Social Torture. Chris Dolan
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(Dolan and Hovil 2006).
The approaches I adopted during the main research period were influenced by a number of factors. One was the simple fact of working within a development NGO and wishing to make the research as relevant as possible to the organisation's activities and to engage colleagues in the research process. Others were related to logistics, security and political sensitivities; rather than a post-conflict situation this was an ongoing ‘war’ with fluctuating levels of insecurity which cast a spell of uncertainty over everything and left the boundaries of what was possible or desirable distinctly unclear; in particular I did not know what my colleagues (particularly the fieldworkers based in the protected villages) would feel safe to ask or talk about.
At a much more conceptual level, I felt an urgent need to question the whole basis on which the COPE project had been structured, namely the belief that the local, national and international dimensions of conflict could be de-linked. The various fieldwork-based readings outlined in the introduction offered convincing evidence that careful attention to peoples’ subjective experiences and interpretations at a local level offered greater insights into the linkages or systemic nature of a situation than the more ‘theoretical’ studies. This went hand in hand with a more political concern to give voice where it had been silenced. I thus needed an exploratory process which was both ethically and methodologically sound.
Institutional Setting
Whereas in all my previous research work I had been a member of academic institutions, here I was in a development NGO. Although it was fairly typical of development NGOs, in that research activities were very much the lesser partner in relationship to ‘programme’ activities, it had a commitment to research built into the name (Agency for Cooperation and Research in Development) and was open to being involved in a piece of work which went beyond more traditional needs assessments or monitoring and evaluation concerns.
In Gulu itself, ACORD had had a presence since the 1980s. Unlike the majority of other agencies it had never closed its office, even during the most difficult periods. It had a correspondingly strong reputation and profile, and when I went to do fieldwork people did not respond purely to my research activity, but also to their generally positive experiences of the agency I worked for. This also substantially eased the task of persuading the authorities of the legitimacy of the project. It also brought with it certain responsibilities vis-à-vis my colleagues; although I was there on a time-bound basis and with my own funding, I was expected to fit myself to a certain degree within the agency's existing practices. At a minimum this involved things such as participation in organisational meetings, and, more importantly, it meant I had to consider what impact my work would have on theirs and whether the two could be combined to mutual advantage. It also meant that I became a participant observer in the at times complex relationships between Government, humanitarian and aid actors. For example, in the three months following ACORD being kicked out of Kitgum district by an irate LCV chairman, I attended numerous meetings at local and national levels between the agencies, the LCVs and the office of the Minister for Northern Uganda Reconstruction.
Working in a ‘War Zone’
As this example shows, even an established NGO such as ACORD faced challenges and a degree of vulnerability. The necessary authorisations were not always sufficient to gain access to individuals and places, or to address certain issues. Fluctuating security made travel outside the immediate vicinity of Gulu town unpredictable, and the context as a whole created high levels of suspicion, not just of me as an obvious foreigner, but also of colleagues whose personal political affiliations were not known but could put respondents at risk. Unlike an idealized Clausewitzian situation in which good and bad guys are clearly identifiable, here there was the official position on the ‘bad guys’ (the LRA), but no agreement on the ‘good guys’ – or if there even were any. Some people did not even see the LRA as primary protagonists, but rather as mere proxy fighters in a war between the Governments of Uganda and Sudan (see Chapter 4).
Possible respondents had many interpretations of our role as researchers, including that we were spies for foreign governments, or might feed our findings to the Ugandan government, or alternatively were rebel sympathisers ourselves. It was often extremely difficult to judge where a given respondent sat on the political spectrum, and how information flows worked. It was also the case that both respondents and co-researchers were likely to have occupied several different roles in their lives (e.g. civilian, soldier, rebel), each with different political overtones. And it was not uncommon for a person to have different close family members in several different political camps. They might have a brother in the bush, a sister in local government, an uncle in central government and cousins in London, Toronto or New York.
These high levels of ambiguity about identities, affiliations and political sympathies, created serious security/confidentiality concerns for researchers and respondents alike. This was particularly the case when researching the LRA, for even to ask a question about them in Gulu was liable to raise suspicion (or fear). Not only was documentation scarce, but to attempt to talk with the LRA could be viewed by the authorities as tantamount to collaboration – as The Monitor newspaper noted, ‘When Presidential candidate Paul Ssemogerere told voters in 1996 that he would talk to Kony into abandoning the rebellion, he was branded a rebel himself’1. Even those who had been authorised to make contact with the LRA were at times arrested by the UPDF, as happened when three priests, carrying a letter from the Kitgum Resident District Commissioner, tried to meet with LRA Commander Toopaco on 28 August 2002.2 Individuals offering to make contact with the LRA on my behalf often turned out to be linked with government security services. I could have interviewed returned child abductees in centres established for their rehabilitation, such as GUSCO, but I was reluctant to follow this well-trodden path. Just as Heike Behrend had observed that well before she wrote her own analysis of the Holy Spirit Movement, it ‘had already been created by the mass media’ (Behrend, 1999: 2), in the case of the LRA it was created not only by mass media but also by the UN and Non-Governmental Organisations using the testimonies of traumatised children who had escaped captivity and been processed through reception centres such as GUSCO and World Vision. While the testimonies seemed in many respects genuine, they provided a partial picture, as adult voices were largely absent. There were though few other obvious options. At the same time, the LRA were said to have eyes and ears everywhere – at any public meeting someone would comment to the effect that ‘whatever we say here will be relayed to the LRA’ – but nobody would go so far as to point out particular individuals. As a result one could never be sure who was who and had to regard everyone as a potential informer to Government or LRA – or to both.
The sense of being under surveillance was at times acute; it was not uncommon to meet a respondent for a meal or drink and then find somebody unknown sitting exceptionally close by, despite the availability of numerous empty tables further away. On one occasion in Kitgum, I spotted such a ‘restaurant observer’ at ten o'clock the following morning sitting 100 metres away from the ACORD office on a termite mound. From there he could observe our comings and goings while reading a book. Such scrutiny from security services meant that some respondents could also be at risk from being seen to talk with us, and raised serious concerns about the confidentiality of sources and security of data collected. Returning to my hotel room in Kitgum after a day's fieldwork to find that my laptop had been tampered with brought this home to me in a very direct fashion. Furthermore, for much of my fieldwork there were only a handful of telephones in Gulu town; any call from the post-office was bound to be listened to by the queue of other people waiting, and any fax received was likely to be perused by several people before reaching its intended recipient. This also led to a form of self-imposed censorship in discussing what was happening.
Conceptual Challenges
I felt I had to go well beyond simply documenting the impact of war and humanitarian interventions on people at a local level. I did not wish to simply repeat data collection that had already been done; some issues, such as LRA abductions and other atrocities already seemed relatively well documented – indeed they seemed amongst the few elements of the situation which did not require much research.
Furthermore, I felt that such documentation had a limited impact on the situation.