UGANDA: Rebels Scale Down Fighting To Allow Farmers To Plant

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Aug 14 1997 (IPS) - Rebels seeking to topple the government of President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda say they have scaled down military operations to allow farmers to plant their fields.

John Obita, the spokesperson for the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) here, has been quoted by a European radio station as saying that the decision to reduce the rebels’ activities did not mean surrender or defeat by government forces.

“Instead we want to dispel the widespread claim by the government that the LRA does not care about the welfare of the civilian population in northern Uganda,” he said.

The LRA, headed by herbalist Joseph Kony, operates in northern Uganda, on the border with Sudan. It began its fight against Museveni’s government in 1987, shortly after the defeat of a rebellion by the Holy Spirit 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.

According to political analysts here, one possible reason for the LRA’s change in tactic is that the rebel group is no longer a formidable fighting force. “It has been facing a series of defeats by government forces in the battle fields,” said a lecturer at the University of Nairobi.

His view is shared by a Ugandan businessman here who said he was convinced that time was running out for the rebels. “I think the LRA as a rebel movement is finished,” he told IPS on Thursday.

Similar statements have been uttered by President Museveni, and his top military aides.

In late July, Museveni urged his country’s motley rebel groups to give up. He said the wind of change that had been blowing across Rwanda, with the ouster of Juvenal Habyarimana’s government in 1994, and in the former Zaire — now renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo — with the toppling of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in May, marked the end of an era for dissidents intending to destablise Uganda.

Museveni says he is convinced that neither Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, nor Tanzania would lend support to any dissident group in Uganda.

In the North, the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) says it has also “sealed” the Sudan/Uganda border, a key supply route for the LRA.

The move to “seal” the border brings to the fore, once more, the charge by the Ugandan government that the LRA uses bases in Sudan as a springboard for raids into Uganda. On their part, the Sudanese authorities counter that Uganda is supporting the SPLA.

Last year, the United States pledged 20 million dollars in military aid for Uganda, Ethiopia and Eritrea to fight the threat of Islamic fundamentalism spread by Sudan.

Uganda claims that Sudan is using rebel groups like the Allied Democractic Forces (ADF) and the West Nile Bank Front (WNBF) as agents to disseminate the regime’s extreme brand of Islam.

The ADF is a combination of the Islamic fundamentalist group known as Tabliq, remnants of the National Army for the Liberation of Uganda, and soldiers of the ousted governments in Rwanda and the former Zaire. It is currently fighting government forces in western Uganda, on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The WNBF on the other hand, is dominated by people from the West Nile region — Madis, Lubgara, Aringas and Nubians — who had formed the bulk of the army of the ousted 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 the former Zaire, from where they later infiltrated Uganda.

Opinions are, however, divided in Uganda on how to end the conflict in the north. Museveni, who has accused the LRA of committing atrocities against the civilian population, is adamant in his rejection to talk with the LRA, saying such a move would set a dangerous precedent for other rebel groups.

He has, however, agreed to monitor talks between the LRA and a group of concerned Acholi elders and legislators, whose region has been devastated by the war.

But others like his half-brother, Maj-Gen. Salim Saleh, suggests a loan scheme to help develop the potentially agriculturally-rich region. He argues that the Acholis would stop backing Kony once they are engaged in some sort of trade or business.

The assessment is based on the skewed development in Uganda where the south and southerners benefit from a business boom under Museveni’s government, while the north remains marginalised, unstable and resentful.

Saleh, a southerner like Museveni, is commanding government troops that are fighting rebel forces in the north of the country.

Museveni seized power in January 1986, after six years of bush war. His government, backed by human rights groups, has compiled a list of over one million people, allegedly murdered by dictators Amin and Milton Obote between 1971 and 1986.

Other rights groups like the London-based Amnesty International and Africa Watch have also documented cases of atrocities, such as forced recruitment through abduction, rape and the cutting off of the ears, lips or limbs of civilians suspected by the LRA of collaborating with the government.

Those claims have, however, been rejected by the LRA. Obita said the LRA rebels would not have survived among the population if its human rights record was that poor.