Social Torture. Chris Dolan
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affected 80–90 per cent of the population in the Acholi sub-region (by early 2004, the WFP were providing relief distributions to over 1.5 million internally displaced people in northern Uganda, including hundreds of thousands in Teso and Lango sub-regions), his observation that northern Uganda was one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, sparked a significant increase in levels of external intervention over the next two years (notably from UNOCHA, UNICEF, OHCHR, UNHCR and its implementing partners). This had the advantage of drawing resources and attention to this hitherto seriously under-recognised situation, and the disadvantage of tending to depoliticise it by stressing its humanitarian dimensions. Whether there was benefit in the UN's decision to make northern Uganda one of the pilots for UNHCR's extension of activities to include IDPs, and for its controversial ‘cluster approach’, is not clear.
A second event, which further extended northern Uganda's role as guinea-pig for the international community, was President Museveni's decision in January 2004 to make a referral to the newly established International Criminal Court (ICC). His call for the Court to prosecute the LRA for war crimes was welcomed by the prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, although most civil society organisations active in northern Uganda viewed it with considerable scepticism. They pointed out that it was at odds with the provisions of the Amnesty Act of 2000, an act which had only been passed after extended lobbying of a reluctant government, and which the LRA had only just begun to take up in significant numbers. As the first referral to the ICC it came to be seen as a test-case for the viability of the institution, and supporters of the ICC quickly polarised the debate by arguing that critics of the ICC were opponents of justice and proponents of impunity.
A third feature of this phase was the elections of February 2005, in which Museveni's NRM received virtually no votes across the conflict-affected regions of the country. As a local UN official commented, ‘The north has always voted against Museveni's government, but this time it was clear. Now they [the government] have realised if they want to win the hearts and minds of the north, they have to do something.’56 As part of the ongoing decentralisation process, Amuru district was created out of Gulu district during this period.57 In addition to these internal changes, the installation of the Government of Southern Sudan following the Comprehensive Peace Accord in October 2005, and the holding of elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2006, both considerably affected the regional environment.
Phase VII – June 2006 Onwards
When peace-talks between the LRA and the Government of Uganda were announced in mid-2006, they took many by surprise and were greeted with considerable scepticism given the history of failed talks in the past. Nonetheless, the events of Phase VI provided some explanation for the Government's shift away from its hitherto rigid refusal to engage in talks. Additional motivating factors included the need to be seen to take action prior to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in November 2007 – and the (albeit remote) prospect of the ICC turning its attention to government actors. The signing of a Cessation of Hostilities agreement in Juba on 26 August 2006 (and its renewal some months later) did, however, create some hope that these talks were serious, as did the signing of protocols on comprehensive solutions, as well as accountability and reconciliation. While the same period saw relatively large numbers of the IDPs in Teso and Lango return home, the IDPs in the Acholi sub-region remained far more sceptical about the peace process. Thus although there was some movement into government organised ‘decongestion sites’, this was not the return home many were waiting for. Joseph Kony's failure to sign the final agreement in April 2008 inevitably created doubts about whether any of the potential of the protocols would be realised.
The War As People Remember it
The broad outline given above focuses on what are generally regarded as key players, events and processes. But within this there are numerous more personal histories which easily slip out of our consideration, when they should in fact be central to it. A sense of how the macro- and micro- pictures interact can be gained from the summarised findings of a discussion held with thirteen members of a women's self-help group at ACORD's offices in Gulu, 10 February 1999 (see Chapter 2 for discussion of methods). The results were shocking in the extreme.
The women's dominant memories were around physical harm, killing and abduction of relatives, and loss of properties. Telegraphic bullet points describe truly gruesome events, reducing a book's worth of personal tragedies to a page of code. People do not forget – even after thirteen years the memory of loss was acute and detailed, down to how many sacks of which type of grain were looted. And there was no closure – one woman whose son was abducted back in 1987 still talked of her son as being ‘in captivity’, as did the woman who lost two grandsons to rebel abduction in 1988. And while the multiplicity of perpetrators was bewildering (NRA, Lakwena, UPDA, UPDF, LRA), the practices were consistent. Although in the overall picture, 1999 marked a lull in the violence, for the women in this group it was in many respects as dangerous as 1989.
When memories of things which happened in the respondents’ home communities over the same period were added in, the picture became even more distressing (Table 3.2).
Table 3.1 Incidents that Happened to Women and Their Immediate Families (Each Line Represents a Different Person's Memory)
| Year | Incidents |
| 1986 | – 4 of my children were abducted by Lakwena. They returned after 4 months |
| – 2 of my children died of a hand-grenade attack by the NRA | |
| – 2 brothers were killed by NRA (1 with a molten jerry-can, the other through beating) | |
| 1987 | – My cattle (20 head) were taken, I was beaten and four girls were taken by Lakwena |
| – Karimojong took 38 cattle belonging to my grandfather | |
| – My husband was arrested by the NRA for 2 weeks, came back ill and died 3 (cont.) years later | |
| – 2 of my brothers were killed by Lakwena | |
| – I was beaten, my son was abducted (returned after 1 year), and 5 goats were taken by Lakwena | |
| – My husband was killed, 28 cattle were taken, 4 huts and 6 granaries were burnt by NRA | |
| – My son, who was married with a daughter, was abducted and is still in captivity (LRA) | |
| – My brother drowned himself after NRA took 100 cattle | |
| 1988 | – I was abducted and lived in captivity for 3 months. Some of my property was taken, others destroyed, one child taken who returned after 6 months |
| – 3 of my brothers were killed by Lakwena and household property robbed | |
| – 10 goats robbed by Lakwena, 50 cattle by cattle rustlers | |
| – My husband was killed | |
| – 8 sons of my brothers were killed by NRA, who also took 30 head of cattle | |
| – UPDA burnt one hut, 2 sacks of millet, 8 sacks of sunflower, household properties, 2 granaries | |
| – 2 of my grandsons were abducted, one returned after 1.5 years, the other is still in captivity | |
| – My arm was shot by the NRA and had to be amputated | |
| – My brother was abducted by the UPDA | |
| 1989 | – 4 of my brothers were burnt alive in their huts by the NRA who accused them of being collaborators |
| – NRA burnt property including 4 huts, 3 granaries, 40 iron sheets, because the rebels had camped in the area | |
| – I was hit by a mine and my leg was amputated | |
| – My brother's son was killed by the LRA | |
| 1990 | – 6 children killed by Lakwena (Bobi) |
| – 1 man was killed by the NRA | |
| 1991 | – My sister's daughter was abducted by LRA, and died in Agweng, Lira district |
| 1992 | – NRA took our maize mill |
| – NRA took my brother's son's maize mill | |
| – NRA took my uncle's maize mill | |
| – My brother's house was used as an army office; to date there has been no rent payment made | |
| 1993 | – LRA abducted my brother-in-law's son from Sir Samuel Baker School, he returned 1 year later |
| 1996 | – I was hit by an anti-personnel mine and lost my lower leg |
| 1997 | – I was hurt in the hip by a UPDF bomb |
| – My brother-in-law's son was shot dead in the market place by the UPDF | |
| 1998 | – |