LRA may not have killed Sudanese
By Tunn-min Kul Ri-Kwangba
October 24, 2006 — The recent press allegations that Lord Resistance Army (LRA) killed 41 Sudanese is not accurate. Having toured the scene of the ambush, evidences emerging are now being implicative of more organized forces and possibly the UPDF. This massacre in the jungle of Southern Sudan in which innocent people were slaughtered is characteristic of the brutal practices of the Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) as seen in Eastern and Northern Uganda over the years. The enactment of the scene or the crime is by far consistent with the basic guerrilla military mentality of NRA now turned UPDF as observed in the infamous Luwero triangle war processes and strikingly, the cooking of Acholi civilians in a pot in early 2000. There are many incidences that mimic the other scenes I have witnessed in Uganda as a freelance journalist. In northern Uganda, the heart breaking Mukura and Atiak massacres should ring a bell in your minds.
The main drive behind this massacre is being attributed to theories which suggest that, the penultimate aim of the UPDF in committing this particular heinous crime inside Sudanese soil was to avenge the death of their Captain Mugarura who was purportedly killed by the LRA; that it was aimed at undermining and discrediting the LRA and the Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS) before the international community, the Sudan government and Ugandan population so as to give the murderous NRM regime an upper hand and a Mr. Clean image. Additionally, UPDF was desperate to distort the course of the investigation by Maj. Gen. Deng into who truly breached the August ceasefire agreement between UPDF and LRA.
Luwero evidences and its replication
It is now apparent that the guerrilla tactics of the NRA during the Luwero triangle was designed to discredit the Obote regime by killing civilians while disguised as UNLA. The tribalist NRA further discredited the northerners by mimicking northern languages and speaking fake Swahili disguised in northern accent. Both Museveni and Col Kiiza Besigye have confessed having strategically laid several ambushes on the main supply routes that served Kampala, notably, the Gulu – Kamapala Road disguised as UNLA and spoke northern accents before the Luwero population.
There were many children who were deployed to ambush vehicles as attested to in China Kaitetsi’s autobiography, and its not surprising that the suspects in the murder in Southern Sudan are unkempt child soldiers in UPDF. The most intriguing strategy that the NRA guerrilla is oriented to is causing malice to gain public sympathy. For instance the atrocities caused on Luwero Civilians have been overly attributed entirely to the defunct Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA), while none to the NRA rebels. This, on its own is telling of the basic fact that guerrilla warfare strives to exceed territorial boundaries by manipulating human minds. Guerillas aim at penetrating the political and human psychological boundaries with propaganda through aligning with the aspirations of the masses. By nature, guerrilla warfare is essentially a political war whose operational area supersedes the parameters of conventional warfare. In effect, human beings are considered the priority objects with their minds targeted for manipulation through any possible means by the usually armed guerrillas.
This theory has been tested in northern Uganda each time the LRA mounted groun breaking attacks on the UPDF. Usually children and women are mutilated and killed in the most gruesome way including ripping them through with machete and then claiming that LRA has committed such a crime even when the rebels have long retreated. In essence, the rest of Uganda are manipulated to believe that the atrocities in Northern Uganda are the sole enterprise of the LRA. In 2000?, when the LRA/UPDF insurgency had peaked, a notorious Maj Roland Kakooza Mutaale organized the so-called Boo-kech, a group of unemployed opportunists who were then armed. These people killed civilians in north eastern part of the trobled northern city of Gulu and boiled the bodies in regular cooking pot. That memory is still fresh in the mind of the people. Again it was attributed to the LRA. Later, the UPDF conceded that indeed there were loose groups who are armed and are conniving with some errand military officers, a process that culminated in unearthing the ghost soldier scandals in that rotten army.
The purpose of this synopsis is to open up your minds into understanding how the Ugandan government conducts its business. Twenty years in government, the UPDF is still instructed with revolutionary ideologies that northerners are the problem of Uganda. Gen. Museveni on his own part is determined to go any length to inflict harm on any human species as long as such an act would give him any slightest political advantage. I shall conclude shortly by reiterating that the recent massacre of our people in Southern Sudan is the handywork of none other than the UPDF considering the level of the heinousness of crimes that they have committed in northern Uganda in the name of LRA and the evidences been found on the ground.
What now remains to be done is an elaborate investigation as the GOSS is not articulately pinpointing any party as being responsible. The culprits must be bought to the books and punished. Of course, as Southern Sudanese, we would not expect the LRA to abuse the generosity of our young government that has sacrificed s much in searching for peace for this volatile region.
The author is a veteran freelance journalist, now researcher and oil exploration expert, Southern Sudan. [email protected]