| Last Updated: Sunday, 5 October, 2003, 15:21 GMT 16:21 UK |
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No respite in northern Uganda | ||||||||
| The Ugandan Government still appears to be having little success in its attempt to defeat the rebel force known as the Lord's Resistance Army.
Last year, President Yoweri Museveni deployed 14,000 soldiers, backed by tanks and helicopters, against the rebels. The LRA, he promised, would be wiped out by February this year. But the violence has continued. Bill Law is in the north of the country, where a number of people have been killed in rebel attacks in the last few days.
Our Land Rover stopped in the middle of nowhere - dry veldt 60 kilometres (37 miles) north of the nearest town, a few kilometres south of Sudan.
And then they appeared, Karamajong tribes people. First the children and then some adults. We were led through the grass and scrub, past kraals (hut villages) full of cattle to an open area, a large flat rock. An elder, tall and distinguished, held forth. Squatting all round him were young warriors wearing a ragtag mix of army fatigues and traditional blankets.
They were holding a variety of assault rifles - Russian AK-47s, American M-16s and British G3s. The local Oxfam co-ordinator who had brought us here worked his way through the warriors, smoothing things out. He was a little nervous because the Karamajong do not normally let outsiders see their weapons. They did so today because they trust Oxfam, thanks to a project that helps them treat cattle disease. Abandoned The young warriors are proud of their guns but the people of this region pay a terrible price. In a culture where cattle rustling is the norm, the transition over the last few decades from sticks and spears to assault rifles has decimated the Karamajong. Recently, 50 of them were killed when a raiding party from another clan attacked a village. But it is not just the warriors doing the killing. Last year, the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF), the Ugandan army, attempted to disarm the village of Panyangara. The warriors resisted and a fire fight broke out. When it was over, dozens, including women and children, were dead. Hundreds of homes had also been destroyed. Oxfam helped to rebuild them because, in many ways, this part of Uganda has been virtually abandoned by the central government in Kampala. Camp crisis President Museveni is often hailed as the new breed of African leader, determined to take his country towards a better future.
But here in the north, Ugandans have little hope that anything will improve. Around 150 kilometres (100 miles) to the west, nearly a million people, the Acholi, have been displaced by a guerrilla war that has sputtered on for 17 years. A few thousand child soldiers led by a charismatic madman called Joseph Kony have run rings around the UPDF. Mr Kony's LRA, the Lord's Resistance Army, kidnaps, brutalises and brainwashes young children. In 1997, the government moved most of the Acholi people into camps. They said it was to protect innocent civilians as well as making it easier for them to pursue the LRA. But the camps offer no protection either from the rebel raids or the UPDF - whose poorly fed and demoralised soldiers prey on the very people they are supposed to defend. Disease is rampant, with HIV/Aids jostling with malaria and starvation as the main killer. Government failure Every day in the late afternoon the camp people make their way into Kitgum, the principal town in the region.
Women and children stream in their thousands to spend the night sleeping on the ground outside hospitals and missions. Most of them do not even have blankets. All of them are suffering from malnutrition. The NGOs (non-governmental organisations) are overwhelmed and the government does next to nothing. The night I was there I saw no soldiers, no police, no government officials distributing food, blankets or water. What I saw were thousands crammed into every available piece of open ground at Kitgum Hospital, their lives utterly dislocated by the failure of Mr Museveni's government to end the war. He says he has a three pronged approach - military, prayer and peace. Escalating conflict But it is the first he seems to favour.
In June 2002, the president launched Operation Iron Fist. It was supposed to crush the LRA but the conflict has only escalated. More children are being abducted, more people killed and maimed. From time to time the army responds to another mass abduction by launching a counter-attack. Often it is captive youngsters, still tied together, who are killed then claimed as rebel dead. Sometimes the child soldiers escape. They are turned over to the UPDF for interrogation and then passed on to NGOs who work to bring these children back into civil society. No 'success story' I talked to a young man who had served as one of Mr Kony's elite guard.
Abducted at 16, held for three years, he was forced to kill or be killed. The first two he murdered were young girls who had tried to escape. I asked him how many people he had killed. "Forty-six, I killed 46 persons," he said. His eyes held no _expression_ when he told me this. He looked into the distance. Into a hell I could not possibly imagine. The West regards Uganda as a success story. But it is not, not here in the north. And it is only when the Museveni government picks up its duty to protect and care for its people that the guns may finally be put down. Maybe then. But right now that seems a long and terrible way off. | ||||||||
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