. This is a line of thinking that he ought to abandon as quickly as possible.
The fact is that Museveni, who has completely exhausted his trust account with the people of Uganda, cannot be a credible broker in this process.
He must, of course, be an important person at the table, but working together with other Ugandans to find a solution under the auspices of a credible, neutral party sponsored by either the African Union [AU] or the United Nations [UN].
The search for comprehensive peace in Uganda challenges us to constantly examine and re-examine our positions on the long and expensive conflict that has cost the lives and dreams of millions.
Surely it is not beyond our power to let reason triumph over passion, to let our collective interests take precedence over our parochial ethnic interests, and to learn from our history in order to manage our future. We live in hope.
