Behind the violence: The war in northern Uganda

Abstract

The war in northern Uganda is now entering its eighteenth year. Initially rooted in a popular rebellion against President Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Movement (NRM) government, the conflict has since been transformed by Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) into a brutally violent war in which civilians are the main victims. More than 1,4 million people have been displaced, and tens of thousands more have been killed, raped or abducted. At first glance, the persistence of the LRA over such a long period is incomprehensible: the majority of the force is made up of kidnapped children held against their will, there LRA is extremely unpopular among civilians because of its brutality and apparent lack of an overarching political agenda, and it operates in an environment without significant natural resources to sell for arms. Indeed, the conflict has not only continued for nearly 18 years, but in 2003 spread significantly east into the Teso and Lango regions. Based on...