Northern Uganda Messenger Post

NORTHERN UGANDA MESSENGER POST: Justice and accountability must remain part of the end-game in northern Uganda

Proponents of the government of Uganda and the LRM/A have fingered "Acholi Diaspora" for sabotaging the signing of the final Juba Peace Agreements. While elements of the LRM/A in Diaspora may have had something to do with it, the non-factions of the LRM/A Acholi certainly had no role, despite their misgivings about the Juba process. It would seem it is an effort by both the government, through Walter Ochora, RDC Gulu, and by the LRM/A through James Obita and Nyekorach-Matsanga, their current and former leaders of delegation to the talks, to shift focus away from their own respective shortcomings at Juba, to the victims of their 22 year destructive military futility. It is also an effort to detract from any scrutiny of the insincerity, deception and manipulations they came with to the table and have dealt with each other at Juba and in the past with those who have worked for a just, peaceful, negotiated end to the conflict. We cannot be as so foolish as to beleive that, when ...

NORTHERN UGANDA MESSENGER POST: Juba is Dead! Let the Dead Bury their Dead!

The Juba Peace Talks have collapsed! So what now for Acholi and northern Uganda? In November 2007, I wrote an article: "Why Museveni is undermining a negotiated settlement", published in Sudan Tribune http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article24886. That article was prompted by the mysterious death of Vincent Otti, LRM/A former second-in-command to Joseph Kony. In the face of the collapse of the Juba Peace Talks, and unconfirmed news of further upheavals of internal strifes and deaths of nine senior commanders in the LRM /A camps, including Okot Odhiambo, Vincent Otti's successor, the thesis of that article still holds: that Museveni is not interested in a negotiated settlement as compromise, accommodation and give-and-take in order to settle disputes. As far as he is concerned, the LRM/A is a defeated, and there is nothing to negotiate or settle. All that is needed is to draw up an orderly surrender terms- thrugh what is euphenmistically referred to as the Juba Peace N...

NORTHERN UGANDA MESSENGER POST: After 22 Years, Still Waiting for Godot in Northern Uganda

ESTRAGON: Where shall we go? VLADIMIR : I don't Know. Silence . ESTRAGON : Oh yes, let's go far away from here. VLADIMIR : We can't. ESTRAGON : Why not? VLADIMIR : We have to come back tomorrow. ESTRAGON : What for? VLADIMIR : To wait for Godot. ESTRAGON : Ah! ( Silence .)He didn't come? VLADIMIR : No. ESTRAGON : And now it's too late. VLADIMIR : Yes, now it's night. Samuel Beckett. Waiting for Godot. Faber and Faber, 1965 (1956); Act II, p.92 News that the Juba Peace Talks on northern Uganda has collpsed, is a mixed bag of good and bad. The bad news is that, this prolongs the suffering of the people of northern Uganda, many of whom had already broken through the paddocks of concentration camps to return to their ancestral lands. Moreover, the collapse of the talks, if true, plays into the hands of war-mongers and those who have been able to exploit the war economy, who will try to alarm and frighten the population back into camps to serve their ow...

NORTHERN UGANDA MESSENGER POST: Why Robert Mugabe is a "Demon" but Mandela a Moral Icon.

WHY ROBERT MUGABE IS A “DEMON” BUT MANDELA A MORAL ICON Reframing the Zimbabwe debate in equity terms In contributing to the debate on Zimbabwe, we would like to employ the equity maxim that “He who comes to equity must come with clean hands”, to reframe the Zimbabwe debate, by inserting an essential moral question, ignored by Robert Mugabe’s detractors. We take the view that, past immoral conduct of those who use moral and rights arguments to condemn and hang others, is relevant to the test of the merits of their claims. In our case, we would like to argue from the vantage point that, British and American breach of Zimbabwe Independence covenants on land and corresponding British and American obligations, undermined their and Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) -as -their client’s moral claims of standing for the force of good and Mugabe as evil personified in Zimbabwe. Our sympathies are with the view which asserts that, British and American reneging on their undertakings with speci...