Sunday, January 25, 2009

Museveni's Illusions

The war in the north has been going on for close to twenty years. People have been displaced in a maneuver code-named  ‘Operation Scorched Earth’ implying that the government wanted nothing alive in the Acholiland. There should be no living things except government soldiers. At that time, Museveni would now accept that there were no more rebels. In this way the Acholi have been regarded as the Rebels: not the LRA. As soon as the people were forced out of their homes, they were herded into concentration camps where there was no housing or sanitation. People had to begin building from scratch living in the open fields without any protection. This situation can drive you to commit all sorts of inhuman acts. And this was instituted under the watchful eyes of Museveni and his commanders from western Uganda, who constituted 99.9 percent of the army. It was through indiscriminate bombings of the land that people were forced to move because if you did not move you would be considered a rebel and treated accordingly. At this point it would be instructive to ask the Museveni government how many Rebels were there? Why did they have to bombard the whole land in order to move the people out of their villages? Where else in the world or in their campaign, have they used a similar tactic? And what were the results?
These questions are still relevant today and we want to get answers to them. Uganda government is being operated in several tiers: the private wing consisting of Museveni and his original groups from the bush war period, and the parliamentary groups. What took Museveni to the bush was not loss of election through rigging, but disdain for the rule of law. This attitude has never left Museveni. In Museveni world, he is the ‘law’. So, whenever you are dealing with Museveni, you must bear this in mind that Museveni is the law. In order to gain support from the southern tribes in Uganda, Museveni had to turn them against the tribes from the north. As his troops approached Kampala, he said, “We are tired of these northerners, the Okellos...” That was early in 1986 just before the capture of Kampala. The actions of bombarding villages, inciting people to commit murders in the name of tribes, targeting a tribe for liquidations are crimes and are prosecutable by the ICC.
For more than twenty years under Museveni, Uganda has been in war every single day of that period. No mention have been made of indicting Museveni at the Hague. On the other hand, President Bashir of Sudan has been indicted by the same body, the ICC.
The case of Joseph Kony or LRA (Lord's Resistance Army) is very much the case of man versus computer in a game of chess. All the people who joined Museveni thinking his war was a revolution to change Uganda for the better, have been liquidated. The only people who have survived in the NRM (National Resistance Movement) or alive outside the organization are the people who come from Museveni’s tribe or inner circle.
Prior to going into the bush, Museveni had already perfected a method of causing dislike or hatred of the government by attacking people at night and blaming it on government soldiers which he was part of. Attacks in Luwero were stage-managed to implicate government soldiers. Whether people believed it or not, did not matter. But it provided Museveni with a way to ‘purge’ himself of his conscience to do despicable things; and he did many. The story in Acholi follow the same pattern. And Museveni has been forced to negotiate against his will. He has done everything to wreck the peace process to no avail for almost two years. But Recently he decided to go back to what he knows best, which is fighting wars. That is why he hurriedly attacked the LRA camps on flimsy charge of failing to sign the peace agreement. He himself had not sign it. So, one wonders why did he attack the LRA in Congo? Wherever Museveni sends soldiers, there will always be disproportionate civilian death. Suddenly, it is the LRA massacring civilians and Museveni knows all about it in details. No independent journalists are allowed in the area. And the news out of Uganda is nothing but opinion of the writers!

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