UGANDA-POLITICS: Army Fails To Crush Northern Rebellion

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Jan 3 1997 (IPS) - The government of president Yoweri Museveni has admitted difficulties in its campaign against the insurgency in the north of the country, but it has ruled out talks with the rebels.

Maj-Gen Salim Salem, who is in charge of the troops in the north, said that the war against the rebels in the region, which erupted in 1987, has proven difficult to end due to the terrain and the weaknesses in the army.

“The army has been relaxed,” he told the foreign media this week.

Maj-Gen Salem, who is Museveni’s half-brother, said the army could not police the over 150-kilometre stretch of land between Uganda and Sudan. “The terrain is wide. It is open. The rebels come in and go out unnoticed,” he said.

The Ugandan government has often charged that the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) and its ally, the rebels of the West Nile Bank Front (WNBF) in the adjacent West Nile region, use bases in Sudan as a springboard for raids into Uganda.

Sudan counters the claims with allegations that Uganda is supporting the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), which has been fighting the government in Khartoum since 1983.

The Speaker of Sudan’s Parliament, Dr Hassan Abdalla al Turabi, told journalists on Jan. 2, that Sudan had no intention to destablise its eight neighbours.

“We have good relations with all our neighbours,” he said. “There are no ill feelings against them.”

Turabi, the leader of the powerful National Islamic Front (INF) party, is widely regarded in the region as the de facto ruler of the Sudan.

Sudan has also been accused of supporting the Ugandan Allied Democratic Front (Ugandan-ADF) rebels, based in the Ruwenzori mountains in eastern Zaire.

The Ugandan-ADF, composed for the most part of fundamentalist Salaf Tabliq Moslem fighters and remnants of the National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (NALU), first attacked Uganda from their Zairean base in November.

Reports in Uganda, received from surrendered LRA fighters, claimed that the LRA, WNBF, Salaf Tabliq and other rebel groups held a meeting in Aru, about 55 kilometres south of the main southern Sudanese town of Juba in November to co-ordinate their campaign against the Museveni regime.

During the meeting, the surrendered LRA fighters claimed that, the group elected LRA leader, Joseph Kony, as the overall commander of the Ugandan-ADF.

The LRA began its fight against Museveni’s National Resistance Movement (RNM) government in 1987, shortly after the defeat of a rebellion by the Holy Spirits Movement, led by Kony’s cousin Alice Lakwena.

The LRA is dominated by people from the Acholi ethnic group, which straddles the Uganda/Sudan border. Its goal is to rule Uganda on the basis of the 10 biblical commandments.

LRA’s “ally”, the WNBF, is dominated by people from the West Nile region — Madis, Lubgaras, Aringas and Nubians — who had formed the bulk of the army of former dictator Idi Amin. The group’s leader, Col. Juma Oris, was himself a senior official in Amin’s regime.

After Amin’s ouster in 1979, many of his henchmen fled to neighbouring countries, mainly Sudan and Zaire, from where they later infiltrated Uganda.

To defeat the rebels, president Museveni has taken personal command of the war and moved his headquarters late last year from Kampala to Gulu, a town some 200 kilometres north of the Ugandan capital.

LRA secretary-general Dominic Wanyama, in a statement made available to IPS recently, said the LRA was not intimidated by Museveni’s presence in the north.

Despite the escalation of the fighting, Museveni has ruled out talking with the rebels, arguing that it would set a precedence for other dissidents.

Maj-Gen Salem also says that the rebels don’t want to talk. “They think they can capture power in Kampala,” he said.

He has also rejected involving Sudan in any talks with the rebels, if there will ever be any. “We can solve the problem without having to talk with Sudan,” he said.

The proposed Iranian-brokered talks between Sudan and Uganda have yet to materialised.