The Americans, who once had Sudan on their list of terrorist countries, are canoodling with Khartoum, partly a reward to Sudan because it did a U-turn on terrorism and cooperated with the US in cracking down on Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network following the deadly terrorist attack in New York and Washington last September 11.
The Americans listed the LRA as a "terrorist" organization after September 11. With that, the LRA truly became damaged goods. According to informed sources, a deal was struck between Uganda and Sudan. UPDF was given the given light under the deal to go into south Sudan and smoke out Kony if he did not give up his rebel activities as he had been asked to by his Khartoum patrons.
One possible result is that soon a lot of the LRA fighters, a lot of them abducted children, might well abandon the fight and return to rejoin their families or, worse, be killed. Whatever the LRA's fate, there will be few children among the rebels who might surrender, be killed or captured. This is not because they have grown into adults, or most have been killed or escaped and returned earlier. No. It is just that contrary to popular opinion, relatively very few children were abducted in the first place.
The abduction of the 139 girls from Aboke Secondary School in Apac on October 10, 1996 entrenched the view that most of Kony's victims were children. Many children's rights NGO and bodies, including UNICEF, got involved, and soon hijacked the humanitarian agenda in the north since they were able to get resources for children's programmes more easily. The result was that the wider suffering of the north in general, and the majority of children, became marginalised.
Your columnist heard all this at a recent presentation abroad on the question of Internally Displaced Persons in the so-called "protected camps" in northern. The presentation by Chris Dolan, which has also just been published in Accord, a human rights and peace journal in the UK, was based on what is possibly the most extensive research into the IDP camps and abducted persons to date. It deserves to be quoted at length.
According to Dolan, "At the heart of this very real suffering the most recent figures give some grounds for cautious optimism. Rather than the earlier estimates of a rate of return of 50-75% (which would suggest that between 4,909 and 7,363 children would have returned by now), the most recent figures indicate that some 7,860 children have already returned and been reintegrated by World Vision and Gulu Support the Children Organisation (GUSCO). Indeed, allowing that some 10% of those abducted would have become adults in the years following their abduction, less than 1,000 children remain to be returned and reintegrated.
"This indicates a reintegration rate of at least 88% - and a return rate which is even higher, given that not all returnees pass through the World Vision or GUSCO centres. This is in stark and positive contrast to earlier UNICEF reports of a return rate of only 50%. Given that some children have undoubtedly returned without passing through any process of reintegration it also suggests that the number remaining to be returned as of early 2002 is at the very most around 900."
But there is bad news about the 900 children. According to Dolan, if all accounts of children dying or being killed on forced marches and when they seek to escape are true, "then several hundred of these died shortly after capture. Further hundreds are thought to have been killed in skirmishes with the UPDF and SPLA. And it is alleged that hundreds have been sold into slavery by the LRA in Sudan. From all accounts therefore, it is unlikely that many of these unreturned 900 or so children still survive. This raises major questions regarding the nature and behaviour of the LRA, and a huge question mark over the widely publicised claim that children make up 90% of the LRA - if they do, then LRA is a very tiny force indeed with which to keep an entire region in a state of severe disruption."
Dolan's bold argument is that the focus on LRA abductees and returnees has diverted attention from the extreme needs of the children in the affected districts of northern Uganda as a whole, and yet they are a neglible fraction of the people abducted by Kony or affected by the conflict in the north.
He cites reports that children under the age of 18 account for at least 50% or 400,000 of the total population of Gulu and Kitgum districts. 220,000 of these are aged between 8 and 18, i.e. are at risk of abduction. The 800 or so children abducted every year account for at most 0.4% of children at risk of abduction (i.e. aged 8-18), and 0.2% of the child population as a whole (aged 1-18).
The other 99.8%, he reports, live a daily catalogue of major forms of abuse: "A majority of them live in 'protected villages', in which parenting and socialisation practices are severely disrupted. From there some are forcibly recruited into the government's own Home Guard and deployed to other theatres of war such as the DRC. Some lose life and limb stepping on landmines and picking up unexploded grenades, while others suffer severe malnutrition".
But even more troubling, Dolan says, "The phenomena of camp followers and of parents marrying their under-age daughters to soldiers in the hope of increased protection and security, are well documented. Although no figures for this are available, it is probable, given the degree of militarization in the north, that at least as many young girls are married off to UPDF soldiers as the 200 abducted annually by the LRA."
Then the inevitable question: Why have LRA abductees have been given so much emphasis? Dolan, while not questioning the good intentions of those who have been involved in those dynamics, nevertheless sees several interests "benefiting".
The question of returnees, he argues, was "until 1995 a distinct gap which has since become something of a niche for certain humanitarian agencies. It is relatively easy to raise money for children's issues. The case of abducted children of northern Uganda has become something of a cause celebre in the movement for the rights of the child, as well as in campaigns to ban child-soldiers and the anti-slavery campaign, and it has been a key shaper of international perceptions of the war in the north."
Secondly, Dolan argues, "The presentation of the war as being principally waged around children who need to be reintegrated or brought back under control for their own good and the good of society plays directly into the hands of adults who are seeking to strengthen their shaky power-base. Principal mechanisms of this are cleansing and reconciliation ceremonies, and the re-establishment or reinvention of 'traditional leadership' structures (male elders).
Thirdly, he observes, the presentation of the war as a child-centred one has "enabled relatively uncritical demonisation of the LRA by the government - despite the NRM's own notorious use of kadogos (child soldiers) in its struggle for power in the mid 1980s, and its more recent involvement in the training of child soldiers in the DRC.
"Nevertheless, the image of the LRA as being led by individuals who are indifferent to children's rights has in some circles made a non-negotiation stance by the government of Uganda quite justifiable. It has also enabled people to turn a blind eye to government's current abuses of children, such as the forcible recruitment into 'home guards' who are then sent on campaigns in the DRC, and the marriage of young girls to UPDF soldiers, as outlined above."
The furtherance of the interests of these three groups (NGOs and human rights campaigners, local adults, Government of Uganda) through the issue of abducted children has done little either to help resolve the conflict or to create a climate conducive to longer-term peace and stability, Dolan remarks. "Not only have the abducted children themselves not been properly counted, but children as a whole in northern Uganda appear not to count."
©2002 Charles Onyango-Obbo & Worldwide EP. All rights reserved.