The world may rest assured that the people of Uganda eagerly embrace the promise of peace and an end to the colonially generated violence, fascism and terrorism orchestrated by the Arab chauvinist regime of Sudan for the last 40 years.
In 1966, the then Prime Minister of Uganda, Milton Obote, overthrew the independence constitution that had only operated for four years, by use of military means. He replaced it with his own constitution, which the terrorized members of parliament (MPs) found in their mail boxes, after they had "passed it."
That constitution overthrew the decentralized form of government and concentrated all the powers in the hands of the president. Conveniently, Oboto declared himself president under the new constitution he had written, having dispensed with President Edward Mutesa.
This treachery was the genesis of the "political and constitutional crisis" of Uganda that went on until 1993 when, finally, under the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government, a constituent assembly was elected, democratically, by universal suffrage.
Ugandan society suffered mightily in the intervening years. Idi Amin killed about 500,000 persons between 1971 and 1979.
Then Obote returned for a second round of tyranny from 1980 to 1985, targeting civilians in the Luwero Triangle, where 300,000 perished. Half a million others were forced into exile from West Nile, the home of Idi Amin, and they fled to Congo and Sudan.
The NRM eventually won the civil war in 1986. The NRM and its predecessor organization, Front for National Salvation, had been fighting, almost continuously, for a total of 16 years. The NRM that won this civil war was comprised of patriotic revolutionaries that despised sectarianism; respected the peoples' human rights by punishing, harshly, soldiers and other criminals that engaged in extra-judicial killings of civilians; supported democracy - the denial of which had been the beginning of the Ugandan constitutional-political crisis way back in 1966; were for Pan-Africanism so as to strengthen the voice and capacity of the black people as well as other Africans; and were determined to modernize Uganda through industrialization, export-oriented growth and social transformation.
Over the past 20 years, the NRM has:
- Brought down HIV-prevalence from 30% in some urban centres in 1986 to a national average of 6.4%;
- Increased primary school enrollment from 2.5 million to 7.7 million;
- Increased universities from one to 18 (including private ones)
- Increased the share of industry as a portion of GDP from 8% to 22.2%, thereby causing a decline of agriculture as a percentage of GDP from 62% to 31.1% by maintaining an annual average rate of GDP growth of 6.3 %, while the GDP size of Uganda has more than tripled in the last twenty years.
Additionally, constitutionalism was restored in 1995; democratic elections are held every five years; a multi-party system, banished by Obote in 1969, has been restored; and a thorough going decentralization was put in place.
All these achievements were scored in spite of the terrorism campaign launched against Uganda by the Sudan government in northern Uganda, West Nile and the Rwenzori region of western Uganda - in partnership with Mobutu of Congo in respect of the latter two. Sudan executed this terrorism through a group calling itself the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) and other terrorist groups such as West Nile Bank Front (WNBF) and Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).
The Arab chauvinist regimes of Sudan did not want to be neighbors with a Uganda led by black nationalists. They apparently feared that if the black nationalists are allowed to entrench themselves in Uganda, they might eventually extend solidarity to their southern Sudanese black brothers, who had been fighting to throw off the Arab yoke since 1955, when the British left.
The Arab chauvinists, therefore, tried to overthrow our government by re-equipping the elements of the defeated former colonial army of Uganda - which had also served Obote and Amin) - that had fled into Sudan. After failing to overthrow the NRM government, the Sudanese Arab chauvinists aimed to destabilize Uganda or intimidate its government into becoming another stereotypically pliant, quisling black regime, with no qualms about selling out the interests of Africa.
With vile intentions, the Sudanese opened three fronts against us, using Ugandan agents: Kony's LRA in the Acholi area (North-Central), WNBF of Juma Oris in West Nile, and ADF, through Congo, in western Uganda. These multiple fronts were supposed to over-stretch Uganda's Army (UPDF) so as to lead to our regime's collapse or capitulation.
We prevailed on all the three fronts, defeating the ADF especially, after our intervention in Congo in 1997. We also defeated WNBF in West Nile and pushed both the Sudan army and Kony's army from our common border. The Sudan regime, in the end, was forced to negotiate with our Black brothers in southern Sudan, leading to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005.
The Sudan Government stopped overt support for Kony in 2002, allowing us to attack his bases in the Kit valley in April of that year.
This was the beginning of the end for Kony. Although the Kony forces tried to spread their terror to more districts, in an attempt to overstretch our forces in 2003, the defeat of Kony was as inevitable as the hopelessness of his cause had been. That is why Kony had to flee to Congo with about 200 remnants of his group. Since August 2003, we have rescued most of the children he had abducted - a total of 17,000 - and captured a total of 3,867 assorted pieces of weapons.
Since Kony's group targeted mainly civilians for abduction, murder, rape or mutilation, people in the affected areas fled from the rural areas to the trading centres and established what came to be known as Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps.
These were spontaneously created by villagers fleeing from the killers. They are not concentration camps like some charlatans such as Olara Otunnu [a former foreign minister of Uganda and former UN Under-Secretary General and former Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict] and other supporters of defeated genocidal regimes have been claiming.
The villagers ran from people who were killing them - the terrorists - to the people who were protecting them - the government army. Our resources were seriously strained by these unexpected migrations, but the government was determined to protect and provide for our desperate countrymen.
Our military forces, fortified by concentrated defense spending, overwhelmed the remnants of the rebel forces, which fled to Congo, where they are hiding out to this day. They are no longer able to disturb our people from there. They are now more of a problem for Congo, southern Sudan and the UN. We are ready to help, nevertheless.
Even as we now pursue Kony and his ragged and of rebels, offering them negotiations that they have not earned, but which civility requires, we are encouraging the civilians in the IDP camps to go home and be resettled. We have budgeted for the return of the people to return to their homes.
The external partners have also promised to help. As I write this note, about 200,000 people have already returned to their villages. The urgent issue is now to give the requisite package to them.
The external partners should, therefore, expedite their contributions. Our own contribution is already in place. The most important contribution, however, was to defeat Sudan's efforts and those of Kony, their agent in their terrorist campaign against the civilians and the economy.
Our critics, burdened by ignorance or political envy, have wrongly portrayed the Government as remiss, or worse, in its responsibilities to the refugees.
We are the ones who defended the people. That is why the people in the affected areas did not run into exile, but rather, to be nearer the centers of government.
In April 2006, I called a meeting of all the chairmen of the districts involved, the RDCs, the members of parliament etc., and caused them to adopt a uniform plan for managing the camps where they still exist. Some of the camps - Tetugu, Gengali, Otong, Alele, in Gulu and Pader - were well run. There, the people engage in production and there is no overcrowding.
The most important point, however, is that even at the worst of times, when the Sudanese equipped Kony with surface-to-air-missiles and land mines to interfere with the movement of vehicles and planes in northern Uganda, the army kept the roads open for relief, passenger transport and counter-terrorism operations. We won most of the major battles and won the war. Now, let the people of goodwill help us win the peace and resettle our people back in their homes.
I have found it necessary to write this article because of all the charlatans, criminals, neo-colonialists, busy bodies as well as some well-intentioned but ill-informed actors that continue to fog the screen and confuse the observer. There were crooks, in addition to the Sudanese, that were using this terrorism with the hope of re-instating the defeated dictatorships in Uganda.
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Now that the terrorism and its external backers have been defeated and the ICC has come in to prosecute the war criminals, they are scared stiff. They fear that the arrest of Kony will lead to the exposure of their criminal involvement. They, therefore, go all over the world spewing lies.
The people of Uganda and their army have single-handedly resolved this problem. The problem will not regress because we have the capacity to deal with the terrorists promptly when they come back to Uganda, or to the parts of Sudan and Congo that are near Uganda.
It is best if the UN forces in Congo, together with the Congolese government and the government of southern Sudan, could work together with us to deal with the remnants in Congo today. This has taken too long to be realized.
Whatever the goings on in Congo, Uganda has the capacity to guarantee its security and that of its citizens. In the struggles against Sudanese-sponsored terrorism, we were assisted by some of our African brothers for brief periods: the Eritreans, the Ethiopians and other brothers whose names I must hold in confidence.
The friends from outside who want to help should be informed that there are three areas now that need attention: the resettlement of the IDPs back to their homes, post conflict reconciliation within the affected communities and trauma counseling for victims of the rebel terror.
There is need for the UN forces in Congo, the Congo government, and the government of southern Sudan to deal with the remnants of the terrorists in Garamba National Park in Congo. Naturally, the Ugandan people and their government are prepared to root out the rebels and bring them, at long last, to justice.
Yoweri Museveni is the president of the Republic of Uganda. This article was written following the 26 August signing of a peace agreement between the government and the Lord's Resistance Army insurgency, after decades of conflict in northern Uganda.
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