Piecing Together the Puzzle of Uganda’s Elusive Peace

A complex combination of time, situation and opportunity, have coalesced to create an enabling environment for the ongoing Juba Peace Talks between the Government of Uganda (GOU) and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Snapshots from the past 20 years reveal an asymmetric conflict which has spanned three countries – Uganda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo; witnessed egregious violations of human rights – including recorded cases of forced abduction and rape, attacks on civilian populations; the recruitment and retention of child soldiers; and the killing and displacement of millions in Northern Uganda. The current chance at peace has cross-border local and regional security and development implications. To piece together the puzzle of Northern Uganda’s peace prospects, consideration ought to be given to regional involvement in the peace talks, the level of representation of the parties to the talks, their positions on the issues, and the time frame for dialogue and agreement.

Over the past couple of years, the conflict dynamics in Northern Uganda have been altered by a number of factors which include – the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement to end Sudan’s 23 years Civil War in January 2005; the unveiling of International Criminal Court arrest warrants for the LRA’s Joseph Kony, Vincent Otti, Okot Odhiambo, Dominic Ongwen, Raska Lukwiya in October 2005; Yoweri Museveni’s re-election to the Ugandan presidency in February 2006; and the upcoming elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo. All these events have invariably shifted strategic decision-making choices towards the management and sustainable resolution of the conflict in Northern Uganda. Hence the high expectations, colored by cautious optimism, surrounding the ongoing Juba Peace Talks. It would be remarkable to cap off this series of stabilizing events with a sustainable and comprehensive peace deal in Northern Uganda. However, a few pieces of the peace puzzle remain elusive.

Given the regional implications of the sustained conflict in Northern Uganda, there is the need for the Juba Peace Talks to be put under a broader regional organizational mandate. The African Union has a stake in the current peace process, given that the conflict in Northern Uganda is currently Africa’s longest running cross-border intra-state conflict. Meanwhile a strong Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) presence at the peace process would show the commitment of regional actors to see a deal emerge from the ongoing talks. These organizational actors would, through their participation, leverage the actors to reach consensus by providing security and monitoring guarantees where they are needed. They would also provide the bridge to trust and confidence-building between both parties. These are all intangible elements which would bolster the current effort being undertaken by the Government of South Sudan.

However, regional participation is legally complicated by the ICC warrants looming over the peace process. The warrants are blamed for Kony’s skepticism to directly participate in the talks. As the argument goes, if Kony steps foot in Juba, the UN forces on the ground could arrest him, given the outstanding warrant. This once again raises the long-standing contention between peace and justice. With the commitment of the international community, a just peace can be attained. Simplistically, a coordinated effort by MONUC (United Nations Mission in the Congo) and UNMIS (United Nations Mission in Sudan) forces could enforce the warrants executed by the ICC, bring the leaders of the LRA to justice, thereby opening the way for tier-two LRA leadership to engage the GOU in peace talks.

With these structural deficiencies in the backdrop of the ongoing talks, there remains a need to find common ground between the GOU’s push for a narrow agreement which focuses on current strategic calculations, and the LRA’s search for a more comprehensive agreement which addresses the root causes of the conflict. The GOU’s bargaining position is strengthened by the ICC warrants on the LRA leaders. Hon. Amama Mbabazi, Ugandan Minister for Security, visited the ICC in the Hague on July12th – two days before the start of the Juba Peace Talks – but noticeably did not request a withdrawal of the ICC arrest warrants. The government’s stand at the peace talks remains hinged on a narrow amnesty offer for the LRA leadership under indictment by the ICC. For the rest of the LRA fighting force, the GOU envisages for some, reintegration through a security merger with the Ugandan Peoples’ Defense Forces (UPDF); and for others, the GOU plans for reconciliation and resettlement into Ugandan civilian life. To this government position, Hon. Betty Akech, former Ugandan Minister for State Security, while noting previous failed talks between both parties, cautions that “the GOU should only make realistic, feasible and deliverable commitments to the LRA not those it cannot implement because of some structural as well as legal difficulties.”

Though the LRA has denied any strategic frailty, their attempts at calling for the talks and Kony delivering his first televised interview in 20 years, are a response to the collusion of forces to bring them to the Juba Peace Talks. The LRA seeks a more expansive peace agreement including compensation for losses incurred during the conflict, a program of national reconciliation and national unity, a completely revamped national army and wealth-sharing and power-sharing agreements similar to those of the Sudanese Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). Hence beyond the acrimony accusation and counter accusation which marred their initial encounters on July 14, their positions do not seem so distant after all. Nevertheless, the devil remains in the details of the puzzle to Northern Uganda’s elusive peace.
Overall, there is the need for a peace deal which will positively alter the attitudes and behaviors which have sustained the conflict over the past 20 years. Meanwhile, institutional guarantees need to be put in place for altering structural contradictions and fostering peace with development.

The government September 12 deadline for an agreement seems rather abbreviated given the 20 years of mutual mistrust, fear and uncertainty which separate the GOU and the LRA. Should the current Juba Peace Talks fail to reach an agreement the GOU would consider an outright military victory by attacking LRA positions in the Garamba forest in the northeastern DRC. Meanwhile, the LRA would resort to the same guerilla tactics which has sustained them as a resilient, close knit fighting force over the last 20 years. This situational dynamic has consequences on the fragile CPA under implementation in Sudan and on the concerted effort by IGAD, IGAD partners, the AU and the UN to bring peace to Sudan. The stakes are much higher than they appear on the surface, thus regional and international partners ought to get involved.

All the pieces in Uganda’s peace puzzle may not come together at this point in time. However, the start of high level talks between the main parties to the conflict is a laudable move in the right direction. If the talks break off with the commitment toward further consultation between both parties, it would have provided a window of opportunity to right the organizational, participatory and temporal frailties of the current effort. A return to the conflict status quo ante is definitely not an enviable option.