Joseph Kony, Yoweri Museveni, Joachim Chissano, Riek Machar Teny, northern Uganda, Southern Sudan, Sudan People's Liberation Movement / Army (SPLM/A), Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), Juba Peace Talks, Third Party Intervention, Third Party Mediation.
Even before the final stocks are taken, there is no doubting the damning verdict that
Third Party Intervention & Mediation-the outsiders looking in-failed in northern Uganda. The last nail on the coffin of third party mediation, aka the
Juba Peace Process, was dealt by Uganda's decision -at the behest of the USA- to cobble together a coalition of DRC Congo and Southern Sudan, for high noon showdown in Garamba with Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). However, the failures as processes, can be accounted for by five inter-related components of actors and their framing of the northern Uganda conflict.
1. First on the list is
superpower-small-states politics, and the structure of global inter-states and multilateral international / regional politics.
2. The second one is perceptions and actions of international human rights organisations.
3. Third, is the code of silence among international humanitarian agencies, particularly in favour of a state and the status quo, and the willingness to work with and support unjust conditions.
4. The fourth factor is loss of
autonomy and voice in the process by victim civil society groups in northern Uganda and their diaspora.
5. Fifth, the credibility and neutrality of mediators foretold of doubts in viability and impartiality of the Juba Process
1. superpower-small-states politics
Lately,
public international law, particularly human rights law and multilateral governance, are being gate-crashed by non-state entitities, people, groups, particularly social movements, as legitimate and primary stakeholders who are in the first line of fire when normal politics and states fail. However, high politics, that is international relations and diplomacy, as well as multilateral governance, is stil the preserve and relations of states. Moreover, states conduct their affairs to maximise the welfare of their citizens, by pursuing advantage in their self-interests. As such, any claims to a normative criteria or conduct in the international behaviour of states, is defined by a
realist morality-a mix of pragmatic, case-by case, self-interested, and flexible apporach to security and strategic issues, rather than following an inflexible, standard template of moral matrix that would apply uniformly to similar cases under similar conditions anywhere and everywhere.
Altough we are often deafened by a crescendo of moral claims, particulary regarding human rights, democracy, and fundamental rights and freedoms from the White House or State Department and Number 10 Downing Street or White Hall, such rhetorics are often so subjectively and narrowly defined as to reflect American or British economic and strategic interest. It is never informed by a self-less, bleeding-heart morality of an Archbishop Desmond Tutu, or Mother Theresa, or the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury; that sees inustice as injustice and seeks justice, anywhere and everywhere, with the same convictions against human suffering and exploitation without unterior motives than that the victims deserve justice and wellbeing that we all claim to fight for, for others and ourselves.
A classic example where doublespeak and double standards have been so blatantly manifest in the face of unparalleled injustice, is in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and American, British, and generally Western attitudes to the plight of Palestinian Arabs in Palestine. The Western position, led by the USA, taken the invariable line that Israel is always right, even when innocent Palestinian children and women are massacred in cold blood, in callous display of superior military power and state terrorism financed by the West. And Israel always gets away with it because it is a strategic American and Western ally in the Middle East, with a strong, well-organised international Zionist lobby groups, with strategic global stranglehold on mass media and international finance and industry. No one can do as little as question the conduct of the racist and apartheid Israeli government without being set on by its defenders through the myriad global media outlets they control. Politicians like
Michael Ignatieff Deputy Leader of Canada's Liberal Party, who let down their guards and speak candidly and with conscience, wake up to regret as the possibility of their political career falling apart stare them in the pages of those broadsheets and they are
forced to take back their words.
Consequently, the asymmetrical Palestinian struggles for justice and self-determination, is misrepresented simply as "terrorism", the moral outrage to which must offset and erase that of the justice claims of Palestinians dispossessed of their lands and homes and rights and locked in concentration camps in their own homelands. Palestinian recourse to self-help and resistance in the face of international collusion with Israel against them, is characterised simply as mindless terrorism.
The framing of Palestinian resistance as "terrorism" against a "democratic" and "civilised" Israel, which is the occupier and oppressor, but absolved of all moral responsibilities by so-called Palestinian "terror" tactics, is inversely not different from the framing of the Zimbabwean struggles against Anglo-American imperialism, British neo-colonialism, and historical dispossesion of blacks of their lands and rights, whose claims for justice, must be superseded by narrowly, subjectively, and self-interestedly defined human rights and democratic rights claims to entrench British and American interests through patronised opposition groups such as the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)and its shallow leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
More often than not, the beneficiaries of superpower doublespeak in post cold war unipolar or multipolar world are states; recent exceptions being a non-state party such as the Albanian terrorists in Kosovo, who were fighting against a former socialist state of Yugoslavia or Serbia, which the USA and Western Europe were bent on dismantling, to continue accelerating the disintegration and absorbtion into NATO, of former Warsaw Pact bloc states, and the strategic isolation and containment of Russia, as well as encirclement of a rising China. In cases such as Zimbabwe opposition groups inside of normal politics are supported by the West against states and leaders like Robert Mugabe, who are less favourably disposed to Western interests and unamenable to obsequious acquiescence with Western moral doublestandards and ideology of power and domination.
Half-hearted encouragement but non-adoption of opposition in Uganda, where the regime and its leader is considered a Western hatchet man, and yet Uganda's human security situation in the north of the country have been graver and huamn rights and democratic credentials as a matter of policy have been worse than Zimbabwe's, prove our arguments on Western self-interests and moral trade offs.
As a state, Uganda benefited from US unilateralism after 9/11 attacks. But Uganda's speical relationship with the West, particualarly Britain and the USA, goes back to when Yoweri Museveni was a guerrilla leader and after he came to power in 1986. As insurgents, the National Resistance Movement/ Army (NRM/A) were supported by the West against the popularly elected government of Milton Obote. And when Musevni came to power in 1986, after a coup détat had deposed Milton Obote and the Uganda People's Congress (UPC) earlier in July of 1985, Museveni made a radical break with his marxist rhetoric and past, to embrace IMF / World Bank imposed economic liberalisation measures and social adjustments policies that was to firmly put him into the Western circle as a trusted hatchet man in Africa. This meant, as a state and government formed by former non-state elements the West helped bring to power, Museveni and the Ugandan state were assured of international diplomatic, political, and moral protection from the West, and the only superpower left standing, the US.
Until 9/11 2001 attacks in the US, the international community or the West had turned a blind eye to the genocide in northern Uganda, and tacitly gave Museveni a free hand in brutally suppressing insurgency there, in the process of consolidating power over the country and legitimising his violent seizure of power despite the
1985Nairobi Peace Accord. As far as the West and Museveni were concerned, Uganda was peaceful and prospering. Any suggestions to the contrary- as their acolytes such as
John Prendergast of the Centre for American Progress and
Enough! today do not tire of reminding the world- were the work of diaspora groups "rabidly" opposed to the Museveni government, abettors of Lord's Resistance Movement / Army (LRM/A) child abduction and terrorism, and who are out of touch with what progress and strides Uganda had made on human rights and social development front and ought to be treated by the West on the same plane as terrorists.
After 9/11, America, through the
Coalition of the Willing, on which Yoweri Museveni opportunistically jumped, could now openly support its man in Kampala, against insurgents in the north. Without wasting time,
the LRA and its leaders, were designated as international terrorist group. Labels of "terrorism", as used against legitimate claims of Palestinians against international and Israeli injustices, was meant to intimidate critics and shortcircuit legitimate national and regional debates about the political nature of the Ugandan conflict, and the failures and ravages of the military option, and the imperatives for a peaceful, negotiated settlement. As a result, the LRA insurgency, as well as official proscription of political parties and their activities, as symptoms of broken politics under Museveni, were discussed separately despite the apparent conjunctions of claims and charges against the government by civic opposition groups and proponents of the LRA.
Since
Museveni serves American and British economic and strategic interests in the Great Lakes Region of East and Central Africa, Britain and USA are willing to prop up his government and ally with the Ugandan state against its critics and opponents in the country, the region and internationally. Dividends from such support was the quick
indictments of the LRA by the nascent
International Criminal Court (ICC), after
Museveni- standing shoulder to shoulder in London with Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC Prosecutor-
conveniently referred the matter to the ICC. This was a culmination of a whirlwind diplomatic offensive by Museveni through Western capitals, taking him to Washington, and ending in London.
The failures by human rights groups, social movements, Ugandan and particularly Acholi Civil society and its diaspora to effectively oppose the expedient designation of the LRA by Washington as a terrorist group, and subsequent referal by Museveni to and indictments by the ICC; or reframe the debate on legitimate northern Ugandan socio-political grievances on the origins, the convenient use of the conflict northern population and Musevni's political opponents, marked the first instance of the failure of third party intervention in northern Uganda. After the ICC indictments, it was obvious that any further search for a political solution was futile, since the dominant international powers had already defined the problems and the framework under which solutions ought to be pursued. It was clear that Museveni's own responsibility and role in rights violations in Uganda, particularly northern Uganda, was once again going to be shaded from the searching glare of international justice.
Once again, like in Palestine or Zimbabwe, when people's aspirations for justice conflict with Western interests, "terrorism" or "dictatorship" and other permutations are used to subvert legitimate criticism, debate and opposition to the status quo, and to reframe the issues and debate to render the original rights and justice claims illegitimate.
2. Failure by human rights organisations to lead on a more appropriate and just framework for peace in northern Uganda.
Although human rights groups such as
Amnesty International (AI) and
Human Rights Watch (HRW), kept a catalogue of claims, counter-claims, and denials of rights violations, including arbitrary arrests, torture, rapes, and extrajudicial killings, by armed groups, they weakened their positions by coming across as if they were more interested in assessing which party has killed or violated rights more than the other party. Language and phraseologies such as, Museveni and the NRM/A have committed atrocities but their record is an improvement compared to previous regimes, is simply irresponsible, to say the least. Killings and other crimes against humanity and war crimes, should not have a numerical threshold or degree of barbarism in order for it to be a legitimate candidate for our sympathy and moral outrage. Even only one violation, must be treated for what it is and attract proportionate punishment.
Although both AI and
HRW criticised the partial indictments of only the LRA by the ICC, they both supported Washington's characterisation of the LRA as a "terrorist" group, while knowing it was politically convenient, and aimed to shield Museveni from political accountability. Moreover, their call for both sides in the northern Uganda conflict to be brought to account, were feeble, and largely celebrated the LRA indictments, to the detriments of offering critical assessments of the complexities of the northern Uganda conflict and the limitations in the ICC Rome Statutes. Knowing fully well that any investigations were limited to July 2002 when the ICC came into being, these organisations and their leaders knew accountability and justice would not be fully rendered, given the most horrendous violations in the northern Ugandan conflict took place before 2002, and that all parties to the conflict had some political and command responsibilities to take and accounting to do for the behaviour of their forces.
Aware of these shortcomings, and their own familiarity with recent and emergent international special war crimes and crimes against humanity tribunals practices, these principal international human rights organisations were well-placed to lead the debate in the search for a more efficacious and appropriate framework for war termination and search for justice in northern Uganda. They forgot their own reports and others' writings on both parties, including the voices of the victims. That they failed to speak up and speak out more loudly than they did, can be attributed to their own immersion into the socio-political and ideological realism of the international politics and policies of their own home countries in the West.
While both HRW and AI have regional units throughout the world, they are American and British in origins, and do share the dominant social and political values of these societies. Like other social movements, there is a cross-pollination between and among personnel in the not-for-profit sector and those in government in their respective countries. Some start their careers in government departments, and move on to social movements, while others cut their teeth within the social movements and move to government departments or serve in advisory roles as policy experts on respective regions of the world.
But the omission of bodies such as HRW and AI, pale in comparison to the overt adoption or positioning with official Washington policies; or working with the regime and government of Uganda, to distort and misinform on the key issues and history of the conflict. Such organisations include Enough, and
Invisible Children. It is doubtful, what level of genuine commitment to ending the conflict in northern Uganda and lessening human sufferings these groups and their principals have, than to promote their own careers, create jobs for themselves, and raise a lot of money in the process with negligible portions actually going to support the niche causes in northern Uganda they identify with. While they do raise their funds from the American public, other funding sources are also undoubtedly accessed through USAID and other federal government sources. It is therefore reasonable to assume that they may not bite too much, the hand that feeds them. Hence, their closeness to and similarity with official Washington policies and positions on the northern Uganda conflict, is not accidental.
In our view, giving uncritical support to Washington's convenient characterisation of the LRM/A as a terrorist organisation after 9/11; and letting the ICC referal and partial indictments of the LRM/A slide without a spirited debate for its limitations and inappropriateness for a just peace, compared to a special tribunal for instance, open up these human rights organisations to accusations of shirking responsibility, after they led the war baying for the blood of all rights violators in the conflict through their detailed thematic reporting. This marked the second wheel falling off the beat-up justice vehicle, in its tortured and bumpy ride over the murky northern Uganda rights terrain.
3. Code of silence among international humanitarian agencies and their willingness to work within and support unjust conditions.
Part of the failures of third party intervention in northern Uganda can be attributed to the lack of objective and impartial confidential or open reporting by humanitarian agencies of the political and social conditions they work in, rather than simply tweak donor emotions and consciences with symptoms of conflicts arising from either state policies or non-state militia groups actions. Although some humanitarian agencies in Uganda catalogued LRM/A atrocities against civilians, there were scantly any documenting similar abuses by government forces.
It is understandable that host states regulate the work and actions of such agencies. However, it is inexcusable that such organisations, even if forbidden to comment on political and human rights matters by their charters, would not have the conscience and courage to abandon working in conditions where their work would complement the illegal policies and actions of insurgents or state parties in the violations of fundamental human rights. For instance, in northern Ugnada, a UN mandated organisation such as the World Food Programme (WFP) tolerated local state officials in northern Uganda requiring aid recipients to produce NRM party cards in order to be served their food aid and other rations in the concentration camps. Essentially, displaced camp populations were being forced to join and register as members of the NRM party, at a time the country was preparing for multiparty elections in 2006 for the first time in twenty years under Museveni.
Furthermore, the Ugandan government never accepted to declare northern Uganda a disaster area, despite entreaties from humanitarian aid organisations, who needed such official policy to allow them to scale up their work and pour more resources against the degraded human security situation in the region. Moreover, while it was reluctant to declare northern Uganda a disaster area, for fear it would invite legitimate international presence and scrutiny, the Ugandan government completely neglected to house, feed, treat and care for the camp population, but left them to fend for themselves. Even then, the humanitarian aid community said nothing, but silently moved in and worked to sustain a government policy which was clearly a violation of international humanitarian law on internal displacement. Additionally, they worked in silence, with the unwritten codes to see nothing, hear nothing and say nothing, even as atrocious violations, including rapes and extrajudicial killings are perpetrated by government troops in the camps they helped manage and serve.
For the last twenty-three years, aid and development agencies, including UN mandated agencies-from UNICEF, WPF,UNDP-and voluntry agencies such as OXFAM, World Vision, Danish Refugees Council, International Rescue Committee (IRC), and many others; as well as those affiliated with governments, such as DANIDA of Denmark, CIDA of Canada, DFID of the UK, USAID, of the USA, to mention but a few, drove through Acholi and past civil populations being stopped and forced by the government army and state agents, to perform forced, unpaid labour on roads throughout northern Uganda. School Children, children, pregnant women, the elderly, the sick and infirm, were subjected to these humiliations, while a cross section of the entire so-called international community went by with as little as questioning the proprieties of such state actions, or taking up the matter with government through quiet diplomacy and protests, or report it to thier respective governments. That the practice did not stop, even today, persuade us to conclude that it was ignored by the world, in its zeal to protect and shield Yoweri Museveni and his forces from international justice.
By the time these blind, deaf and dumb field managers, programmes coordinators, and country representatives of these organisations remnisce about their experiences in northern Uganda in their memoirs as
Jan Egeland did, it will certainly be too late to help achieve justice for the people of northern Uganda. In our assessment, while some aid and development organisations did commendable work in northern Uganda, they also wittingly or unwittingly, became complicit in the abortion of justice for the victims of the conflict, by accepting and continuing to work under conditions and within policies and actions parameters that propped up unjust conditions that contributed to rights violations by the Ugandan state against citizens it had primary responsibility to protect and provide for once they were deliberately uprooted from their normal settlements by government policy. We consider this another example of the failure of third party intervention in northern Uganda.
4. The fourth factor for failure is loss of autonomy and voice by victim civil society groups in northern Uganda and their diaspora.
Civil society groups and leaders, both in-country and their diaspora, uncritically accepted to be co-opted by and onto agenda of external aid groups, human rights fraternities, and so-called third-party peacebuilding and conflict transformation capacity building groups. As a result, civil society lost the opportunity to self-determinedly define the problems and outline their goals, objectives, and expectations for war-termination agreements and subseauent peace.
Kacoke Madit (KM), Acholi Religious Leader's Peace Initiatives (ARLPI) and Acholi Traditional leaders, as partners and stakeholders, chose to be both neutral and to be led by outsiders in setting and defining agenda for peace.
In particular, ARLPI and Acholi Traditional Leaders, were especially mistaken in their thinking and believing that the peace they sought was the same as the peace America, Britain and their Western allies pursued in Uganda and the region. While the Acholi civil society groups took their search for peace seriously and perceived peace almost literally and as pacifists informed by Christian private and social morality; and their own individual and collective suffering as victims; Western donors and assumed partners were informed by realist morality of states-to pursue the best objectives and advantage for American or British interests without any overt commitments to fixed moral latitudes and straight jackets. Suave diplomats often took care to speak in diplomatese, always leaving room for ambiguity and flexibility in interpreting their partnership and support and for everyone on both sides to find in it, at least something that seems to cater to their own particular interests. Unsophisticated and without any reasons to doubt good intentions, Acholi religious and traditional leaders took the notion of the whiteman's burdens, too seriously for their own good and any possibility of a just peace in northern Uganda.
The more sophisticated KM, the Acholi diaspora headquartered in London, UK, boxed itself into neutrality and aspirations of a mediator, to try to coax the LRA and the Uganda government into negotiations and peaceful settlement. In our view, KM should have been the more articulate and autonomous voice of the Acholi civil society as it had originally set itself to. However, a partnership with
Conciliation Resources (CR)-a peace and conflict organisation that helps communities build capacities for conflict transformation-seemed to have imposed limitations in KM thinking that it should only be a neutral and honest broker, rather than a victim with justice claims against both the LRA and the government of Uganda.
Having done superb advocacy and lobbying that exposed the tragedies of northern Uganda to the world, KM's work was embarrassing Museveni and his Western allies internationally with Western citizens in their own countries. It became necessary thereore, for Museveni's allies to do damage control, by pouring humanitarian aid into northern Uganda through their development arms, while doing nothing to prod Museveni towards a political solution to the conflict and democratic reforms in the country. As part of their and Museveni's strategy, the Acholi diaspora needed to be isolated from organised Acholi civil society at home. Soon, American and British, as well as European Union development agencies and their representatives, started to deal directly with ARLPI or Acholi Traditional leaders, independently of KM and leading Acholi diaspora personalities. While these civil society groups were not openly told to stay away from KM, they were never encouraged either, to seek guidance and act in consultation and collaboration with KM as a more informed section of the Acholi civil society.
The strategy of isolating the KM from Acholi civil society required that Acholi at home and their political leaders viewed Acholi diaspora with suspicion, as the financiers and political wing of the LRM/A. By the logic of such allegations, the diaspora was responsible for aiding the crimes the LRA were accused of perpetrating on the hapless civilians. And just for good measure, elements of the Acholi Parliamentary Group (APG) was encouraged by government disinformation to regard Acholi diaspora as rivals, rather than allies. To achieve maximum effect, the same disinformation was planted among Acholi diaspora, claiming that some KM elements were in the pay of Museveni as external agents. This completed the circle of suspicion and distrust among friends and colleagues, leading to paralysis and disintegration of Acholi civil society.
The disintegration of Acholi civil society forelosed any thoughts of Acholi civil society occupying an autonomous middleground in a mediated process, between the LRA and the government of Uganda, demanding accountability and responsibility for their behaviour and actions in the northern Uganda conflict, and to ensuring that the need for such accountability are not conveniently negotiated and bargained away by the two belligerents to escape responsibility. It is possible that the outcome out of the Juba Peace Process would have been different, had an autonomous and active Acholi civil society voice existed to counterbalance either party's attempt to subvert the process to minimise their role and need for accountablity in the conflict, or detract from the objectives of the peace the people expected.
The absence of an active and effective Acholi civil society organisation or collective leadership, with a clear idea of the objectives for peace for the Acholi people, made for a flawed process design for the Juba Peace Process, and significantly contributed to the failings of third party intervention and mutually acceptable and just mediated settlement of the northern Uganda conflict.
5. Fifth, the credibility and neutrality of mediators.
Perhaps the last straw that broke the camel's back, and ensured that third party intervention and mediation to the northern Uganda conflict achieved nothing resembling a just and mutually concluded negotiations and agreements, were the choice and perceived partiality and bias of mediators.It would seem that the UN Secretary General and those donor countries that sponsored the process, did not do their homework, but if they did, they certainly had no regard for the
mediation principles of impartial regard.
As matters of informed consent, Joaquim Chissano, a former Mozambican president, is a close ally and personal friend of Yoweri Museveni, before and after both men were in power. While there is nothing to suggest that he could not rise above personal friendship to shepherd the parties through the Juba Peace process to deliver a just and credible peace for northern Uganda, knowing that he was a personal friend to one of the parties, should have disqualified him as a honest and neutral mediator. The fact the UN Secretary General did not find this important, raises concerns that the odds were stacked against the non-state party.
Furthermore, the
UN Secretary General appointed Chissano Special Envoy to LRA Affected Areas, but not to Uganda or Northern Uganda, in contrast to Sudan, Congo, and other conflict areas around the world. This was nothing but deference to Museveni's and his powerful allies' objections to any official international recognition of the political legitimacy of the LRA insurgency. As far as Museveni is concerned, the LRA is not fighting the Ugandan government but the Acholi civilians, through acts of common brigandage, rather than insurgent contestation of the Ugandan state.
All these point to carefully planned actions by a network of powerful states and internation figures to protect Museveni from exposure and possible indictments for his role in
northern Uganda genocide. Such suspicion were recently justified, when
Chissano addressed the UN Security Council, calling it to fully back the decision by Uganda, DRC Congo, and Southern Sudan to attack the LRA in their hideout in Garamba forest. Can he still remain a honest broker and mediator?
Third, the decision to maintain
Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon, the Southern Sudanese Vice President of Sudan People's Liberation Movement / Army (SPLM/A) administered Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS, as chief mediator, and to retain Juba as the venue for negotiations, despite LRA protests early in agenda-setting stage of the process, beggared belief. It is well known that the SPLM/A were and are close allies of Museveni, and jointly took part in Operation Iron Fist, to drive out the LRA from bases in SPLM/A controlled Southern Sudan in 2001. Since then, thousands of Ugandan troops have been deployed in Southern Sudan.
From the foregoing, unless someone did not do their research, the decisions to appoint
Joacquim Chissano envoy, and to LRA Affected Areas rather than Uganda or Northern Uganda; the retention of Riek Machar as Chief Mediator and Juba as host city for the talks over LRA protests, compromised the needs for active and perceived neutrality and impartiality, and raise plausible grounds to believe someone somewhere acted in bad faith. Which suggests that, the Juba Process was not meant to achieve more than it did, but to cheaply accomplish what the current three-nation military action is hoped to achieve in the jungles of DRC Congo-
to apprehend or kill Joseph Kony and his senior lieutenants.In conclusion, self-destructively-trusting Acholi civil society leaders; humanitarian aid and development organisations working in Uganda; human rights groups; powerful international interests and states; the ICC; poor process design and faulty mediation process in Juba; all worked individually and interactively; consciously and unconsciously, to ensure that third party intervention and mediation of the northern Uganda conflict failed and Yoweri Museveni shielded from international scrutiny and accounting for his role in the northern Uganda genocide. As we said when the talks started,
Museveni has never been interested in a negotiated settlement, but outright military victory at whatever costs.
