Monday, June 23, 2003
CHARLES ONYANGO-OBBO
New Genie of Uganda: The Man With the Gun
Army commander Maj-Gen James Kazini had indeed promised that if he couldn’t deliver LRA leader Joseph Kony’s head by December, he would quit.
When, even with the Uganda army deployed in southern Sudan where the LRA is believed to have important sanctuaries, it became clear that Kazini wouldn’t have his scalp any day soon, he amended the ultimatum. He said he wouldn’t quit, because to fail was human.
Kony replied that he would survive Kazini, as he had survived previous army commanders. And he did. In May, President Yoweri Museveni dropped Kazini in a reshuffle of the army leadership. And, sensibly, Minister of State for Defence Ruth Nankabirwa banned security officers from giving ultimatums for ending the 16-year-old rebellion in northern Uganda because it only brought embarrassment for the government.
The LRA, meanwhile, has stepped up both its attacks and atrocities. In the past two weeks, it has attacked targets in the remote northeastern district of Katakwi, far from its traditional killing grounds.
The LRA is also abducting more recruits, and has threatened to kill religious leaders who are trying to broker a peace settlement. Recently, it cut off the ears, nose, mouth, and hands of a government soldier. It posted a warning letter to the authorities with the ears of a boy enclosed.
One would imagine that the LRA would have been defeated by the wave of national revulsion at its actions. It hasn’t.
To compound matters, intelligence sources say the attacks in Katakwi could be the work of a new rebel group.
If one kept a directory of the Ugandan rebel groups that have risen up, been defeated, withered away or gone into exile in the past 15 years, it would be at least as fat as the Yellow Pages.
And that, ultimately, might be the real reason the LRA has not been defeated. Uganda has grown to be a country where the fact of being an armed man or group ensures you longevity either as a president with a partisan army, or a rebel leader.
Thus Uganda – and the world – has had its eye on Kony as a factor (call it serious threat) for 15 years running, while dismissing an opposition politician like Dr Paul Ssemogerere – who walks around with a constitution tucked in his back pocket – as an anachronism.
Some say it all began in 1966 when Prime Minister Milton Obote sent Gen Idi Amin to chase Uganda’s titular president Kabaka Edward Mutesa out of his palace. Others pinpoint it to when Amin overthrew Obote in a coup in January 1971.
Many armies came and went after that, and Museveni and his guerrillas elevated guncraft to an art form, and have been rewarded for it by being in power twice as long as any previous government.
We spend a lot of time chronicling the toll that the marriage between the gun and politics has taken on the country. So we grieve over the number of civilians butchered because that’s what we see and understand.
We don’t comprehend the culture of the men at arms because the majority of us don’t keep the company of rebels or soldiers regularly enough to enter their minds.
The fighting in the north, and the eruption of rebellions, are Uganda’s political equivalent of the genie in children’s fairy tales. Once the genie escapes, it takes a miracle to put it back in the bottle.
Not surprisingly, the one man who uttered the ultimate truth about the war in the north is former Army commander, now member of the East African Legislative Assembly, the mild and reflective Maj-Gen Mugisha Muntu.
He said the Museveni government can’t end the northern rebellion. The best it can do is to contain it.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is managing editor in charge of media convergence at the Nation Media Group.
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