Members: Here is a copy of a letter delivered to the White House not too long ago.
Ochan ----------------------------- Mr. President, We the members, directors of the board, officers, volunteers, and supporters of Friends for Peace in Africa (FPA) are very excited to learn that you will visit five African countries next week. We are even more excited about your Administration's commitment to working towards a free, peaceful, and prosperous Africa. We welcome such a noble commitment from the most powerful country in the world. It gives us hope that peace in Africa will soon become a reality. We welcome your recent pledge of $15 billion to fight the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and are particularly proud that you intend to use the Ugandan AIDS program as a model to be adopted by other African countries. Furthermore, we applaud your commitment to promoting democracy throughout the world. Lastly, we appreciate the strong position you have taken on President Charles Taylor for failing to step down when the people of Liberia no longer want his leadership. Mr. President, your visit to the country of Uganda, which follows on the heels of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's visit to the White House last month, is of particular interest to us. As a project-driven organization with a mission to bring peace to the troubled continent, FPA's principal project right now is the dismantlement of the Internally Displaced People's (IDP) camps in the Lake Region of Africa. Many of such camps exist in Uganda. On June 10, 2003, FPA sent you a letter addressing the situation in Uganda, particularly the 17-year war in the north between President Museveni's Uganda Peoples Defense Forces (UPDF) and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). We implored you in this letter to make it very clear to President Museveni that your administration wants a peaceful settlement of the northern conflict-not a military one. This war of attrition has killed, maimed, and displaced almost a million people in northern Uganda. Information reaching us indicates that you responded by insisting that Mr. Museveni not only seek peace in northern Uganda through negotiation, work to stem corruption in his government and military, but also adhere to the constitution that limits the presidency to two terms. For this, we are eternally grateful. Mr. President, recent actions by President Museveni indicate that he does not intend to heed your advice. Even as he is expecting you in Uganda, he has sent out a strong message that he does not intend to do any negotiating with the LRA. Instead, he has appointed General Tinyefuza to be Coordinator of Operation Iron Fist, a military push to defeat the LRA on the battlefield. General Tinyefuza is legendary for his ruthlessness against the Acholi people of northern Uganda during the first attempt to suppress the LRA by force 17 years ago. The locals know him best as the butcher of the Acholi people of northern Uganda. His appointment means an escalation of the war and further suffering: the LRA responds to force, or the threat of force, with more raids, abductions, killings, rapes, lootings, etc. to prepare for it. Their excursions in Eastern Uganda represent a new phase in their operations. It is likely to expand into other areas of presently secure areas of the country. We are particularly happy that you are visiting Uganda and we anticipate that Ugandans will enthusiastically and warmly welcome you. We would like to point out, however, that a specific sector of the Ugandan population targeted for annihilation by Mr. Museveni will not be there to welcome you even if they wanted to do so. These are the Acholi people of northern Uganda. We wish that your visit included going to northern Uganda to see for yourself the horrendous conditions under which people have been confined in the so-called protected villages since 1996. Please note that General Salim Saleh, one of the architects of the war and a close military advisor to, and brother of, President Museveni, admitted last week that the war was a mistake, and that the so-called protected villages were unfit for human habitation. The villages are neither protected from the LRA,UPDF, biting poverty, diseases such as AIDS and TB, nor moral decay. Evidence abounds showing that government troops frequently commit atrocities against innocent people on an even wider scale, but blame them on the LRA. The most heart-wrenching consequence of the 17-year war is that children, the most vulnerable members of our society, are the principal victims. They are subjected to daily kidnappings by the LRA, which turned them into child soldiers and, hence, killers. The LRA is also rounding up little girls as young as 10 and distributing them to LRA officers as wives, concubines, or incubators of future LRA soldiers. The LRA is also selling children as slaves to the Arabs in northern Sudan in exchange for military support. In spite of all the appeals from the victims of the war, religious leaders including the Pope, President Museveni has stubbornly refused to pursue a negotiated settlement: he favors a military solution. Yet, in spite of all the promises and millions of dollars spent, the Museveni government has been completely unable to win a military victory over the LRA. There are indications that President Museveni is also perpetuating the war to win political support from the rest of the country by continuously demonizing the Acholi people and the LRA. In any case, the median age of the LRA rebels drops every year, and is now closer to 12. In fact the war is spreading into new areas such as Eastern Uganda. While it is bad enough for children to be kidnapped, it is even worse for them to be forced to fight against the government soldiers that are supposed to protect all citizens of the country, particularly children. When the UPDF proudly announces how many rebels they have killed in each military operation, it actually announces the killings of children it had failed/refused to protect from being abducted by the LRA and turned into child soldiers in the first place. We cannot imagine how you would feel if your own soldiers were to kill American children. Mr. President, we also cannot imagine the magnitude of the sorrow that parents of kidnapped children must feel or the terror parents of young teenagers must experience knowing that their loved ones could be kidnapped at any time from the so-called protected villages right from the watchful eyes of President Museveni's troops. Lastly Mr. President, while we feel proud that you might be considering adopting the Uganda AIDS program as a model for fighting AIDS in Africa, we would like to draw your attention to the fact that many AIDS epidemiologists are beginning to question the so-called 'success' of this program. Even more are becoming less convinced that President Museveni had as much to do with this 'success' as he is being credited with. Consider the following: 1. The entire AIDS program has been confined to the peaceful parts of the country, i.e., southeast, south-central, southwestern, and southern Uganda. In fact, given the horrendous conditions of life in the IDP camps, the incidences of AIDS in war-ravaged northern, northeastern, and the West Nile districts of Uganda have not abated. If anything it is on the rise. 2. Ugandan societies have traditionally been open to new information on sexual practices. The adoption of new sexual practices spoke more of the advantages of open societies rather than deliberate/conscious application of political leadership. That Mr. Museveni was the President when the AIDS program became a 'success' needs to be attributed as much to the coincidence of history as to the effectiveness of his political leadership. 3. The fight against HIV/AIDS in Uganda was, and is, a moral issue. Women's organizations, traditional and religious leaders, non-profit organizations, and individuals were more involved in the fight using societal sexual practices rather than the policies from the government on HIV/AIDS. The so-called Museveni 'success ' is therefore limited. We cannot envision how the Ugandan model can be considered a national success if it excludes, by design or neglect, more than a quarter of the country. In our humble opinion, the people of northern Uganda, who are confined in the congested IDP camps, deserve as much right to enjoy the success of the program as any other Ugandan citizens. While you consider adopting the Ugandan AIDS program for other African countries, we humbly ask that you also consider the application of the same program in northern Uganda, a peaceful Northern Uganda. While we anticipate that you will be warmly welcome in Uganda and that you will have a memorable visit, we appeal to you to think about three concerns we described above: 1) the 17-year war in Northern Uganda, 2) the forced confinement of IDP in camps under conditions contrary to the United Nations Guidelines on internally displaced people and 3) the continuous use of abduction of children by the LRA and the conscription of children into the Uganda government military. In our opinion, the perpetuation of these problems is contrary to the commitment of working towards a free, peaceful, and prosperous Africa as a whole-and Uganda in particular. We feel that it would be very helpful for our effort to peacefully resolve the war in northern Uganda if you take the lead in strongly insisting that (a) President Museveni and the LRA abandon their military approach to the 17-year old war and instead pursue a negotiated settlement, (b) both sides stop using child soldiers in their armies, and (c) the Uganda government ensures that the IDP camps are orderly disbanded so that residents can peacefully return to their homes. While the Pope and other religious leaders, the European Union and its member countries, and local, national, and international non-governmental organizations operating in Uganda have often vociferously insisted that peace in Uganda be sought through negotiation rather than military victory on the battlefield, your leadership on this and other attendant issues, as shown in the case of Liberia, is indispensable if President Museveni is to seriously consider negotiating with the LRA. We wish you a memorable and successful visit to Africa, and hope that it will not be the last as President of The United States of America. God bless you, and God bless America. Respectfully, Ochan Otim, Ph.D. Okot Nyormoi, Ph.D. President. Chairman, Board of Directors. Cc. Colin Powell, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, National Security Advisor Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
