The opening rebel statement at the start of delayed talks with the Ugandan government does not bode well for the negotiations. Effectively the insurgent Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has demanded the Kampala government accept it has been in the wrong during the 19 year rebellion which has cost thousands of lives, most of them innocent Ugandan civilians. This is not the way to start serious negotiations, even though it is very much in character with the ruthless, uncompromising rebel campaign.
If it is purely a negotiating ploy, it is not a very sound one. Those, including the Sudanese, who have brought the LRA and the government of President Yoweri Museveni together in the Sudanese southern city of Juba will be hoping that serious negotiations will now begin. This is an appalling brutal conflict that cannot be allowed to continue, not least because among its major victims have been children. The LRA has made a tactic of kidnapping youngsters, turning the girls into sex slaves and the boys into fighters. This has made the insurrection particularly repugnant. In a country with true justice, the LRA leaders would be treated as odious criminals and feel the full force of law enforcement. Unfortunately northern Uganda is no such a place and the government in Kampala has neither the power nor the resources to deal with these crimes.
Instead they have offered a full amnesty to the rebels if they abandon their cause, release their impressed soldiers and abducted females, lay down their arms and return to their homes. The extent of these concessions demonstrates the despair and frustration that the authorities in Kampala feel at the inability of the Ugandan police and military to make any headway against the LRA in the difficult bush country where they dominate.
If other rebellions around the world are anything to go by, there is a strong possibility that the LRA will seek to find some way to stay in existence, perhaps demanding a power-sharing deal. Were this rebellion based on genuine deep-seated grievances, any government would be wise to consider such an option. Unfortunately whatever the triggers 20 years ago for this most vicious of bush wars, this insurrection has, like so many others, including that in Sri Lanka, turned into a profitable and even comfortable way for a relatively few rebel leaders to exercise absolute power over a cowed and brutalized local population, which these individuals then have the neck to claim they represent.
To abandon rebellion will be to abandon a way of life that has suited such people very well. Why should they cease to be kings in their own backyards and join in a peace that will offer them no such easy pickings?
It must be hoped that there is some degree of seriousness in the LRA’s participation in peace talks, perhaps because of the loss of support from sympathizers in the south of Sudan. If negotiations fail however, no one can blame the Museveni administration for not offering a generous deal.
