To compliment the weekly Peace and Conflict Updates, we’ve developed a new series from Uganda that will appear on the IC blog - Perspectives on Peace and the War. Through blog posts that are written by both western and Ugandan staff, this series will highlight a wide range of topics - from stories about growing up in the midst of conflict in northern Uganda to thoughts on the return and resettlement process. As conversations about these issues are ongoing at the IC office in Uganda, we hope you’ll join in on the discussion as well.

For our first installment - and to coincide with the recent commencement of the peace talks in Juba - Houston Shearon weighs in on the nature of peace in light of the complexity of the conflict in northern Uganda.

The October sun beat down on me as I waited for security clearance to hear President Yoweri Museveni speak about his plan to rebuild northern Uganda after two decades of war. I passed the time talking with a friend about the bumbling security procedures in Uganda and the near lack of control the small security team had over the crowd of overheated and anxious government officials and community and religious leaders.

Suddenly my friend became quiet. Discretely she pointed to a man talking with a group of people about 10 feet in front of us and said, “He is the one who abducted me.” She began to recount how this individual led a raid in her village that had targeted her house. He kicked down the door to her family’s home and ordered his soldiers to shoot her and her father, but her family refused to be separated and clung together in solidarity and fear. She explained how, for some unknown reason, the commander decided not to kill her family and instead forced her to join him and his fellow soldiers in the rebel army. That night she was taken to the bush where she remained for two years until her escape.

Nineteen years later, these two people were brought together for a second time by chance and my friend who had been abducted was forced to relive a painful and unpleasant memory. As I listened to her story, I began to realize the difficulty in bringing peace and ultimately justice in an environment where victims, bystanders, and perpetrators are forced to live in close proximity with each other. In this environment, peace must do more than establish Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) processes and superficially smooth over political and social problems. The need to find a comprehensive solution to the conflict in northern Uganda is especially dire, and yet elusive.

When I arrived in Gulu, Uganda, in July 2007, the area was experiencing the longest ceasefire in almost a decade, and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Government of Uganda (GoU) were actively negotiating a comprehensive peace deal for an end to the twenty-plus year conflict. The first year of negotiations had been both productive and tense, with parties failing to agree at times and occasionally walking away from the table. Yet, the absence of fighting had provided opportunities for citizens of northern Uganda to begin thinking about life beyond war. New economic opportunities emerged through lucrative trade routes between northern Uganda and southern Sudan, creating possibilities for displaced persons to begin planning their return home and their children’s return to school.

Amidst growing economic and educational opportunities, the absence of fighting in northern Uganda had also given birth to individual and communal reflections on the nature of justice and reconciliation. The International Criminal Courts (ICC) issued arrest warrants for the top five LRA commanders in 2004 and nearly every formal and informal conversation I was a part of focused on whether or not this western justice mechanism could deliver lasting peace to northern Uganda. Many believed that the ICC was a poor solution and questioned whether a court trial could truly bring peace to the region.

In my estimation, and as my friend’s encounter with her abductor illustrates, peace must account for the future of northern Uganda where the many actors and victims in the conflict will attempt to return to some standard of normal life once again. Obviously issues such as the mistrust between the Acholi and the GoU and the lack of economic development in northern Uganda must be dealt with, but ultimately, peace must uncover the roots of the conflict in northern Uganda and strike to prevent those roots from growing ever again. This is the type of peace we are working toward.

Share This