Northern Uganda Messenger Post

NORTHERN UGANDA MESSENGER POST: Why Museveni is Undermining a Negotiated Peace Settlement

Why Museveni is undermining a negotiated settlement Garamba Sideshow: Divide and Conquer Dead or alive, the fate of Vincent Otti, if Joseph Kony is to be believed, may well have been foreshadowed a year ago (LRA leader speaks out on deputy Otti, Monitor 8 Nov. 2007). It was reported then that the Ugandan government had focused its efforts at a parallel contact with the LRA fighters, rather than the official Juba Talks, as a preferred means to ending the conflict (Kony wants to talk to Museveni, Monitor, 23-29 July 2006). Such a strategy aimed to achieve one or more of the following objectives: to avoid addressing the root causes of the conflict; to isolate the LRA military leaders and fighters from its political leadership; and also to pre-empt the risk of issues raised at the Juba talks cohering with grievances and concerns over abuses in northern Uganda, which had sporadically been raised by civil society, political leaders, opposition parties, the media and rights groups. The sides...

NORTHERN UGANDA MESSENGER POST: Will Joseph Kony Stick with his confessing Peace Emissaries?

Nobody seems to notice, or only cursorily and disinterestedly if at all, that Ojul and Dr. Obita et al are embarrassing themselves and have completely forgotten the Terms of Reference of their so called consultations. And they seem to make statements that they did not have authority to make at any one session of the Juba talks. But now, they seem to have very wide latitude to act without sprinting back to Garamba for debriefing and guidance and delegation on each and every line of contention. Now they seem possessed with their apologies that seem to undoubtedly propel them very openly and unguardely along the paddocks of the ICC tribunals. I have no doubt that Ocampo and the political and diplomatic powerbrokers are smiling and requisitioning bunkbeds for those cells for Joseph et al. Why not, with their heads of delegation making those confessions? The peace negotiation is yet to be concluded and responsibility and accountability is still a contentious agenda, for crying out loud. If ...

NORTHERN UGANDA MESSENGER POST: Freedom and the Individual: Existentialist Crisis in Acholiland

MAKING AUTHENTIC CHOICES IN TIME OF CRISIS. Sverker Finnstrom’s recent work on northern Uganda picks up and continues a particular theme of existential inquiries that echo Shakespeare, de Sade, Tolstoy, Proust, Kafka and Moravia. Living With Bad Surrounding re-states the nature of daily human and individual struggles to live under turbulent circumstances (Piny Marac) in northern Uganda. Read in broad existentialist terms, the Ugandan State and regime are absurd worlds, from which its citizens in the north have been alienated from themselves and estranged from the popular view of national normalcy. Trumpeted NRM/A revolution, liberation, peace and prosperity, contrast very sharply with their lived realities of violence, abduction, murder, rape, diseases and social dislocation. The fish-bowl existence in the concentration camps, characterised by rights abuses, sexual violence, suicide, prostitution, idleness, and a host of other social ills and diseases, is for many individuals and fam...