FOCUS: Uganda donors urged to turn up pressure for peace
08 Jun 2005 Source: AlertNet By Ruth Gidley
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Internally displaced Ugandans receive beans, maize and cabbage seeds from the Ugandan Red Cross at Aromo camp near Lira in northern Uganda.
STRINGER photo
LONDON (AlertNet) – Aid agencies say it’s time for global donors who fund half of Uganda’s budget to pile pressure on the government to replace military muscle with constructive negotiations to end a two-decade insurgency that has sowed misery in the north.
Britain has already cancelled a chunk of its aid over delays in Uganda’s return to multi-party politics and donors have imposed defense-spending caps since Uganda’s embroilment in conflict across the border in Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1990s.
But non-governmental aid organisations now want donors to go further by insisting that Kampala revive a peace process with northern insurgents that broke down earlier this year and use their influence to put Uganda’s “forgotten” war at the centre stage of international diplomacy.
They say the reluctance of rich countries to make waves in a country held up as an African development success story has let the conflict fester - despite massive suffering at the hands of a brutal rebel group that forces children into battle and cuts off the lips of its enemies.
For almost 20 years, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has been waging war against the government and carrying out horrific attacks on villages, towns and camps for the internally displaced. In a recent AlertNet poll of experts, the conflict emerged as the world’s second-worst humanitarian hotspot “forgotten” by the international community after Congo.
“People can’t get out in the fields to grow crops, they can’t trade in the markets because the roads aren’t safe, (there’s) massive trauma, especially among younger people, many of whom have been abducted,” said George Graham of British-based aid agency International Rescue Committee (IRC).
“If you compare that to what’s happening in Darfur (in western Sudan), where people are relatively aware of it and keen that the crisis be dealt with in terms of months rather than years, it’s shocking.”
Up to 100,000 people have been killed since the conflict began, and between 1.4 million and 2 million – or some 90 percent of the affected area of Acholiland - have been forced from their homes by the Ugandan army into squalid camps, which are vulnerable to LRA attacks.
Led by self-proclaimed prophet Joseph Kony, the insurgency initially drew on local resentment among the Acholi tribe, the largest group in northern Uganda, about their marginalisation by a government dominated by southerners.
But the rebels turned against the Acholi when support dwindled as the uprising turned into an apocalyptic cult-like army whose ranks are 80 percent abducted child soldiers.
MIXED MESSAGES
The conflict escalated in 2002 when President Yoweri Museveni launched “Operation Iron Fist”, a military campaign aimed at wiping out the LRA for good. Rebels responded by stepping up attacks on local people and increasing abductions of children.
These days, Uganda’s government employs what it calls a three-pronged approach to resolving the conflict: military force, a long-standing amnesty offer and peace talks.
"We are solving this problem, because we are defeating those terrorists," Ugandan Defence Minister Amama Mbabazi said at a recent debate at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
Peace talks between the Ugandan government and the rebels officially broke down earlier this year, but Kathy Relleen of Oxfam told AlertNet from Kampala that government negotiator Betty Bigombe – a former government minister -- was still in contact with Kony, believed to be hiding in Sudan.
Relleen, advocacy and information officer for Oxfam Great Britain, which is part of a coalition of civil society organisations for peace in northern Uganda, said the negotiators were keeping information close to their chests.
But she said: “The peace team is still there. The peace efforts are being made. (Betty Bigombe) is apparently in discussions with Kony. He’s had talks with her last week in Sudan. His mother went up to see him. His favourite wife went back to see him.
“There is some dialogue there, but it’s not helped by the fact that the government maintains it must keep this military pressure up in order to have peace. That undermines trust between both sides and puts the civilian population at risk.”
Relleen said the government had refused to commit to a new ceasefire because it said the rebels would use any lull to regroup.
Tim Raby, disaster management officer for northern Uganda with British-based NGO TearFund, said the government was sending dangerously mixed messages.
“On the one hand they’ll say: ‘We’re supporting the peace process’,” he said. “On the other, they’ll say: ‘We don’t want any more ceasefires’, or: ‘We’re prepared to root out these terrorists and kill every last one of them’. It’s very hard to negotiate from that position, because the signals are so mixed.”
RELUCTANT TO CRITICISE
Aid workers argue that without more foreign pressure, Museveni has no real motivation to negotiate a peaceful conclusion to the crisis in the way he has with other rebellions inside Ugandan territory such as a conflict in West Nile region that ended in 2002.
“The conflict in the north doesn’t affect the Ugandan state,” Raby said. “Therefore it’s not of particular interest to donors, it’s not of particular importance to the Ugandan government.
“Rather than focusing much more on the democratisation process, which is important … I would argue they (donors) need to put much more emphasis on the conflict.”
Uganda’s top donors are Britain, Ireland, Norway and Sweden. Others include Austria, Belgium, Canada, the European Union, France, Germany Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and the United States.
Since seizing power in 1986, Museveni has become a favourite of the West as his government put behind it the bloody and turbulent years of the Idi Amin dictatorship and brought about changes that gave Ugandans much to be proud of.
The Kampala government turned around an AIDS crisis and cut overall poverty rates. Numerous commentators say most Ugandans have vastly improved access to primary education, health care and clean water.
“Uganda is legitimately viewed as a success,” said Oliver Morissey, an academic at the Institute for Development Studies at Nottingham University, adding that the majority of people’s incomes had increased since Museveni came to power in 1986.
“Between about 1990 and the early 2000s, the incidence of poverty has been reduced by half, from 60 percent to below 30 percent.”
TearFund’s Raby said: “For a long time, Museveni’s been seen as one of the new breed of Africa’s leaders and the work that his government has done to increase the level of primary education and reduce the HIV rates has been excellent.
“I think that’s partly the reason why the international community has been unwilling to criticise him has been because of his record on those things.”
TALE OF TWO COUNTRIES
But Uganda’s success story is a tale of two countries because most of the gains haven’t reached the north.
Morissey said about 20 percent of Ugandans – the poorest of the poor – had not experienced any improvement in their standard of living. He said people in this category were typically rural families without farmland, afflicted by AIDS and with a woman at the head of the household, who tended to be concentrated in the north.
“Although there’s been a lot of progress, they’re still poor.”
Oxfam’s Kathy Relleen said: “There have been advances in HIV/AIDS and primary education, but (the north) still has the highest HIV rate in the country, and primary education is limited.
“Schools are displaced. There are classrooms with up to 200. If that’s quality education, it’s really disappointing.”
Donors occasionally tussle with Museveni, most recently over a plan to remove presidential term limits that critics say is aimed at keeping him in power despite the country’s promised return to multi-party democracy. Museveni banned political parties in 1986, blaming them for spreading tribal hatred.
Not all experts agree donors should beat the drum too loudly on northern Uganda, with some worrying that the use of aid as a bargaining tool could do as much harm as good.
“If donors did cut spending, the government may cut spending on health,” Nottingham University’s Morrisey said. “Ultimately, the poor would lose out, in access to health and education.”
But Raby said even if donors cut their bilateral contributions to Uganda’s national budget, they could still provide humanitarian aid through alternative channels such as the United Nations.
He added that the United States, not traditionally a major player in Ugandan aid, was becoming increasingly important in egging on the peace process.
Washington used to favour military suppression of the LRA, while the European donors pushed for peace talks, but the United States has come into line with its fellow donors over the last year and a half.
“NGOs have been pushing for a unified donor view on the conflict and how to end it, so if all the donors as one can say that a peaceful solution is the best way to go, that has an impact,” he said.
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