{UAH} IDDI AMIN NEVER TARGETED LANGIs/ACHOLIs, THEY TARGETED HIM {---Series One-Hundred and seventy-one}
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Friends
Besides the gross violations of human rights, the conflict in northern Uganda has damaged the fabric of Acholi society. With children and youths the main target of LRA abductions, the memories of rebel atrocities will take generations to fade away.
Joe Lakony, a trainee social worker at GUSCO, says the LRA's use of Acholi children to commit atrocities has not only caused bitterness in his society, but has sown the seeds of distrust between the younger and older generation. "What I know is that most of the children we are helping here were abducted. We know they were forced to do a lot of things. Some were ordered to kill their own parents and family members. We have come to understand that they did what they did for their survival," he explains. Goreti Oyiela, one of the managers at a rehabilitation centre for former abducted children run by World Vision in Gulu, has similar feelings. "Sometimes you don't know what to do. You feel the pain, but then you also know the child was innocent. So you help the child," she says. The situation is thought to be at its worst in Kitgum and Pader Districts. This is a "society dying by the roots", in the words of Baker Ochola, the retired Catholic Bishop of Kitgum.
This is what Acholi violence has delivered into Acholi with its people. There are some fundamental questions to be raised at this point, {a} Why is the population of Northern Uganda simply quite about this situation? {b} Why are members of UAH that come from these regions only discussing Kampala when they have a violence monster sitting in their midst? {c} If violence has hit Acholi land to this level, how does it make any sense what so ever, for anyone to publicly stand and state that this is just a problem of few criminals? And lastly how are we going to live with these friends when all these children grow up to future Acholi adults? IRIN filled this report from its Nairobi office under a heading Is Acholi society dying?.
Ugandans we need to discuss Acholi violence candidly.
In-depth: Life in northern Uganda
UGANDA: The Acholi Society
Photo: OCHA
Internally displaced children at the Awer IDP camp
NAIROBI, 5 January 2004 (IRIN) - Is Acholi society dying?
It is difficult to find anyone in northern Uganda's Acholi sub-region who has not been affected by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency.
Denis Mwaka, a social worker for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Gulu, was abducted by the LRA in 1999 but managed to escape during a skirmish between the rebels and the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF).
Charles Uma, the government official in charge of the Gulu District Disaster Management Committee, says the war has displaced his family and led to the deaths of several relatives.
"The abductions have touched every family; everyone is affected," says Dora, a social worker at the Gulu Support the Children Organisation (GUSCO), who has also lost friends and family to LRA violence.
Reagan Okumu, a Member of Parliament whose Aswa constituency is one of those cut off by LRA activities, says he has lost count of how many members of his family have died as a result of the conflict.
"My sisters, brothers and cousins were first massacred by government soldiers as punishment for supporting UPDA [a now defunct Acholi rebel movement formed in 1986 with the aim of removing Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni from power].
"The army went to my village and buried 15 people alive. LRA came later and slaughtered more people in cold blood. I can't tell you how many relatives I have lost," Okumu told IRIN.
Lost generation
Besides the gross violations of human rights, the conflict in northern Uganda has damaged the fabric of Acholi society. With children and youths the main target of LRA abductions, the memories of rebel atrocities will take generations to fade away.
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Joe Lakony, a trainee social worker at GUSCO, says the LRA's use of Acholi children to commit atrocities has not only caused bitterness in his society, but has sown the seeds of distrust between the younger and older generation.
"What I know is that most of the children we are helping here were abducted. We know they were forced to do a lot of things. Some were ordered to kill their own parents and family members. We have come to understand that they did what they did for their survival," he explains.
Goreti Oyiela, one of the managers at a rehabilitation centre for former abducted children run by World Vision in Gulu, has similar feelings. "Sometimes you don't know what to do. You feel the pain, but then you also know the child was innocent. So you help the child," she says.
The situation is thought to be at its worst in Kitgum and Pader Districts. This is a "society dying by the roots", in the words of Baker Ochola, the retired Catholic Bishop of Kitgum.
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Social destruction
If the number of people living in IDP camps is an indication of the extent of suffering in northern Uganda, then the figure of 800,000 out of the Acholi sub-region's estimated population of 1.05 million people, says it all.
For IDPs, the camps mean a life of abject poverty: scarce food and water, no sanitation, inadequate clothing, no bedding, no healthcare and no schools. Their poor living conditions are made even more unbearable by their inability to walk even a kilometre outside the camp due to fear of rebel attacks.
The camps have played a role in eroding some the Acholi people's cultural traditions, they say.
The Acholi society was structured in such a way that every family lived in its own compound, and everyone gathered by the fireplace each evening for traditional teachings. This is not the case with the IDP camps, where parents are forced to sleep in one small hut with their children.
Signs of social breakdown in the camps include high levels of promiscuity, girls opting for early marriages, and an increase in the number of child mothers. With no schooling and no income-generating activities to occupy them, youths in the camps have become idle, left to self-destructive practices like drinking, unprotected sex, and early marriages.
Their continued stay in the camps is slowly destroying what little is left of their dignity, with many elders now occupying themselves with drinking, while others are suffering from mental illnesses.
"We are now sleeping in the same small huts with our children. There are many children in the camps, but not enough schools and teachers. The young have no respect for the old," says Jackson Orach, the community leader of Labonyo displaced camp in Gulu district.
"Worst of all, we are seeing diseases that we had never seen before. People are fighting for water," he says. "It is difficult to tell you how I feel. The best way I can express it is to cry."
Economic cost of war
Apart from the obvious social cost, the economic cost of the LRA insurgency in northern Uganda is tremendous.
A study commissioned by the NGO coalition, the Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda (CSOPNU), estimated the cost of the northern Ugandan war to be US $1.33 billion over 16 years, a sum translating to roughly 3 percent of Uganda's national budget expenditure over the same period.
According to the report, the military cost of the war made up 28 percent of this figure. Losses over the years in terms of deaths, agricultural output, tourism and public health problems accounted for the rest.
Other socio-economic indicators for northern Uganda are shocking, especially when placed against the generally encouraging national statistics.
Gulu District is said to have both the highest HIV infection rates and fertility rates in Uganda, estimated at 31 percent and 71 percent respectively. Official figures also show that 82 percent of female spouses and over 50 percent of male spouses in Gulu District are illiterate.
According to Charles Uma, the Gulu DDMC chairman, there are several counties in the district where up to 90 percent of schools have not opened since January due to LRA attacks on schools and teachers. "Most of our people here are not living, but existing. Marriages are also breaking. Men are running away from responsibilities. When life becomes hard, you feel you have nothing to offer your children. You go to another relationship where the responsibilities are lighter," Uma told IRIN.
"The war has a lot of effects," he added. "We have lost a whole generation, which is dangerous for the nation. People are dangerously illiterate. The kind of children growing up today have a very limited idea of how decent people should live."
Some Acholis do not just blame the LRA for their society's predicament, but also criticise the Ugandan government and the international community for failing to tackle the crisis.
"I don't know who is making the Acholi suffer the most. Is it the LRA or is it the government, or is it because the international community doesn't care," one social worker at the Olwal IDP camp in Gulu told IRIN.
Representatives of local and foreign non-governmental organisations operating in northern Uganda hold similar views. "By keeping the people in the camp, the Acholi society is going to disappear," an official with the French charity Action Contre la Faim, told IRIN. "The whole community now waits for WFP food. Social life has deteriorated, girls are being raped, education in the camps has died. It is a societal genocide."
Stay in the forum for Series One hundred and seventy-two on the way ------>
EM
On the 49th Parallel
Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in anarchy"
Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni katika machafuko"
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