UGANDA: The End in Sight For ‘Christian’ Rebels?

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Sep 28 1997 (IPS) - Excited Ugandan officials insist that Joseph Kony, the enigmatic leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), is starving in his hideout in northern Uganda and looking for a guide to smuggle him out to Kenya to seek refuge there.

News of Kony’s alleged plight was broken by Col James Kazini, the overall army commander in northern Uganda. He told the state- run ‘New Vision’ newspaper on Sep. 19 that the LRA leader and his 40 escorts were badly short of food.

“They are starving, but fear to come out into the open to confront the army,” the Ugandan paper quoted him as saying.

Kony is a herbalist and former Roman Catholic cathecist. The goal of his LRA — which operates in northern Uganda on the border with Sudan — is to rule the counry on the basis of the 10 biblical commandments.

The LRA began its fight against President Yoweri Museveni’s government in 1987, shortly after the defeat of a rebellion by the Holy Spirit Movement, led by Kony’s cousin Alice Lakwena.

Now a refugee at Kakuma in Kenya, on the border with the Sudan, Lakwena reportedly spends much of her time prescribing and supplying medicinal herbs to other refugees from Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A former barmaid, she had driven thousands to their death by making them believe that throwing stones at the enemy could end the war faster and that applying sesame oil on their bodies would make them immune to bullets.

Like Lakwena, Kony strongly believes in the power of the spirit. Those in the know say his decisions are always based on dreams and on consultations with oracles — practices also held dear by former dictator Idi Amin, who ruled Uganda from 1971 to 1979.

The rumours surrounding the demise of the rebel group heightened after a top LRA official said in August that it had scaled down its military operations to allow farmers to plant their fields.

John Obita, the LRA spokesperson here, was quoted by a European radio station as saying that the decision to reduce the rebels’ activities did not mean surrender or their 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.

Immediately after that, Ugandan papers, quoting military sources, reported that Sudan had cut supplies to LRA base camps, forcing Kony and some 300 rebels into Uganda. Their arrival sparked a series of clashes with the army in the northern district of Kitgum and 50 children abducted earlier by the rebels were reportedly rescued after one battle.

The crisis in the LRA has compelled more than 800 rebels to surrender to the army since March, according to military sources in Kampala. Perhaps the big blow to the LRA is the reported sealing off by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) of the Sudan/Uganda border, a key supply route for the LRA. However, reports to that effect have not been confirmed.

The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) is a rebel group fighting to topple the Islamic fundamentalist regime in Khartoum, which has consistently accused Uganda of backing the rebels. Kampala, on the other hand, has charged that the LRA has used bases in Sudan as a springboard for raids into Uganda.

Each country’s government has denied supporting rebels opposed to the other.

Humanrights groups such as the London-based Amnesty International and Africa Watch hae documented cases of atrocities imputed to the LRA. These include forced recruitment through abduction, rape and the cutting off of the ears, lips or limbs of civilians suspected by the rebels of collaborating with the government.

In a joint report they released last week, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch condemned the kidnapping and murder of children by the LRA.

The human rights groups charge that 8,000 to 10,000 children, some as young as 11 years old, had been abducted in the past two years and subjected to extreme and arbitrary violence. Some were forced to kill other children, and girls were allocated to LRA commanders as sex slaves, they reported.

The LRA has rejected similar accusations in the past. Obita said the rebels would not have survived among the population if their human rights record was that poor.

Efforts to reach LRA officials here to get comments on Kazini’s statement on the situation of their leader have been fruitless since their telephone lines were dead. A rumour that LRA Secretary- General Dominic S. Wanyama had been transported to a refugee camp in northern Kenya as a result of pressure from the Ugandan government could not be immediately confirmed.