The Observer (Kampala)
Martyn Drakard
23 September 2009
Kampala — Based on fieldwork conducted between 1997 and 2006, Sverker Finnstrom, lecturer in Social Anthropology at Stockholm University, describes how the younger generation of Acholi, those born during civil strife, come to terms with their "world" as they seek "good surroundings", better futures for themselves and their families. The author sets out to show the complexity of life in a war zone, and that black-and-white propaganda of "good guys" and "bad guys" doesn't hold.
Quoting Okot p'Bitek, the expression "bad surroundings" means that "the whole thing is out of hand, that the entire apparatus of the culture cannot cope with the menace any more." In other words: sickness is abundant, children are mal-nourished, cattle are gone, crops fail, bad spirits roam the surroundings and people are killed or die at an early age and in large numbers.
Finnstrom qualifies the LRA insurgency as a "dirty war", based on terror, with civilians rather than soldiers as tactical targets; a warfare that focuses less on killing the physical body than on terrifying the population as a whole into cowed acquiescence. Strategic murder, torture, community destruction, sexual abuse and starvation become the prime weapons in the arsenal of terror warfare.
In 2005, when the war was said to be over, except for a few mopping-up operations, one thousand Ugandans were dying every week in the camps, the overwhelming majority of curable diseases and malnutrition (WHO et al.)
He trashes the conventional wisdom that the Acholi people are responsible for Uganda's violent past. The colonial period, with its beliefs in clear-cut ethnic differences, and immutable human types, especially among "primitive" peoples, helped spread the misconception that the Acholi are warlike and backward. Onyango-Odongo, however, wrote in 1998 in an unpublished book that Acholi parents promoted education and white-collar careers rather than military careers for their children. The same had been foreseen by White educationists in the 1930s.
"Crowded in camps, Herded like cows, In a huge kraal, Cramped all together, In a foreign fashion, Not of their choice..." as described by Christine Oryema-Lalobo. And "That young boys of yesterdays, Should be forcefully enrolled into fighting, Killing, maiming, abducting, Forced to witness the unimaginable, The deaths of own kith and kin.
The very foundation of our culture Has been shaken to the very depth" in an unpublished poem by Caroline Lamwaka. Both these point to a new kind of war, fought with helicopter gunships, tanks, armored vehicles, machine guns and land mines, mass abduction of minors...forced mass displacement, destruction of crops and systematic rape. Past wars had identified allies and enemies; women and children could never be legitimate enemy soldiers and were not to be killed, only captured.
Most aspects of this war are carefully analyzed: political, cultural, the suffering and trauma, and the international connections. The book ends on a note of hope in the resilience of the Acholi, and looks towards a time when the surroundings will be "good": "when things are normal, the society thriving, facing and overcoming crises" (p'Bitek).
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