allAfrica.com: Uganda: Joseph Kony's Killing Fields in Northern Region (Page 1 of 3)

FRANK NYAKAIRU looks at the major incidents of death during the Lord's Resistance Army's rebellion led by Mr Joseph Kony in part four of this series

Suddenly, a Tuesday bright and sunny morning unfolded the worst day in their lives. "They came and pointed a rifle at me. I dropped the child I was carrying and raised my hands," a survivor of the Atiak massacre on April 17, 1995 narrates.

"...My boy had been shot in the leg and was still alive when the rebels came back. They finished him off with a bayonet," another survivor said.

These harrowing stories are just two but part of dozens documented by the Justice and Reconciliation Project, Northern Uganda. The Atiak massacre was not only one of the biggest in post Independence Uganda, but also particularly shocking in how a community member can kill his own people at will. It followed warnings by Mr Kony to "punish the Acholi people for refusing to support us."

Mr Kony sent his deputy, Otti Lagony and a then junior commander Vincent Otti, whose home is located near Atiak trading centre. Otti (until recently the second-in-command of the LRA), believed to be one of the most eloquent rebel leaders, was once a businessman who sold merchandise to Makerere University students in Wandegeya on the outskirts of Kampala. But on this day, he reportedly ordered LRA fighters to attack with no fear or favour.

"Otti told us that we were undermining their power. He also said we people of Atiak were saying that LRA guns have rusted," another survivor says in the report. "He said he had come to show us that his guns were still functioning ... then ordered his men to shoot at the civilians."

Mr Otti, now believed to have been killed by his boss Kony in October 2007, bewildered his family. Just like any other Acholi family in the last two decades, they did not know who was their friend or foe. Both the LRA and the government forces then known as the National Resistance Army (NRA) turned their guns on the civilians at different times during this conflict.

The same situation befuddled every victim of LRA's vicious policy of abduction and conscription, among other crimes.

Though the National Resistance Army (NRA) changed its name following the promulgation of the 1995 Constitution to the Uganda People's Defense Forces (UPDF), it did little to change the bad reputation that the army gained in northern Uganda. NRA's image problems started way back in 1985.

Six months after General Tito Okello's coup, and just one month after the execution of the Nairobi power-sharing agreement, the NRA unilaterally abrogated the treaty and proceeded to militarily capture Kampala.

Government forces were overrun and expelled from the capital and then NRA finally took full control of the country. Mr Kony has accused President Museveni's army of committing atrocities when they arrived in Gulu.

"When they came they did very many bad things to our people, they killed so many of our brothers," Mr Kony says in a May 2006 video recording. But most of the initial atrocities allegedly committed by the NRA were actually by the Federal Democratic Movement (Fedemu), an anti-Obote rebel group which had joined Gen. Tito Okello's junta following the July 1985 coup against Dr Obote.

Fedemu did not enjoy a reputation for discipline. It was comprised mainly of Baganda combatants, among whose families were the victims of Luwero Triangle atrocities, allegedly committed by forces of Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA) that had first been Dr Obote's military and then broken down into factions, one of which backed the 1985 coup.

When the NRA overthrew the Okello government, Fedemu switched sides and was integrated as a distinct unit into the NRA, which from that moment assumed responsibility for its conduct. This group reportedly committed one of its worst atrocities at NamOkora, Chua County in Kitgum District. This was at the birth place of former president Gen. Okello. At least 45 civilians were roasted to death.

"They burnt people in the huts, they held their prisoners up-side-down and poured paraffin through the anus," Josephine Apire, formerly an LRA negotiator in the Juba peace talks, has said of the incident. When the NRA, which was predominantly made up of soldiers from western Uganda, took control of Gulu, this is a reputation they inherited. Years on, the UPDF's conduct in certain instances perpetuated that impression through various acts of indicipline.

During Operation North that was characterised by reports "of arbitrary arrests and detentions and blanket cordon and search operations intended to net the so-called 'rebel collaborators', which in the end generated resentment against the army and the government," writes Billie O'Kadameri, a journalist based in the north then, the Acholi suffered greatly.

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