 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
"The Ugandan government has established a national body to combat the proliferation of illicit small arms into the country," announced the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs on September 24. The NFP (the Ugandan National Focal Point, an agency that coordinates
Uganda's relations with multinational bodies) will be responsible for
fulfilling the country's obligation, pursuant to the Nairobi
Declaration, to reduce "the demand and supply of illegal firearms"
in Uganda. According to the March 2000 Declaration, illicit small arms
have had "devastating consequences . . . in sustaining armed conflict
and abetting terrorism, cattle rustling and other serious problems in
the region." To the contrary, it has been disarmament which has been
the prime facilitator of state-sponsored terrorism in Uganda. In light of the absence of a strong central government, and the easily transportable nature of bovine assets, it should come as no surprise that cattle rustling (with its concomitant social violence) has been a traditional Karamojong activity. Low-quality firearms were first introduced to Karamojong society in the late 19th century by ivory hunters and traders, but were not generally available until the fall of Idi Amin. The British (who ruled Uganda from 1894 to 1962) were mostly successful in keeping firearms out of the hands of the indigenous population. Uganda's first prime minister, A. Milton Obote, perpetuated British policies,
including the gun-control laws. But pastoralists across the borders to
the north and east had access to modern firearms, which facilitated raids
on Ugandan herds. While Obote's armed police were ineffectual in protecting
the Ugandan pastoralists, they were nevertheless quite diligent about
thwarting the Ugandans' acquisition of firearms. In response to Amin's murderous rule, the Karamojong began
producing their own guns, fashioning gun barrels from the steel tubing
of metal furniture. These homemade guns were then used tactically to acquire
better and more powerful ones by attacking isolated police outposts where
acquisition would not be terribly costly in terms of tribal lives. When
the Amin government was toppled and his army fled, military firearms were
traded, sold, or lost along the way to local tribesmen, who also found
easy access to now-deserted weapons depots. Museveni also promised trained, armed militias (Local Defense Units,
or LDUs) and army troops for Karamoja. As Uganda's government-owned New
Vision newspaper reported:
When the voluntary gun surrender expired on February 15, 2002, and only a disappointing 7,676 guns (out of a conservatively estimated 40,000) were collected, Museveni turned up the heat. He gave the army free rein to switch roles from guardian to terrorist, and the army launched a "forcible disarmament operation" in Karamoja to get the rest of the guns. Yet despite the risk of imprisonment, the remaining gun-owners refused to disarm. The UPDF went on a rampage, beating and torturing Ugandans, and raping and looting at will, all the while using firearm confiscation to justify the violence. On March 21, 2002, Father Declan O'Toole, a member of the Mill Hill Missionaries in Uganda, and his companions were executed by UDPF soldiers because O'Toole asked the army to be "less aggressive" in the disarmament campaign. The murderers were apprehended and their death sentence was carried out within days, before they could appeal it — and also before they could reveal who had given them the order. Just one week after O'Toole's murder, New Vision reported on the death of an expectant mother who "died of injuries sustained when a soldier kicked her in the stomach during forceful disarmament." Museveni's answer was to blame the Karamojong, whose torture by the army was the basis for O'Toole's complaint. According to an article in New Vision, Museveni "said the best way to stop such incidents in [the] future is for the Karimojong to hand in their guns to eliminate any justification for the UPDF operations in the villages." But the Karamojong know that security lies in their own hands. In remote Karamoja, when you discover your cattle being raided and your wife being raped, there is no 911 system to call. Indeed, what exists there is a barely functioning phone system, described as "poor and unreliable". Those who had credulously surrendered their guns were not rewarded with tranquility, but instead found themselves especially vulnerable. As New Vision had earlier admitted, "Most of the people whose cows were taken" in a raid in the recently disarmed Bokora district, "had handed in their guns to the government in the on-going disarmament exercise." By May 2002, reports of fierce resistance from the remaining armed Karamojong began to trickle out, despite government attempts to suppress knowledge of that resistance and of the army's brutality. The Catholic Church charges that thousands of residents were displaced from Karamoja after their homes were torched by UPDF troops in the disarmament campaign. By mid-July, the total number of confiscated guns had reached 10,000 — only about 25 percent of the expected total. Now, however, in addition to suffering from cross-border raids from Kenya, from other local Ugandan tribes, and from an oppressive standing army, the partially disarmed Karamojong face an armed invasion by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), an insurgency formed two decades ago north of Uganda. Based in Sudan, the LRA, under the leadership of Joseph Kony, have regularly ravaged the Ugandan countryside west of Karamoja, and terrorized the people of Uganda. Their activities have increased of late. The LRA, one of numerous movements that came into existence in opposition to Museveni, aims to overthrow him, and alleges that he ascended to power through the help of many of those same Rwandans who would ultimately perpetrate Rwanda's genocide. To help check LRA incursions to the west, Museveni launched Operation Iron Fist in March 2002, an aggressive campaign that allowed him, with permission from Sudan (which has historically provided a safe haven for the LRA), to cross the border and take the fight to Kony's base camps. But Museveni needed more soldiers there, and he began to redeploy the army as well as many Local Defence Units west and north — and out of the Karamoja region. Some of Kony's LRA rebels found relative safety in the void left by departing Ugandan troops. They also found easier pickings from a partially disarmed countryside. Reports of LRA atrocities in Karamoja included burning, looting, and castration (after which the men were left to bleed to death). Even so, the LRA claims to be a Christian organization. The assertion of firearm-prohibitionists that fewer guns lead to less violence has not been the case in Karamoja. Even without recorded statistics, it has been admitted by many that "insecurity" has increased despite — or perhaps because of — disarmament efforts. The government-controlled press in Uganda acknowledges that the Karamojong are now "purchasing more guns to replenish those either voluntarily handed [over] or forcefully recovered by the Government." Because of the need for Ugandan troops to battle the LRA, the government of Uganda has temporarily suspended the disarmament program in Karamoja, although first deputy prime minister Eriya Kategaya promises that "the disarmament exercise would, however, resume as soon as peace comes to northern Uganda." The only uncertainty about that next initiative is when, not if, since the Nairobi Declaration calls for full involvement by the U.N., and specifically for the U.N. "to draw up appropriate programmes for the collection and destruction of illicit small arms and light weapons." And whenever the U.N. gets down to the business of civilian disarmament, it pursues that goal relentlessly, no matter what the human or economic costs. In an address
to the African Conference on the Implementation of the U.N. Programme
of Action on Small Arms in March 2002, U.N. under-secretary for Disarmament
Affairs, Jayantha Dhanapala, stated: "The threats posed by these
[small] arms jeopardize . . . the protection of women, children, and innocent
civilians everywhere. . . . We must ensure that the global edifice of
controls over small arms rests on a foundation of solid 'grass roots'
support." The U.N.
disarmament vision is for two, three, many Ugandas, all over Africa
and the world. In Uganda, "disarmament" is a U.N. euphemism
for war on the people's right to protect themselves from predators, including
predatory governments, and if the people lose that war, then the next
war may be a war of genocide. |
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
<% dim printurl
printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>
ore
gun control, more genocide. That's the lesson of the 20th century in many
nations, including Uganda. Yet the United Nations is again trying to make
it impossible for Ugandans to protect themselves. Once again, the U.N.
is supporting repression rather than human rights. 
