Why the Kony-Museveni peace gridlock

By Okot Nyormoi

January 6, 2009 — The signing of the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the government of Uganda (GOU) on August 26, 2006 followed by an Agreement on a Permanent Ceasefire on February 23, 2008 ushered a two year period of relative peace in northern and eastern Uganda. The modest success of these agreements demonstrated convincingly that a peaceful resolution of one of Africa’s longest running wars can be achieved.

Since February this year, the northern Uganda peace process has been chronically gridlocked, causing a lot of concerns among stakeholders. No matter, many of the stakeholders, particularly the victims of the war, have been patiently waiting, hoping and pushing for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. All such hopes for peace were shattered on Sunday, December 14th, 2008 when the government of Uganda gleefully announced a joint military operation to attack Kony’s military bases in Garamba, DRC.
Some people have expressed shock at what happened last week in Garamba. However, those who are familiar with the Museveni regime in Uganda do not at all find this surprising. If one looks at the larger picture, one will see that this incident is consistent with what Museveni has been doing ever since he embarked on acts of violence as his modus operendus in 1971.

To understand and appreciate the attack on the LRA in Garamba, it is necessary to focus on the following key factors.
1) Museveni’s obsession with power.
2) Museveni’s adaptation of what he called “organized violence” to acquire and retain power.
3) The real reason for the lack of progress in the northern Uganda peace process.

Obsession with power

Other than monarchies, most if not all political leaders who have served as heads of state for more than ten years are dictators. They are people who are either obsessed with power and/or are forced by circumstances of their own making to remain in power as the only way to guarantee their own security. In the case of Museveni, having captured state power by force, he relies on force to maintain power. This is particularly important when one considers the probability that there is not a single family left in the whole country which has not been wronged by the NRM/A regime.
To address this question in an opinion article (The Daily Monitor, Dec. 13, 2006) Charles Obbo asked, “Why do dictators live longer than democrats?” The answer is simply that it must be frightening, to say the least, for Museveni and his family to live with the possibility of what such people would do if they were given the opportunity to force them to account for all the pain he has caused them. He probably dreads the LRA the most.
This fact is fundamental to the lack of progress in the Juba peace talks and the resumption of war. In this regard, Museveni does not have the political will to negotiate in good faith. If and when he feels that a compromise will not threaten his ability to stay in power, he will make it as he did with the various agreements he negotiated with small rebel groups in Teso and West Nile. Otherwise, with groups such as the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) and the LRA, he does not have the inclination to co-exist within the same country. Instead, he prefers to defeat them militarily or remain at war with them at a level that does not threaten his power and yet allows him to use the war to his political and financial advantage. In this case, he can propagandize locally that he is fighting to protect the citizens from negative forces in the Great Lakes Region.

There were many peace initiatives which he scuttled because they were not going to serve his interests. Museveni trashed the 1985 Nairobi Peace Agreement and called it a peace joke, scuttled the 1994 Bigombe I peace initiative, in March 2003 bombarded the bush venue for a meeting to talk peace between the LRA and the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative, attacked the LRA delegation when it was returning to consult with their leaders during a peace negotiation between Ambassador Ocwet and the LRA in early 2004, attacked the LRA delegation on their way to consult with their leaders leading to the collapse of the Bigombe II peace initiative, undermined the Juba peace talks by carrying out parallel negotiations between Kampala and Garamba, using Colonel Ochora, Gulu LC5 Mao, Oulanya and Owiny Dollo. Is it any wonder that Museveni decided to renew the war?

Internationally, he claims to be fighting international terrorism and therefore gets support from Britain and USA. For example, in 2007, the Commonwealth rewarded him with its meeting in Kampala and he was made chairman of the group. More recently, the soon to be ex-President Bush lavished him with praise on his visit to the White House for being a strong leader and US ally against the war on terrorism in the Great Lakes Region. Furthermore, in October, the United Nations awarded a seat to Uganda on the Security Council in spite of the fact that Uganda under Museveni has broken many key UN laws on security in the Great Lakes Region for the last 23 years that he has been in power. The use of child soldiers in armed conflict, invading and looting the natural resources of the DRC are a few examples of UN laws broken by Museveni. Given the support of the US and Britain, Museveni does not feel compelled to negotiate in good faith.

It is clear that the attack on the LRA last week is just another event in the overall strategy to keep Museveni in power in perpetuity. The peace process is once again at a cross road.

Organized violence

In his master’s degree thesis at the University of Dar-es-salam, Tanzania, Museveni espoused the virtue of organized violence as a means of acquiring and maintaining power. Plenty has been written and whispered about how he employed violence, including the murder and execution of various prominent people, to show that the Amin, Obote and Tito regimes could not govern Uganda or protect her citizens from rogue elements. Violence was used strategically to position himself as the only leader who could govern the country.

Once he took over power in Uganda in 1986, he used military and cultural terrorism to impose his will on the people. When the people in the north in particular resisted, he launched a new form of ethnic cleansing which has now lasted for 23 years and counting. Here, he used soldiers from Acholiland to fight rebels who are also from the same area. Even in the current war, Museveni is employing former LRA soldiers to attack the LRA in Garamba, thus subjecting formerly abducted children who are now on the opposite side to double jeopardy.

Although the military war is much touted, the more devastating tool of war at Museveni’s disposal has been the forced people’s displacement camps. It was estimated by the Uganda Ministry of Health and UNICEF that 1,000 people perished per week from preventable diseases, a number well above the emergency level (Health and Mortality Survey, 2005). In 2004, Doctors without Borders found that the health situation amounted to an emergency (MSF International Report, 2005). Furthermore, Jan Egeland described it as the world’s worst forgotten humanitarian crisis (Agence France-Presse, Nov 3, 2003).

Internationally, Museveni is alleged to have orchestrated the shooting down of a plane carrying the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, which triggered the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Between 1998 and 2003, Museveni invaded the DRC during which time he toppled President Mobuto Sese Seko, is alleged to have engineered the assassination of the former President of the DRC and the father of Joseph Kabila, the current President of the DRC because he refused to be his puppet.

In 2007, the International Justice Court found Uganda under Museveni liable for looting and plundering the natural resources of the DRC and for fomenting ethnic cleansing in Eastern DRC for which the ICJ ruled that Uganda should pay $10 billion in compensation to the DRC.
Uganda also sent her troops in South Sudan allegedly in pursuit of the LRA, but there is evidence that the UPDF have been committing similar crimes (rape, killing and looting of natural resources such as prized timber) in South Sudan.

The real reason for the lack of progress

While we should be concerned about the immediate casualties of the attack on the LRA in Garamba, it is instructive to recall what Museveni said in his thesis, “To transform a human being into an efficient, uncostly, and completely subservient slave, you have, as a pre-condition, to completely purge him of his humanity, manhood, and will. Otherwise, as long as he has some hope of a better, free future, he will never succumb to enslavement. To become an efficient instrument of oppression, you have to radically de-humanise yourself by forgoing many qualities that are normally found in balanced human beings. You purge yourself of compassion, altruism, consideration of other people’s suffering and the capacity to restrain your greed….- ” Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, (writing in his dissertation, Dar-es-Salaam University).

Considered from this perspective, it becomes easier to see that the attack on the LRA in Garamba is just another step in President Museveni’s strategy to use organized violence in his quest “To transform a human being into an efficient, uncostly, and completely subservient slave” to satisfy his hung for power.

He author is based in the USA. he can be reached at [email protected]