The local aspect of the conflict in northern Uganda is misrepresented in the literature in two different ways. Some situate the conflict exclusively within Acholiland, claiming there’s nothing anyone else can do about it – that it’s an Acholi problem that only the Acholi can solve. Another misrepresentation takes place when the national and even international aspects of the conflict are recognised, but the local aspect is portrayed in a simplified and often distorted manner. From the point of view of conflict resolution or development intervention in the conflict, both misrepresentations are potentially harmful.
The LRA has over the years repeatedly claimed that it is fighting for the Acholi people. This claim is often countered by arguing that as long as the LRA is targeting Acholi civilians it cannot be considered to be their legitimate representative. This was also the view of most of the internally displaced women I interviewed in Kitgum. Yet if the debate over the validity of the LRA’s claims is taken no further, it is inconclusive and rather useless, particularly since there has been a varying amount of local support for the rebels throughout the conflict (Branch 2003, Finnström 2006a). Saying, as the head of an INGO in Uganda told me, that “there’s nothing else to it, they’re just crazy”, is no more helpful. A much deeper analysis is needed, and is provided for particularly by the extensive ethnographic accounts of Acholi lifeworlds by Behrend (1999) and Finnström (2003, 2006a).
A number of issues within Acholi society can be evoked to explain the evolution of conflict in the region. These include questions of leadership, spiritual cleansing,
generational issues as well as social integration. When Museveni’s NRM/A replaced Milton Obote’s mainly Langi and Acholi UNLA in 1986, numerous young Acholi soldiers retreated to their home region in the North. Many of them had been in the army for a long time, and few had the skills, or the will, to go back to civilian life (Van Acker 2004). The Acholi were aware of the atrocities committed by UNLA soldiers in the counterinsurgency war in Luwero, and the evil spirit, or cen, that was believed to have come upon the Acholi soldiers through the uncleansed killings, made it difficult for the community to reintegrate the former soldiers (Behrend 1999, Finnström 2006a).
Van Acker places the blame for this on the traditional leaders of Acholi, who “demonstrated little imagination in dealing with the crisis” and were “unable to appease and exorcise the cen” (2004: 344). Branch (2007) analyses the creation and evolution of political authority in Acholiland through the colonial and independence era, and shows how Van Acker’s statement is misleading in its simplicity. Indeed, the whole question of who in fact held so-called “traditional authority” in Acholiland was unclear in 1986, and continues to be so today, since interventions from the colonial state, the Obote, Amin, and NRM governments, and the humanitarian regime and international civil society have affected formations of power in Acholiland, undermining some authorities while bolstering and even inventing others (see also section 6.3).
In any case, in 1986 the unoccupied former soldiers, with little experience of social belonging, had a strong feeling of economic and political marginalisation within Uganda. These ‘internal strangers’ (Van Acker 2004: 348) of Acholi society turned to rebel movements in search for meaning and belonging.15 Finnström (2003: 110) shows how people in the region came to differentiate between two dimensions of war, and correspondingly, two types of armed groups: the initial political war and groups like the UPDA, and the subsequent movements engaging also (although not solely) the spiritual, like Alice Lakwena’s Holy Spirit Movement/Army (HSM/A). As to which of the underlying reasons for rebellion were the most important, sources disagree. Finnström’s young Acholi informants, for instance, place marginalisation at the heart of rebellion in northern Uganda (2003: 112). In this view, the spiritual aspects of conflict, although relevant and not to be slighted, should be seen as a vehicle of social discontent.
It was the HSM/A that eventually gained the widest group of followers, and the most media attention – worldwide. Behrend, focusing on the cosmological, describes the
15 For an account on the numerous rebel movements active in northern Uganda during the
HSM/A’s war as “a consequence of preceding wars. Its war was a war against a war, one attempting to cope with the never-ending cycle of violence and retaliation. Although itself generating violence, despair and death, the HSM/A nevertheless tried to end this cycle of violence and to heal not only individuals but also society” (Behrend 1998: 247). Alice Lakwena’s promise of spiritual cleansing to the soldiers infected by cen was readily accepted, yet support for the HSM/A rebels was not based solely on want of a spiritual battle. The HSM/A war, which engaged spiritual forces to the battlefield by to some extent replacing guns and bullet-proof vests with magical sticks and ointments, gained support particularly in those areas “where the NRA’s arrival had been interpreted as an occupation instead of a liberation” (Branch 2007: 161). This fundamental descriptor of the HSM/A was also to become Alice Lakwena’s downfall, since she lost grassroots support upon moving to areas of intense NRM/A support, being finally conquered just kilometres from Kampala in 1987.
As Alice Lakwena’s HSM/A fell, the political space the rebels had vacated was quickly occupied by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony. The LRA came to merge the two types of war in Acholi: the politically and the spiritually motivated. This occurred not only metaphorically, but concretely in the sense that after their defeat, fighters from both the UPDA and the HSM/A were merged into the LRA. The political motivations of the LRA conflict have to do both with a search and struggle for authority within Acholi society, as well as for recognition of the Acholi on a the national level (Finnström 2003).
Understanding the political dynamics within Acholiland is crucial to understanding the LRA conflict and why it has lasted for so long. Yet the political aspects of the conflict are generally blatantly simplified in accounts of the conflict, or simply ignored or nullified (Finnström 2003). As Branch (2007: 41–42) writes, “the Western academic and policy communities have decided that the LRA, due to its extreme violence and its violence against children, has forfeited its privilege to be considered a genuine political force.” This decision has been greatly promoted by national and international media accounts of the conflict, which systematically underline the barbarity and insanity of the LRA, thus also systematically overlooking any possible logic behind LRA violence. Both Branch and Finnström, however, show, that LRA violence has primarily not been wanton and random, but has often been specifically targeted at armed forces and civilians seen as political enemies. The LRA’s attacks have also been coupled with both
verbal political statements and written manifestos, the existence of which the Ugandan government has repeatedly denied (Finnström 2003).16
Alongside the political, Finnström (Finnström 2006a: 205) also persuasively argues the importance of the cosmological as an element of conflict within Acholi. Particularly, war blessings and curses carry great meaning. For instance, a central contested question concerning the conflict, one which has great bearing on peace mediation and reconciliation efforts, is whether the LRA has been given a warfare blessing by Acholi elders.17
Behrend (1998: 249) describes the HSM/A’s war as having been a mirror image of the conflict external to Acholi: “The war against an external, alien enemy was thus turned inward, leading to an increase in tensions and conflict in Acholi which might otherwise have remained latent.” The pattern has been reproduced ever since. The conflict in northern Uganda has set the Acholi people in an impossible situation: siding with one party means opposing the other, but refusing to take a side is not an option. Being neutral is impossible. Not only are the Acholi stuck between the rebels and the government; both of which are sensitive to any signs of siding with the other; the Acholi people are also forced against one another in a vicious cycle of mistrust (Finnström 2003: 125, Finnström 2006a: 209). It is a cycle into which intervention in northern Uganda is unavoidably enmeshed, and which intervention can exacerbate despite its pronounced aim to do the opposite.