Barbara Among
28 November 2008
analysis
Kampala — Acholi singer Justine Obol, popularly known as Simpleman, vividly remembers the day the Lord's Resistance army rebels stormed their home and killed his father.
Obol, 25, has now made a hit in Northern Uganda with a song Kuc ber dano ducu meaning peace is good for everybody. However, for two decades, Obol has known nothing but the pain of growing up without a father in a war situation.
"Let's forgive and forget the past; we have to look to the future," he told delegates at the Juba Peace Talks when he met them early this year.
Just like Obol, many people in the war-ravaged northern Uganda have expressed support for the peace agreement and many are now preaching the message of forgiveness and peace.
When the Government and LRA delegates kick-started the talks on July 14, 2006, in the Southern Sudan town of Juba, many saw it as the best chance for a peaceful resolution of the war.
Several attempts to end the war peacefully had been made in the past, but with no success. The failure of earlier talks and the consequent mistrust had widened the rift between the Acholi community and President Yoweri Museveni's Government.
Conflict begins
The conflict in the north began in January 1986, when President Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Army (NRA) ousted the military regime of Tito Okello Lutwa, an Acholi general.
The retreating soldiers, from Lutwa's Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA), who were largely Acholi generals, fled to southern Sudan. Enroute, they warned the population of the wrath that would follow in the wake of the NRA victory.
The threat created fear and despondence among the Acholi people who would then follow the fleeing soldiers rather than any genuine concern about them.
Five months later, government ordered ex- UNLA soldiers to report to their barracks.
The order drew deep suspicion, in part, because it was reminiscent of the late ex-president Idd Amin's decree that led to the 1971 massacre of Acholi and Langi soldiers. Some ex-UNLA soldiers went into hiding, others fled to Sudan and some decided to take up arms.
UPDA of Odong Latek
Soon, the ex-soldiers were joined by a stream of youths fleeing from NRA operations. This saw the birth of the Uganda People's Democratic Army (UPDA) rebels, led by Brig Odong Latek.
UPDA launched the first attack on NRA forces in Gulu barracks on August 20, 1986. UPDA said it was in retaliation to attack on their base in southern Sudan by the Uganda-backed Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) rebels.
But the UPDF's General David Tinyefuza, says, "Because they (UPDA) had been in government and had been defeated by an incoming force; there was no reason why it would not regroup and make a counterattack."
The UPDA/NRA hostilities flickered in late 1986.
Lakwena's Holy Spirit Movement
Four months after the formation of UPDA, a second armed group - Alice Lakwena's Holy Spirit Mobile Force, the herald of the LRA, emerged in Acholi land.
In October 1987, the NRA defeated Lakwena's rebels, but the UPDA continued its war for another year, before signing a peace deal with the Government in 1988.
Factions of Lakwena's force continued their raids under Lakwena's father, Severino Lukoya Kiberu, who calls himself "God the Father." However, many of his followers were killed by the army. Those who survived joined the disaffected remnants of UPDA soldiers, which eventually became the LRA, formed in 1988, under Joseph Kony.
LRA and Kony
The defeat of Lakwena's force reinforced confidence in the army that any replay of the war in Acholi sun-region would meet the same fate. The emergence of LRA, therefore, did not initially worry the army. But Kony's army was strengthened by a combination of recruits of the remnants of both UPDA and Lakwena's rebels. They carried daring attacks against the army from 1988-89.
The LRA/NRA war flared in the early 1990s, as the LRA consolidated its military capacity, with rising humanitarian and military costs. However, insurgency in Lango and Teso sub-region had ended by this time.
As the armed conflict escalated in the north, the Government dropped its flippant attitude, stepped up a military campaign to destroy the LRA and created a political infrastructure to co-ordinate a response to the crisis.
Operation North
In 1990, Gen Tinyefuza, then, state minister for Defence and the NRA's chief military strategist, was sent to northern Uganda to finish Kony's forces. The operation - codenamed Operation North - launched in March 1991 was marked by arbitrary arrests, detentions and blanket cordon-and-search operations intended to net so-called rebel collaborators. This weakened the LRA, but the core of its leadership was unaffected.
Following the failure of the operation in June 1993, Betty Bigombe, the then minister for Northern Uganda Pacification, made contact with the LRA leadership with President Museveni's blessing.
Peace
On November 25, 1993 at Pagik, Aswa County, Gulu, the two sides held the first meeting, attended by members of LRA high command; the LRA director of religious affairs Jenaro Bongomin, one of the brains behind Kony's movement. He is said to have been the only person present when the Holy Spirit descended upon Kony in 1987 instructing him to start the rebellion. Others were Jackson Achama, Kony's personal secretary, commanders- Yardin Tolbert Nyeko and Cirilo Jurukadri Odego.
In this first meeting the LRA declared that it was ready to return home and did not want to be referred to as rebels but as people. They demanded that a cessation of hostilities be declared to allow it gather its troops in Kenya and Europe. They also demanded that the Government treat their sick under joint supervision.
Bigombe in-turn promised them that the existing general amnesty and presidential pardon would cover them. Such was the confidence built by the initial meeting that the LRA later sent their representatives to the Gulu army barracks, where Bigombe lived, to discuss the steps forward of the talks.
At the second meeting, a month later, Kony explained his reasons for fighting. In a four-hour speech, he held the Acholi community largely responsible for the war that had backfired with horrendous results that everyone now blamed on him.
Kony asked for six months to assemble his troops. After this second meeting, there was a lull in the fighting - the first since 1986. LRA fighters moved freely in the villages, entered army barracks and sometimes dined with NRA soldiers.
War again
Two months later on February 2, 1994, a larger meeting took place at Tegot-Atto, Gulu. Senior LRA commanders and NRA's Col Wasswa and Lt Col Tollit attended. A ceasefire deal was signed, but soon, the rebels broke away from the negotiations, claiming that the NRA was trying to trick them.
Four days later, President Museveni announced a seven-day ultimatum for the LRA to surrender or be forced out. This deadline ended the Bigombe initiative.
Although the reasons for the collapse of the talks remain disputed, it is clear that shortly after President Museveni's message, the LRA got military assistance from the Sudanese government and the war resumed with renewed intensity, deepening mistrust and with a new regional dimension to it.
The Rome talks
A number of informal pacifying efforts emerged in the intervening period to draw the Government and the LRA into peace talks.
The 1997 Rome talks, hosted by Sant'Egidio, were the first and the the most successful international attempt to broker peace.At this point, a new figure, Powell Onen Ojwang, emerged. His attendance was to greatly alter the course of events and the balance of power within the LRA's political wing.
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