{UAH} IDDI AMIN NEVER TARGETED LANGIs/ACHOLIs, THEY TARGETED HIM {---Series One-Hundred and twenty-five}

Friends

 

Kasper Thams Olsen MA in Political Science, University of Copenhagen, MSc in Human Rights, London School of Economics and Political Science,  in his working paper  No. 8, of February 2007, wrote an abstract  under a heading VIOLENCE AGAINST CIVILIANS IN CIVIL WAR UNDERSTANDING ATROCITIES BY THE LORD'S RESISTANCE ARMY IN NORTHERN UGANDA. We are posting from page 5.

 

Friends we need to discuss Acholi violence candidly.

 

 

2.3. Violence as population control

Based on my interviews with former LRA combatants I

argue that LRA violence against civilians is primarily a way

of controlling the population and communicating the will

of the militia to the civilians.

Being a small militia that does not control territory, the

LRA is extremely vulnerable to civilian cooperation with

the army. It is therefore crucial for the group to be able to

control the actions of the civilians and to dissuade them

from working against the group.34 Consequently they have

installed a system of retaliation attacks against civilian

government collaborators. I have labelled this system

'violence as population control'. A special risk group in

relation to this kind of violence consists of people who

openly support the government and the ruling NRM party,

political commissioners in the systems of Local Councillors35

and members of the civilian self-defence groups. In these

groups the LRA often targets specific persons who have been

particularly active in cooperating with the government.36

Among the most prominent examples of this is the killing

of Kitgum district's Resident District Commissioner (RDC)

in June 2000.37

Apart from serving to stop people from working against the

LRA, this practice also sets an example for others who want

to work against the group. In other words, such violence

does not serve an immediate purpose in relation to

winning the war in a conventional way. Rather, in line with

a famous quote by Henry Kissinger the aim of the militia

is to win by preventing defeat. This is done by controlling

the civilian population and preventing their obstruction

of rebel activity. While victory by other means is awaited,

the civilians must be controlled and this is done through

retaliatory attacks.

Many former commanders emphasized that if civilians

want the protection of being civilians they should refrain

from participating in the struggle on the government side.

Statements like the following were not uncommon among

my interviewees:

 

"You [the civilian] want to remain alive and you

want me to be killed. […] It is bad. You are not a

soldier. Why do you do that thing? […] If you are a

civilian you maintain being civilian. Don't enter into

another persons work. If you are a peasant farmer you

just do your farming. If you are a business man you

continue your business. But don't involve yourself in

the war. Because when you [do that] it means you are

supporting one side. You are fighting us so you are also

an enemy to us".38

 

Thus, in a peculiar way the LRA has justified the killings

of civilians by arguing that civilians have given up their

civilian status by cooperating with the army.

The government strategy of establishing civilian selfdefence

units in Acholiland (which was initiated around

1990) was particularly important in fostering this

perception among LRA fighters and contributed greatly to

legitimising attacks on civilians. In the eyes of the LRA

leadership the formation of the self-defence units served

as a final proof that the Acholi civilian society could no

longer be trusted and that they should therefore be treated

as part of the enemy force. As one former LRA commander

said:

 

"The formation of the "arrow boys" was giving reason

for LRA to […] show the civilians that, "okay you think

you can beat us but let us show you that you cannot"".39

 

This pattern of militia behaviour has also been observed in

Sierra Leone, where militarisation of civilian communities

in self-defence groups also provoked extremely violent

reactions from the rebels.40

Apart from the formation of the civilian self-defence

groups, the government counterinsurgency strategy of

'protected villages' has also contributed to the alienation

of the LRA fighters from the civilian community. The

initiative is based on forced encampment of civilians in the

war zone. In effect the protected villages are IDP camps

created to deny the rebels access to manpower and other

resources and as such represent the UPDF's own variety of

population control. The camps have gravely impoverished

the population and as such do not enjoy much support

among the common people.41 However, the LRA sees it

differently. The fact that the camp policy has not met

much active (violent) resistance among the civilians has

given the rebels the impression that civilian allegiance is

with the UPDF. This has frustrated the LRA fighters. As one

statement from a former LRA commander shows, the lack

of resistance is taken to imply an informal civilian-UPDF

alliance:

 

"The civilians are now one with UPDF. Of course the

UPDF are guiding them. In any village you will never

enter without fighting. That is what I have seen. Before

the small villages did not have soldiers. [Now] all the villages have soldiers. […] UPDF are guiding those

people. Everywhere you find soldiers among the civilians.

Civilians are a kind of security of the UPDF".42

 

As such the UPDF strategy to 'claim' civilian population by

asserting to fight for them has contributed to legitimising

civilians as a target for the LRA. The LRA's system of

population control has served as a direct reaction to this.

In the view of the LRA a person leaves his/her role as

civilian the moment he/she starts cooperating actively

with one of the parties to the conflict. Paradoxically,

violence is then used to force the person back to his/her

role as civilian.

The problem seen from a civilian perspective is thus that

both the UPDF and the LRA use population control as a

strategy in the war. The civilians are therefore caught

between two forces which are both punishing them for

lack of cooperation. Consequently they will be targeted

regardless of whether they work against the LRA or not.

While policies of population control should not be excused,

it is still worth noticing that fear is an important factor

in shaping such policies. Many ex-combatants argued that

killings were necessary to protect the fighters because

surviving civilians would have alerted the UPDF and

thus have minimised the response time for the army and

maximised the risk of getting caught:

 

"When you kill it will give you time to go a very far

distance before other civilians are coming.[…] When

you ambush a vehicle, and leave others to go [spare

civilians], then the others will go and report to the

UPDF. Immediately UPDF will follow you even before

you have gone very far. So you have to kill anybody. It

will give you space to move".43

 

In other words, killings can be conducted in a perverted

form of self-defence because LRA fighters fear for their

own lives. This view is widely echoed among ex-LRA

combatants. The consequence is that any civilian that

tries to escape during LRA raids is considered an army

collaborator that can legitimately be killed. As one former

commander said, "of course the person who is running is

dangerous. He should be killed".44

 

 

2.3.1. Collective punishment

While targeted killings are an important part of LRA's

strategy of installing fear in the population, it is a slightly

different variant of the system that is responsible for the

most abhorrent killings in the Acholi area. In this system,

which I have labelled 'collective punishment', whole villages

or areas pay for the acts of specific individuals. The system

is simple: If civilians inform the UPDF of LRA's whereabouts

or cooperate with the army in other ways, the LRA will

respond by using indiscriminate violence. Persons working

against LRA interests are therefore not just responsible for

themselves. Their actions will also put their family and

even their village at danger.

Like in the case of individual killings the main purpose of

the system of collective punishment is population control.

Violence is perpetrated in apocalyptic and excessively

brutal ways to increase the fear in the population. One

method used by the LRA is to cook their victims and then

force friends and relatives to eat them. Several commanders

willingly admitted to have taken part in this practice. As

one commander who worked closely with Otti for many

years said:

 

"A person could be cut into pieces and thrown in a

tin and cooked [...]. It was just to sow a kind of

destruction. It is a kind of punishment so that all the

civilians see […] the destruction we are sowing".45

 

Other combatants talked about killing children or adults in

similarly brutal ways:

 

"At times when you go for raiding the whole village

will be gathered together and will be put in a hut and

they are burned. At times younger children are hit on

the tree or put in a mortar and then pounded. At times

they give you your own child to either hit or maybe put

in the mortar and pound. […] At times they do that

after they find out that others from that place had run

away or maybe when a person from that family escaped

while in captivity. Maybe after abducting a child then

the child comes back [to civilian life]. Then after they

find out that this is the home of so and so then those

things will happen. [It is] a kind of revenge".46

 

These practices have seriously contributed to the view of

the LRA as a gang of madmen inflicting mindless violence.

However, as it should be evident from the argumentation

developed here, the behaviour is an intended strategy

of sowing fear in the population. Terror is the means

through which socio-political control is sought. Battlefield

strategies have been replaced by a strategy of atrocities

intended to control the population and prevent them from

working against the rebels. As a psychological weapon, the

system of collective punishment has proved very effective

and helped pacify the vast majority of the Acholi civilian

population.

 

Stay in the forum for Series One hundred and twenty six on the way   ------>

EM

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