Northern Uganda Messenger Post

Key Words: Acholi; Juba Peace Talks; Joseph Kony; LRM/A,; Yoweri Museveni; NRM/A; Genocide; Uganda; Peace; Reconstruction; Development; Programme; PRDP; Acholi Autonomy; Acholi Secession; Just Peace; Northern Uganda; ICC; LRA Indictments . With a central government in full control of every inch and facets of life of the country, and the local governments fully functional,why must disbanding camps, resettling people to their own land, rehabilitation and reconstruction work rest so perilously on Joseph Kony's illegible signiture on the worthless Juba documents? We have come to the conclusion, and the full realisation and firm belief that, the latest comedic episode from the Juba Pantomime, is a grand excuse on the part of those in governmnent, position of power and authority, to actually continue not to do anything for and about northern Uganda mass suffering. Therefore, the time may have come, for Acholi as the principal victim of the war, to really speak independently and with a m...

From Monitor Online New report pins UPDF on human rights abuse Posted in: News By Tabu Butagira Nov 17, 2008 - 1:41:19 AM Kampala UPDF soldiers deployed to fight the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels in northern Uganda often turned their guns against unarmed civilians during counter-insurgency operations, human rights group Amnesty International claims in a new report to be unveiled today. But Maj. Paddy Ankunda, the Ugandan defence and military spokesman, who for many years served as the spokesman for the Gulu-based UPDF 4th Division, then responsible for the anti-LRA offensives, said the fresh allegations of human rights abuses by the UPDF chronicled by Amnesty International are “outrageous and indefensible.” Amnesty International, a UK-based human rights group, is to report findings of studies conducted in five northern Uganda districts of Gulu, Amuru, Kitgum, Pader and Lira in the months of May and August this year. It claims that widespread sexual and physical abuses perpetrated by bo...

The Problems of Amuru is testament to the failure of Acholi leadership When some of us point out from the sidelines, the afflictions that have for the most part been wilfully imposed on Acholi, we are dismissed as a lunatic fringe, more emotional than rational, and out of touch with the realities at home. We are the spoilers. You would think that, given constant flogging and cynical and snide remarks against such voices, we might recoil into our inner selves and shy away from opening our mouths when it is least of our business to meddle. Unfortunately, we are still egragious animals; we seek and like community and we are not going to fold our hands and watch a community we still feel and think we are part of, consumed by fires whose sparks we should have put out and whose conflagration, should have been contained if not prevented. Which brings me to the shame that is Amuru District; that enclave of greed, the symbol of the worse of the vesitiges of ancient regimes, where carts actually...

Museveni, NRM on wrong track For the last 22 years, the NRM did not govern in the interests of Ugandans. It has therefore been and is bumbling on, on the wrong tracks. Post-conflict policy in northern Uganda is illustrative. Relative peace in northern Uganda is changing programming from humanitarian relief to reconstruction and development. NGO plans are predicated on disbanding camps and resettling people to their land. Likewise, the NRM are repositioning. Unlike humanitarian agencies, the government is reinforcing coercive state infrastructures, and dubious "investment", and "modernisation" strategies that are discordant with the immediate needs and priorities in the region. For instance, the government is spoiling to alienate 40, 000 and 20,000 hectares of land in Amuru District for Madhvani Group, and Canada's Eco-Gestion-NileCan, to grow sugar cane. As centrepiece of the government's socioeconomic reconstruction strategy, the policy ignores 22 years ...

From Monitor Online Jamwa’s letter to Museveni on Temangalo- NSSF deal Posted in: News By Oct 20, 2008 - 1:44:34 AM 29th September 2008 Your Excellency Mr President, Sir Introduction It’s painful and a regret for me to bring the real truth to your attention about the Temangalo land deal. However, as a humble Civil servant I am obliged to do so without fear of favour. The issue at hand in the transaction is that there was influence peddling and political interference. NSSF was under pressure to execute the transaction. As the MD of NSSF it’s my job to prepare investment proposals for consideration and approval by the Board of Directors (BOD), the Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic development (MOFPED) and the Solicitor General (SG). My job description that is in line with the NSSF Act does not include either approval or authorisation of investments. This power lies with the three authorities mentioned above. The NSSF MD is the implementer of the decisions of the policy maker and...

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.” Part IV Being is individual, personal and problematic In the face of decades-long, well-orchestrated concealment and revisionism through paid western intellectual brokerages in academia and public relations firms, our desire to engage Opiyo Oloya-type arguments farther in an attempt to humanise and repatriate Joseph Kony back to the realities of existence in Acholi in 1986, and journey with him to the present, is a difficult and contentious one that readily exposes proponents as easy targets for dismissal as LRM/A ideologues and sympathisers at home and in the diaspora. However, we feel that it is a worthwhile enterprise to undertake, and we are confiden...

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.” Part III Contextualising Joseph Kony: Convenient Political Truth Versus the experiential and existential Truth "Little attention has been paid to modern movements of social protest which fall outside the classic patterns of labor or socialist agitation, and even less to those whose political coloring is not modernist or progressive but conservative, or reactionary or, at any rate, rather inarticulate. Robin Hood is fine in the Middle Ages, but out of place in the 19th and 20th centuries. Revolutionary workers and their doctrines are familiar figures; revolutionary peasants and their heroes are only just beginning to be recognized. But peasants, shephe...

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. ” Part II Anarchy in the northern Uganda peace process as “tragedy of the commons.” Garrett Hardin is famous for originating the theory of the “tragedy of the commons.” It is the view that, where there is no clear control, authority, management, demarcation and ownership of a resource and access and user rights are not defined or even privatised, anarchy reigns and there is a tendency for people to over exploit, misuse and be indifferent to the sustainability of the resource. Good examples of such commons are community grazing grounds, fish in lakes and rivers, where people can own and graze as many livestock and as often as they like; or catch as much fis...

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. Intro...