Financial Journalist

New African April 1986

Even as NRA leader Yoweri Museveni settled down in Kampala, fleeing UNLA soldiers were causing havoc in the Karamoja region. These reports followed stories that made it clear the Karamoja had been exploited as a remote and backward area. Aid supplies had been obstructed and the region was used as a UNLA recruiting ground. Gerard O’Kane reports.

TWO WEEKS after Thomas left Karamoja to join the Ugandan National Liberation Army (UNLA), he returned to Moroto looking for his old job back with the Karamoja Development Project. He had become a ‘wealthy’ man, displaying his new stereo cassette player. It was looted.

About the same time, Simon, a 14-year-old boy who had worked for VSO as a carpenter came home. He was lifted from a truck with five comrades and carried in a makeshift wooden coffin to the mortuary. Although it was missing a leg, people were surprised to see a corpse at all.

The population of Uganda’s most north-easterly province is well used to death, having hosted an unpublicised famine and incident after incident of armed lawlessness. Aid workers there saw a major recruitment drive by the UNLA during late 1985 and consider it to have been exploitation by the Government. One aid worker said, “They were prepared to let the people starve to death earlier this year, even though there was enough food in the country.” They claimed that the Karamajong were recruited as ‘cannon-fodder’.

Starving
The lack of normal government interest in the area is obvious. It is the only province that has no bitumen roads, and the regional health commissioner prefers to spend his year in Kampala. Famine relief was hindered. Aid workers, unwilling to be identified, told me that of the 700 tonnes of grain the World Food Programme distributed from their Moroto base, only half made it to the starving. They accused the two District Commissioners, who controlled the distribution, of organising its theft and selling it to local merchants.

Documented proof of such claims is difficult to get. When one WFP official did begin checks on grain levels, his Landrover was ambushed and raked with, bullets. Unfortunately another member of WFP had borrowed it. Mons, a lanky Swede managed to get away and was hit only once. But his arm had to be amputated. His colleagues believe it was a case of mistaken identity and the ambush was meant to stop the grain checks. It did.

Grain losses dogged the famine relief programme. At one stage WFP was so short of grain that other aid groups had to go elsewhere for their food. They found ample supplies on the farms of southern Uganda.

Losses were not confined to Moroto. For example, following the July coup, soldiers cleaned out two WFP warehouses in Jinja. By this time another WFP official on temporary secondment to Karamoja alleged that only one per cent of grain arriving in Mombasa was being distributed to the tribesmen. Both Kampala and the UN WFP headquarters in Rome ignored the claim. They also ignored the frequent attacks on aid vehicles by bandits.

When the Military Council found itself losing ground to Museveni’s soldiers, it sent the only Karamajong in the Government, to his homeland to recruit soldiers. Notices were nailed to trees offering generous pay, and ex-officers’ were asked to rejoin. They were promised their old rank and payment of wages for the years between their leaving the army and re-enlistment.

Conscripted
Not all recruitment practices were so legitimate. When I visited the region, locals claimed that some county chiefs were forced to fill recruitment quotas, while at the Kidepo game park, on the Sudan border, it was claimed that the experienced rangers had been conscripted into the UNLA. By December, sources in the British High Commission in Kampala estimated that 2,000 Karamajong had joined. Aid workers put the figure nearer 9,000.

There were conflicting reports about where the Karamajong were being sent. Deserters claimed to have served in the infamous Luwero triangle, while NRA sources told me several had been killed during the battle for Katonga Bridge.

But it is clear that these new recruits were being sent into battle ill-trained. Within two weeks of the first buses and trucks leaving Moroto, bodies were being sent back and the looters returned. Some aid workers believe this was the deliberate policy of the former military council. Returning deserters, rich in loot, would attract more recruits, while dead bodies would encourage revenge. Ironically, the Acholi, who make up the majority of the UNLA, are the Karamajong’s traditional enemies. Since early in 1985, when 30 UNLA troops were killed in an ambush on their truck by tribesmen, the army has been loathe to travel through the region. Skirmishes have been frequent over the past two years, caused by regular and bloody cattle raiding using automatic weapons. Only days before I passed through Siroko, in the Teso tribal area south of the Karamoja region, residents claimed Karamajong had killed 20 villagers in a cattle raid.

In response to these raids, the Government has sent the army, fronted by Teso militiamen, on destroy missions, to teach the Karamajong a lesson. The village of Monta, 50 kms from the Kenya border bears witness to such a mission. It remains deserted more than a year after the operation.

Aid work is hindered
Now Okello’s men have retreated in disarray from the advancing National Resistance Army, most returning to their northern homelands. The destabilisation of the West Nile province and the Acholi territory seems unavoidable but the Karamoja, no matter what had been the outcome of the December peace agreement, is due to slip further into the morass of violent anarchy.

With the Karamajong having returned home in large numbers, armed from their self-interested support of the Acholi dominated UNLA, the area will be destabilised even further. Cattle raiding will resume into Kenya and Sudan and Government control will slacken further. It is doubtful that any regime, however well intentioned, could solve Karamoja’s problems.

That leaves the aid organisations with the task of developing a region governed by corrupt and ruthless civil servants and patrolled by primitive, yet well-armed bandits. Although the famine has now passed and several organisations are heavily committed to long-term development, Karamoja’s future does not look bright.

Karamoja, Uganda, Military council, NRA