Sam Hedlund
Contributing Writer
Just two weeks ago, the night many of us were celebrating St. Patrick’s’ Day, rebels in northern Uganda abducted between 40 and 50 children. By now it can be assumed that many have been beaten, raped or forced to torture and kill others as they are indoctrinated into the cult-like Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). If you have seen the documentary “Invisible Children,” you know the scale of the disaster in Uganda, where the LRA and Ugandan military are fighting a 17-year-old civil war that has cost tens of thousands of lives, displaced 1.7 million from their homes and lead to the abduction of 30,000 to 50,000 children. Furthermore, the situation has contributed to skyrocketing rates of HIV/AIDS in the region.
Despite these grim statistics and the recent abductions, some hope has appeared in the months since the movie’s release. Peace talks between the Ugandan government and the LRA broke down recently, but they served one of their main purposes by leading to the defection of dozens of LRA commanders. The LRA has responded by ordering child soldiers to shoot any commander who attempts to escape. Negotiations with the LRA, an organization with no real political objectives, were never expected to result in surrender.
Meanwhile, negotiations with Sudan, which long backed the LRA and allowed it to operate from within its borders, led to the December signing of a peace treaty between the two countries that requires Sudan to stop its support for the LRA. Many think that the LRA cannot survive without Sudanese support, and the Ugandan government claimed recently that its forces shrunk from 4,000 to 500. A March 24 report revealed that the rebels, under intense pressure from inside both Uganda and Sudan, were fleeing toward the Sudan-Ethiopia border.
At the same time, in the United States, the growing concern over what Doctors Without Borders has declared the “most underreported humanitarian crisis” led to the passage of the Northern Uganda Crisis Response Act last August. The act advocates a peaceful resolution to the conflict and for more protection for displaced civilians, especially women and children. It also calls on the United States to work with the international community to provide humanitarian aid and development assistance.
The roots of this devastating conflict lie in three places: The spirituality and charisma of Joseph Kony, the leader of the LRA rebels, who is perceived as predicting the future and is reported by former rebels to be friendly except when channeling spirits that direct the killing. The LRA, for all its violence, claims to be fighting the secular regime in order to establish a government based on the Ten Commandments.
Another cause is the more commonly held grievances that the LRA draws upon, especially the tension, built up by the divide-and-conquer tactics of colonial times, between the Acholi people of Northern Uganda and the tribes that now dominate the government. The LRA retains sympathy from some Acholi, but for the most part, has been discredited because most of those suffering from the conflict are Acholi.
A third, and harder to gage aspect of the conflict, is the possibility that the Ugandan government has deliberately prolonged the conflict in order to keep the Acholi under control and to benefit from the military aid it receives from the developed world.
The conflict may be on its way to being resolved, but even if it ends soon, the suffering will not be over. Tens of thousands of child soldiers have lost their youth and are often blamed and rejected by their communities. Millions of people will need to return to their homes and restart their lives. I urge all of us to find ways to help the people of Uganda. Let’s not let the children be invisible any longer.
3-31-2005