Contextualising Joseph Kony: Is Joseph Kony an “unredeemable villain” or an “existentialist hero” of Uganda? Part I
Intersubjective Communication Gaps and political and moral leadership failures in Uganda: Is Joseph Kony an “unredeemable villain” or an “existentialist hero” of Uganda’s violent political order and imprisonment of individual freedom and conscience? An existentialist response to Opiyo Oloya’s “Kony has come to the end of his tether.”
"The obligations and duties that exist for both government and armed groups under international human rights and humanitarian law and armed groups under international humanitarian law provide a framework for discussion of human rights abuse that reduces the risk of falling into a debate on which side is somehow "worse" or "better" than the other. Human rights abuses by one side, no matter how gross, do not provide legitimacy to abuses by the other side. Looking at human rights abuses in relation to an objective set of legal standards is the first step towards breaking the circle of violence."
Amnesty International, 1999.
Introduction
In the NRM/A government daily, the New Vision of 27 May 2008, Opiyo Oloya, one of Acholi Diaspora’s eminent moral voices and conscience, declared that the collapse of the Juba peace process was the end of Joseph Kony, because he had exhausted all his options and equivocations. That Kony had “come to the end of his tether”; the end of all options and possibilities, except life imprisonment or death. Oloya further asserted that, as the other half of the 22 years of civil strife in northern Uganda, the LRA struggle was driven by delusion and nothingness. And that Joseph Kony is essentially an unredeemable villain, whose personal freedom today is as meaningless as if he were dead. Moreover, by inference, the sooner death comes for Kony- whether at the end of a trial (we bear Frank Kafka’s The Trial in mind)-or violently on the theatre on which he has been cast as a protagonist for this long, is no longer relevant and should interest no one. According to Oloya, the notion that Kony may consider himself a freedom fighter and a hero, is a myth that should be dismissed contemptuously, without even token efforts to look at the many contexts and meanings of struggles for freedom, especially individuating ones, even in “limit situations” like that of Uganda’s 22 year military dictatorship and Museveni’s institutionalised autocracy and personal rule.
While we do agree with Opiyo Oloya at some points, we certainly do not think that debating peace and justice issues arising from a long and devastating insurgency and counterinsurgency can afford a black and white knowledge of who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Moreover, it is doubtful that were we to hang Kony in a public square in Gulu or Kitgum tomorrow, all the gruesome war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in northern Uganda will have been fairly avenged and accounted for. Therefore, we believe that the fundamental mistake those involved in forging peace and accountability in northern Uganda make is the invalid assumption that Kony and the LRA are the, rather than a party, to charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in northern Uganda. While the International Criminal Court indictments have made these mistakes, either out of innocent ignorance or deliberately to protect elements of the Ugandan state, for those of us who lived through the conflict and know its twists and turns, it would be a monumental moral outrage for us to replicate and perpetuate such grievous distortions of realities.
Therefore, rather than being the end of a tether, we dare say the collapse of Juba has exposed the unrealistic, unjust, immoral and unconscionable action and aspiration of some Acholi leaders, the International Criminal Court (ICC), the so-called international community, and donor groups, to audaciously go along with a war termination ploy that shields Yoweri Museveni and the Ugandan state from scrutiny and accounting for its role in the debacles of northern Uganda.
Looking at unrevised history of the northern Uganda conflict, we find that contemplating a war termination model that assumes a just settlement and a just peace, cannot avoid but agree that, given the circumstances in 1986, resistance against Museveni was morally and existentially justified. Indeed, popular revolts broke out in Teso to the east, Acholi and Lango to the north, West Nile to the northwest, and Kasese in the west of the country. All these separate and independent rebellions were sparked off by a pattern of serious rights violations, including arbitrary arrest, torture-trussing, rape, sodomy, maiming, and extra-judicial killings by the National Resistance Movement / Army (NRM/A). Most of these atrocities were committed through cordon, search and destroy operations, which were later supported by kangaroo field courts, which tried and executed youths and men of military age, netted in such operations. For a long time, the NRA soldiers operated as the police, prosecutors, judge and hangmen in the insurgency areas.
These experiences and accounts were corroborated and documented by among others, Robert Gersony in The Anguish of Northern Uganda 1998; Amnesty International Reports: Deaths in the Countryside: Killings of Civilians by the Army 1990; Failure to Safeguard Human Rights, 1992; Breaking the Circle: Protecting human rights in the northern war zones, 1999; ACCORD’s development research monograph series: What Do You Remember 1990; and Heike Behrend, Alice and the Holy Spirits: War in northern Uganda 1986-1998, 1999.
We believe that when we engage in discussions on the search for peace and justice in northern Uganda, it is important for us to define what our assumptions and objectives are. We ought to not debase the debate on northern Uganda to an assessment of who killed more and how brutally they did the killings. It should matter less whether one killed in the hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands; or whether in doing so they used machetes, bayonets, or mortar shells, helicopter gunships, grenades or bludgeoned to death in the bushes or safe houses with rifle butts or crude clubs. As much as these different methods convey differing horrifying scenes of death, carnage, and moral outrages, what should matter is that these were heinous war crimes and crimes against humanity committed, and it is our collective duty to identify, apprehend, try, and punish all those found guilty for these crimes. But in order to do so, it requires that we set up an impartial, fair, just and balanced mechanism with legal merits and moral clout to diligently shift through the evidence.
Unfortunately, this far into the game, both the ICC track record in northern Uganda and the alternate complementary propositions of the Juba Agreements to substitute a special division of the Uganda High Court for the ICC, do not meet these basic but necessary tests.
It is imperative for those involved in or support the search for peace for northern Uganda, to clearly state their bottom lines, so that it may be assessed against the circumstances, experiences and the need in northern Uganda, in order to stimulate a meaningful conversation in search of consensus around the most important issues of justice and accountability. This is particularly critical for the civil society in northern Uganda. The notion that the civil population in the concentration camps have asked for blanket forgiveness, and therefore the ICC indictments must give way to mato oput and Ugandan legal mechanisms, must be taken with a grain of salt. Those political and moral leaders from northern Uganda who invoke and sanctify such arguments against the need for peace with justice, commit unpardonable political and moral leadership failure for which they ought to step aside or be pushed out.
Were we all interested in a just peace in northern Uganda, and through an impartial, fair, and just war termination mechanism, we would all agree that there is no excuse why we should condone past or recent Museveni and Ugandan state, or Joseph Kony and the LRA, actions and behaviour that amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity, committed before and outside the timeframe within which the ICC became operational. Even so, it is doubtful that Joseph Kony and the LRA, who have been indicted by the ICC, were inoculated from their toxic past by this statutory limitation and have been investigated with clinically closed minds to their alleged excesses for which they became notorious prior to 2002, when the ICC statute took effect. We suspect that these prior records of alleged LRA crimes weighed heavily at the back of the minds of the ICC prosecutor, investigators, Yoweri Museveni, the Ugandan state, and so called international community and actors, to prejudice legal, diplomatic, official, and public positions on the LRA as candidates for international opprobrium.
In our considered view, rather than write off war crimes and crimes against humanity committed prior to the ICC ratifications coming into force in 2002, serious thoughts should have been given to devising alternative mechanisms; for instance, a UN special war crime tribunal for northern Uganda, to investigate, indict, and try all perpetrators implicated in serious crimes since the outbreak of the rebellion in 1986. Were we seriously looking for justice through full and complete accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity in northern Uganda, the inadequacy, unsuitability, limitations and partiality of the ICC as a framework of choice, should have been effortlessly obvious. That such glaring pitfalls of justice, fairness, due process, and natural justice and equity did not raise any red flags and serious concerns for us; while knowing fully well the twists and turns in the history of the conflict; and well aware that one party to the conflict was being indicted- in the name of administering justice and ensuring accountability to vindicate the human rights of victims of atrocities in northern Uganda- but at the same time ignoring ongoing criminal internment in concentration camps; and forced labour being perpetrated by the army and state in northern Uganda, suggest serious, wilful, immoral travesty of justice.
While everyone interested in justice should applaud, support and uphold the spirit and moral principles of justice behind the ICC investigations and indictments of the LRA leaders, one should however vigorously object to and reject ICC as the institutional framework of choice; first because of its statutory limitations to the period after 2002; and second, because of its partiality and singular focus only on the activities and behaviour of non-state parties, which give the ICC flavours of partiality and political expediency. The bulk of the northern conflict predated the ICC, and the most heinous crimes were committed at the peak of the conflict before 2002. In light of ICC limitations to 2002, those interested and pushing to end impunity in northern Uganda through equitable justice and a just peace, ought to dismiss the ICC remit in northern Uganda as too inadequate, inappropriate mechanism to address justice needs, and aver that either the ICC yields to a special war crime tribunal, or the ICC indictments of the LRA leaders is complemented by special tribunal to investigate all the parties for the duration of the conflict not covered by the ICC investigations in northern Uganda.
The suggestion in the Juba Agreements that the ICC yields to a special division of the Uganda high court, a judiciary whose subjection and subordination to the whims of the executive is legendary, should not be entertained to see the light of day. Moreover, Yoweri Museveni and his generals are suspected war criminals in northern Uganda, and they cannot be expected to investigate, indict, try and punish themselves; let alone preside over a serious and credible, independent investigations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in northern Uganda.
We know we lend ourselves to accusations of making political and moral judgement, when we make the case that rebellion against Yoweri Museveni was justified in 1986. While we welcome such challenges, we by no means intend our positions to be construed as a defence of the LRA insurgents, and particularly the LRA that we see towards the end of this conflict. Any benefits the LRA or Joseph Kony may derive from our arguments are as a result of the experiential realities of the northern Uganda conflict, and elementary requirements of fairness and justice in treating similar cases equally. Furthermore, it may also come as a result of the necessary recognition of the moral rights and existential needs, choices and actions to self-help and self-defence that the unarmed Acholi population deservedly reached for in the face of brutalities in the hands of superior state forces. Consequently, any benefits to the LRA would be by way of benefits to all Acholi as victims of state terror in the first place. It would equally be a case of blatant intellectual dishonesty, if we did not recognise the context and background to the excesses for which the LRA have gained infamy and notoriety. One of these is the mutilation of limbs and body parts of victims, for which the LRA must be condemned and punished. Unfortunately, we would be failing in our duty to ensure justice, if we did not also have the patience and temperament to understand the rationale to such horrific and albeit unjustifiable crimes.
We are familiar with documentary evidence from sources-including Amnesty International, the Gersony Report, and the LRA among others-that indicate the rebels started cutting off limbs, lips, and other body parts of civilians in northern Uganda as angry reactions to the creation of the Arrow Brigades, composed of conscripted northern civilians to fight the well-armed LRA insurgents with axes, sticks, bows and arrows and spears. The misguided idea of mobilising civilians against the insurgents was the work of highly placed political and military leaders such as Betty Bigombe-herself an Acholi-as Minister for the Pacification of northern Uganda-, and NRA brigade and battalion commanders in Acholi. As a result, the LRA treated able-bodied civilians as active state combatants, and mutilation was a strategy to terrify and discourage Acholi civilians from direct participation in the conflict as organised state partisans. Certainly, primary responsibility for the horrific crimes of mutilation and killings in this respects must rest primarily with the LRA perpetrators, but full accountability would suggest that minister Betty Bigombe, her superiors in Kampala and their subordinate levels of political and military authorities in Acholi, including special resident district administrators and army commanders, must share responsibility for their callous counterinsurgency strategies and doctrine that put unarmed civilians in arms way.
Amnesty International, in their 1999 report accurately pointed out that:
"Trying to move forward towards peace or respect for human rights requires looking back and taking into account the events of the past. If human rights abuses or their perpetrators remain hidden and unacknowledged, justice can appear forgotten and deep-seated problems can go unresolved. However, arguing over the past can itself become an obstacle to moving forward. The use of the past by government and its opponents to indulge in a round of self-justification and accusation does little to help the people of the north. One of the challenges facing Ugandans is to find a framework within which the past can be addressed as a way of opening up the future."
Indeed, an appropriate mechanism that adequately addresses the pre- and post-ICC history and excesses of the conflict is the central bone of contention we have with current processes. Unless this is done, as we warn, we will have neither rendered justice to the people of northern Uganda, nor renovated the moral, political and social foundations of the Ugandan polity in order for the people of northern Uganda to feel confident that they will transition from war to peace and a secure future within in a just society.
See Part II
"The obligations and duties that exist for both government and armed groups under international human rights and humanitarian law and armed groups under international humanitarian law provide a framework for discussion of human rights abuse that reduces the risk of falling into a debate on which side is somehow "worse" or "better" than the other. Human rights abuses by one side, no matter how gross, do not provide legitimacy to abuses by the other side. Looking at human rights abuses in relation to an objective set of legal standards is the first step towards breaking the circle of violence."
Amnesty International, 1999.
Introduction
In the NRM/A government daily, the New Vision of 27 May 2008, Opiyo Oloya, one of Acholi Diaspora’s eminent moral voices and conscience, declared that the collapse of the Juba peace process was the end of Joseph Kony, because he had exhausted all his options and equivocations. That Kony had “come to the end of his tether”; the end of all options and possibilities, except life imprisonment or death. Oloya further asserted that, as the other half of the 22 years of civil strife in northern Uganda, the LRA struggle was driven by delusion and nothingness. And that Joseph Kony is essentially an unredeemable villain, whose personal freedom today is as meaningless as if he were dead. Moreover, by inference, the sooner death comes for Kony- whether at the end of a trial (we bear Frank Kafka’s The Trial in mind)-or violently on the theatre on which he has been cast as a protagonist for this long, is no longer relevant and should interest no one. According to Oloya, the notion that Kony may consider himself a freedom fighter and a hero, is a myth that should be dismissed contemptuously, without even token efforts to look at the many contexts and meanings of struggles for freedom, especially individuating ones, even in “limit situations” like that of Uganda’s 22 year military dictatorship and Museveni’s institutionalised autocracy and personal rule.
While we do agree with Opiyo Oloya at some points, we certainly do not think that debating peace and justice issues arising from a long and devastating insurgency and counterinsurgency can afford a black and white knowledge of who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Moreover, it is doubtful that were we to hang Kony in a public square in Gulu or Kitgum tomorrow, all the gruesome war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in northern Uganda will have been fairly avenged and accounted for. Therefore, we believe that the fundamental mistake those involved in forging peace and accountability in northern Uganda make is the invalid assumption that Kony and the LRA are the, rather than a party, to charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in northern Uganda. While the International Criminal Court indictments have made these mistakes, either out of innocent ignorance or deliberately to protect elements of the Ugandan state, for those of us who lived through the conflict and know its twists and turns, it would be a monumental moral outrage for us to replicate and perpetuate such grievous distortions of realities.
Therefore, rather than being the end of a tether, we dare say the collapse of Juba has exposed the unrealistic, unjust, immoral and unconscionable action and aspiration of some Acholi leaders, the International Criminal Court (ICC), the so-called international community, and donor groups, to audaciously go along with a war termination ploy that shields Yoweri Museveni and the Ugandan state from scrutiny and accounting for its role in the debacles of northern Uganda.
Looking at unrevised history of the northern Uganda conflict, we find that contemplating a war termination model that assumes a just settlement and a just peace, cannot avoid but agree that, given the circumstances in 1986, resistance against Museveni was morally and existentially justified. Indeed, popular revolts broke out in Teso to the east, Acholi and Lango to the north, West Nile to the northwest, and Kasese in the west of the country. All these separate and independent rebellions were sparked off by a pattern of serious rights violations, including arbitrary arrest, torture-trussing, rape, sodomy, maiming, and extra-judicial killings by the National Resistance Movement / Army (NRM/A). Most of these atrocities were committed through cordon, search and destroy operations, which were later supported by kangaroo field courts, which tried and executed youths and men of military age, netted in such operations. For a long time, the NRA soldiers operated as the police, prosecutors, judge and hangmen in the insurgency areas.
These experiences and accounts were corroborated and documented by among others, Robert Gersony in The Anguish of Northern Uganda 1998; Amnesty International Reports: Deaths in the Countryside: Killings of Civilians by the Army 1990; Failure to Safeguard Human Rights, 1992; Breaking the Circle: Protecting human rights in the northern war zones, 1999; ACCORD’s development research monograph series: What Do You Remember 1990; and Heike Behrend, Alice and the Holy Spirits: War in northern Uganda 1986-1998, 1999.
We believe that when we engage in discussions on the search for peace and justice in northern Uganda, it is important for us to define what our assumptions and objectives are. We ought to not debase the debate on northern Uganda to an assessment of who killed more and how brutally they did the killings. It should matter less whether one killed in the hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands; or whether in doing so they used machetes, bayonets, or mortar shells, helicopter gunships, grenades or bludgeoned to death in the bushes or safe houses with rifle butts or crude clubs. As much as these different methods convey differing horrifying scenes of death, carnage, and moral outrages, what should matter is that these were heinous war crimes and crimes against humanity committed, and it is our collective duty to identify, apprehend, try, and punish all those found guilty for these crimes. But in order to do so, it requires that we set up an impartial, fair, just and balanced mechanism with legal merits and moral clout to diligently shift through the evidence.
Unfortunately, this far into the game, both the ICC track record in northern Uganda and the alternate complementary propositions of the Juba Agreements to substitute a special division of the Uganda High Court for the ICC, do not meet these basic but necessary tests.
It is imperative for those involved in or support the search for peace for northern Uganda, to clearly state their bottom lines, so that it may be assessed against the circumstances, experiences and the need in northern Uganda, in order to stimulate a meaningful conversation in search of consensus around the most important issues of justice and accountability. This is particularly critical for the civil society in northern Uganda. The notion that the civil population in the concentration camps have asked for blanket forgiveness, and therefore the ICC indictments must give way to mato oput and Ugandan legal mechanisms, must be taken with a grain of salt. Those political and moral leaders from northern Uganda who invoke and sanctify such arguments against the need for peace with justice, commit unpardonable political and moral leadership failure for which they ought to step aside or be pushed out.
Were we all interested in a just peace in northern Uganda, and through an impartial, fair, and just war termination mechanism, we would all agree that there is no excuse why we should condone past or recent Museveni and Ugandan state, or Joseph Kony and the LRA, actions and behaviour that amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity, committed before and outside the timeframe within which the ICC became operational. Even so, it is doubtful that Joseph Kony and the LRA, who have been indicted by the ICC, were inoculated from their toxic past by this statutory limitation and have been investigated with clinically closed minds to their alleged excesses for which they became notorious prior to 2002, when the ICC statute took effect. We suspect that these prior records of alleged LRA crimes weighed heavily at the back of the minds of the ICC prosecutor, investigators, Yoweri Museveni, the Ugandan state, and so called international community and actors, to prejudice legal, diplomatic, official, and public positions on the LRA as candidates for international opprobrium.
In our considered view, rather than write off war crimes and crimes against humanity committed prior to the ICC ratifications coming into force in 2002, serious thoughts should have been given to devising alternative mechanisms; for instance, a UN special war crime tribunal for northern Uganda, to investigate, indict, and try all perpetrators implicated in serious crimes since the outbreak of the rebellion in 1986. Were we seriously looking for justice through full and complete accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity in northern Uganda, the inadequacy, unsuitability, limitations and partiality of the ICC as a framework of choice, should have been effortlessly obvious. That such glaring pitfalls of justice, fairness, due process, and natural justice and equity did not raise any red flags and serious concerns for us; while knowing fully well the twists and turns in the history of the conflict; and well aware that one party to the conflict was being indicted- in the name of administering justice and ensuring accountability to vindicate the human rights of victims of atrocities in northern Uganda- but at the same time ignoring ongoing criminal internment in concentration camps; and forced labour being perpetrated by the army and state in northern Uganda, suggest serious, wilful, immoral travesty of justice.
While everyone interested in justice should applaud, support and uphold the spirit and moral principles of justice behind the ICC investigations and indictments of the LRA leaders, one should however vigorously object to and reject ICC as the institutional framework of choice; first because of its statutory limitations to the period after 2002; and second, because of its partiality and singular focus only on the activities and behaviour of non-state parties, which give the ICC flavours of partiality and political expediency. The bulk of the northern conflict predated the ICC, and the most heinous crimes were committed at the peak of the conflict before 2002. In light of ICC limitations to 2002, those interested and pushing to end impunity in northern Uganda through equitable justice and a just peace, ought to dismiss the ICC remit in northern Uganda as too inadequate, inappropriate mechanism to address justice needs, and aver that either the ICC yields to a special war crime tribunal, or the ICC indictments of the LRA leaders is complemented by special tribunal to investigate all the parties for the duration of the conflict not covered by the ICC investigations in northern Uganda.
The suggestion in the Juba Agreements that the ICC yields to a special division of the Uganda high court, a judiciary whose subjection and subordination to the whims of the executive is legendary, should not be entertained to see the light of day. Moreover, Yoweri Museveni and his generals are suspected war criminals in northern Uganda, and they cannot be expected to investigate, indict, try and punish themselves; let alone preside over a serious and credible, independent investigations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in northern Uganda.
We know we lend ourselves to accusations of making political and moral judgement, when we make the case that rebellion against Yoweri Museveni was justified in 1986. While we welcome such challenges, we by no means intend our positions to be construed as a defence of the LRA insurgents, and particularly the LRA that we see towards the end of this conflict. Any benefits the LRA or Joseph Kony may derive from our arguments are as a result of the experiential realities of the northern Uganda conflict, and elementary requirements of fairness and justice in treating similar cases equally. Furthermore, it may also come as a result of the necessary recognition of the moral rights and existential needs, choices and actions to self-help and self-defence that the unarmed Acholi population deservedly reached for in the face of brutalities in the hands of superior state forces. Consequently, any benefits to the LRA would be by way of benefits to all Acholi as victims of state terror in the first place. It would equally be a case of blatant intellectual dishonesty, if we did not recognise the context and background to the excesses for which the LRA have gained infamy and notoriety. One of these is the mutilation of limbs and body parts of victims, for which the LRA must be condemned and punished. Unfortunately, we would be failing in our duty to ensure justice, if we did not also have the patience and temperament to understand the rationale to such horrific and albeit unjustifiable crimes.
We are familiar with documentary evidence from sources-including Amnesty International, the Gersony Report, and the LRA among others-that indicate the rebels started cutting off limbs, lips, and other body parts of civilians in northern Uganda as angry reactions to the creation of the Arrow Brigades, composed of conscripted northern civilians to fight the well-armed LRA insurgents with axes, sticks, bows and arrows and spears. The misguided idea of mobilising civilians against the insurgents was the work of highly placed political and military leaders such as Betty Bigombe-herself an Acholi-as Minister for the Pacification of northern Uganda-, and NRA brigade and battalion commanders in Acholi. As a result, the LRA treated able-bodied civilians as active state combatants, and mutilation was a strategy to terrify and discourage Acholi civilians from direct participation in the conflict as organised state partisans. Certainly, primary responsibility for the horrific crimes of mutilation and killings in this respects must rest primarily with the LRA perpetrators, but full accountability would suggest that minister Betty Bigombe, her superiors in Kampala and their subordinate levels of political and military authorities in Acholi, including special resident district administrators and army commanders, must share responsibility for their callous counterinsurgency strategies and doctrine that put unarmed civilians in arms way.
Amnesty International, in their 1999 report accurately pointed out that:
"Trying to move forward towards peace or respect for human rights requires looking back and taking into account the events of the past. If human rights abuses or their perpetrators remain hidden and unacknowledged, justice can appear forgotten and deep-seated problems can go unresolved. However, arguing over the past can itself become an obstacle to moving forward. The use of the past by government and its opponents to indulge in a round of self-justification and accusation does little to help the people of the north. One of the challenges facing Ugandans is to find a framework within which the past can be addressed as a way of opening up the future."
Indeed, an appropriate mechanism that adequately addresses the pre- and post-ICC history and excesses of the conflict is the central bone of contention we have with current processes. Unless this is done, as we warn, we will have neither rendered justice to the people of northern Uganda, nor renovated the moral, political and social foundations of the Ugandan polity in order for the people of northern Uganda to feel confident that they will transition from war to peace and a secure future within in a just society.
See Part II
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