UGANDA-POPULATION: Sudanese Refugees Flee Rebels

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Sep 11 1997 (IPS) - Thousands of southern Sudanese refugees are returning home, fleeing the insecurity in northern Uganda, sources here say.

A Sudanese refugee who has just come back from northern Uganda told IPS on Thursday that the refugees were fleeing from Ugandan rebels who were “harassing, looting, raping and killing”.

According to the refugee, who declined to be named for security reasons, the Sudanese running away from Uganda realise that Southern Sudan, where a 14-year conflict between the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and government troops is raging, is not an ideal place for them to return to. But, the refugees, desparate to get out, say it is better for them to die at home than to be killed by Ugandan rebels, he said.

Confirming the return of the Sudanese, Peter Oryema, who is the Secretary-General of the Uganda Red Cross, told the international media this week that only about 50,000 refugees were left in Arua and Moyo districts, on the border with Sudan.

More than 320,000 refugees were registered in Uganda by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1987, at the height of the Sudanese conflict.

“Most of them, especially those in Arua and Moyo districts, have now returned to Southern Sudan,” said Oryema.

He said those in Kitgum district had integrated into the society where they have now become self-reliant, providing for their basic needs.

There are more than 400,000 Sudanese refugees in neighbouring countries, on account of the war, and at least 2.5 million Sudanese in Egypt, which does not recognise Sudanese as refugees.

According to a report by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, there are 27,000 Sudanese refugees in the Central African Republic (CAR), 320,000 in Uganda, 60,000 in Ethiopia, 112 in the former Zaire — now renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo — and 37,000 in Kenya.

The Sudanese refugees in northern Uganda accuse the West Nile Bank Front (WNBF), which is seeking to topple the government of President Yoweri Museveni, of harassment and other atrocities.

The WNBF 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.

They first made headlines in May 1996 when a group of 300 rebels who had entered Uganda from Southern Sudan raided an army barracks in the town of Koboko, blew up part of a bridge and ambushed a Red Cross truck.

Koboko, Amin’s birth place, is a remote town some 600 kilometres northwest of the Ugandan capital, Kampala.

Since then, the WNFB, said to be backed by Sudan, has been staging a series of raids against camps holding people displaced by the 14-year war between Khartoum and rebels fighting for self- determination for Southern Sudan.

The refugees, who have experienced only blood, destruction and death from the rebels, say they also fear the alliance between the WNBF and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which killed more than 100 Sudanese when it attacked a refugee camp in northern Uganda last year.

The LRA, headed by herbalist Joseph Kony, is dominated by people from the Acholi ethnic group, which straddles the Uganda/Sudan border. 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 Ugandan government has often charged that the LRA — whose goal is to rule Uganda on the basis of the 10 biblical commandments — as well as the WNBF, use bases in Sudan as a springboard for raids into Uganda.

The Sudanese authorities counter that Uganda is supporting the SPLA, which temporarily drove the Ugandan insurgents from refugee camps in Southern Sudan in the 1980s.

SPLA leader Col John Garang recently urged refugees to return home to areas controlled by his rebel movement.