Category: conflict

In which I agree with the LRA

It’s common knowledge by now that the Lord’s Resistance Army have pulled out of the Juba Peace Talks for what feels like the 8027th time, demanding that they be moved to Kenya or South Africa or God knows where, accusing Riek Machar and Sudan of being “Uganda’s allies.”

My gut reaction: more sabre-rattling? More political blustering? Haven’t we had enough? Suck it up and get your asses down to work, gentlemen.

But then I thought about it, and in approximately two seconds, I realized that I am an incredible idiot. It goes back to Deborah Scroggins.

Who had the balls foolish audacity to appoint a senior member of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army as mediator of the peace talks between the LRA and the GoU? The basics of any “history-of-the-conflict-in-thirty-seconds” go like this: LRA = bad. Sudan supports LRA, which also = bad. SPLA fights Sudan, which therefore = good. SPLA = good, and LRA = bad, so GoU supports SPLA.

Again: who’s hairbrained idea was it for Machar to be the one mediating? There isn’t even the pretense of neutrality — regardless of whether or not this nutshell-sized-version of the last twenty years is accurate (and Debbie would most likely argue that it’s not), public perception is that this man owes at least some of his current power to Museveni’s administration.

Of all of the complaints the LRA has lodged since the beginning of the talks six months ago, this is actually legitimate. Which means that I find myself in a rather precarious position: I agree with the LRA. Debbie, love, what have you done to me?

i was going to write about karamoja…

…but Samuel Olara did an amazing job over at the Sub-Saharan African Round Table.

An excellent short history of the Karamojong people in the twentieth century can be found in this interview with Dr. Sandra Gray, an anthropologist who works in the region. The interview ends with the question, “Do these people have any political support within their own country?” Dr. Gray’s answer:

Everybody hates pastoralists. They’re among the last groups in the world it’s still politically OK to trash. They’re derided for letting their sheep and goats and zebu overgraze the land and turn it into desert.

That’s a lie. They did just fine for centuries.

divestment: your thoughts

In college I worked on a divestment campaign to get my university to withdraw its investments from companies that do business in Sudan. The (highly simplifed) reasoning behind divestment is that withdrawing money from companies that are directly or indirectly helping the Sudanese government perpetuate genocide will put pressure on them to stop working in Sudan. The resulting loss of money will help stop the atrocities in Darfur, both by pressuring Khartoum to change its actions and by removing the funding for the genocide.

The International Crisis Group recommends divestment as an effective way to work towards long-term peace and security in Darfur. Six U.S. states and a number of universities have already taken steps to divest. On Tuesday U.S. Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Richard Durbin (D-IL) sent letters to the governors of the remaining 44 states, urging them to “[divest] their states’ public pension funds from companies that assist or do business with the Sudanese regime.”

When I worked on the university campaign, I ran up against a number of vehement protests from other usually like-minded activists. They were concerned that divestment would hurt both Sudanese citizens and the organizations doing the divesting and that it wouldn’t prove effective. The Sudan Divestment Task Force argues against these claims, but I’m still interested in what you think.

Is divestment a viable course of action to stop human rights abuses in Darfur? Do its benefits outweigh its possible negative consequences? Will it work?

College activists, conflict experts, Sudanese citizens, economists, people who happened to stumble across Jackfruity today: leave your comments in the box — I look forward to the discussion.

Dear Deborah Scroggins: Ouch.

I spent the weekend and part of my week curled up on a couch, drinking litres of citrus juice and eating the peculiar things one eats when one is too sick to assemble reasonable sustenance for oneself: a fifth of a canister of Belgian-made “Texas Barbecue” Pringles, an apple, week-old bread. To occupy myself as I recover from this cold (a strangely titled affliction, given that it’s 85 degrees (29 Celsius) outside), I’ve been noveling and reading Emma’s War, the true story of a young, passionate British aid worker who married Sudanese warlord Riek Machar in 1991.

I admit that I know very little about Africa — I’ve spent a combined total of less than three months on the continent, all within five hours of Kampala. Other than the content of the handful of books I’ve read and a couple of courses I took in college, the little I do know comes from discussions with other students and activists, my own research and interactions with Ugandans. Most of this knowledge is limited to the Great Lakes region and filtered through the lens of the LRA conflict in northern Uganda.

I’ve spent the last eighteen months seeing the Sudan People’s Liberation Army as a single, unified movement in southern Sudan, fighting against the cruel, genocidal Islamic government and battling LRA rebels who cross the border to obtain supplies from Khartoum. I’ve heard that “Museveni backs the SPLA and al-Bashir backs the LRA” and accepted the alarmingly prevalent (among college-aged activists) logic that because the LRA are obviously the “bad rebels,” the SPLA must be the “good rebels.” The recent peace talks in Juba, coordinated by Machar himself, have served as even further proof that the SPLA is “on our side.”

Eeep.

I know that no single book should be taken as a definitive source for information, but to author Deborah Scroggins I say: wow. I’m ashamed that, despite recognizing the complexity of the conflict(s) in Uganda and having worked for organizations that acknowledge and are wrestling with the problem of developing a comprehensive, holistic approach to national reconciliation and rebuilding in such a fractured social, political and economic environment, I have been so persistently, unquestioningly, ridiculously naïve.

I won’t attempt to explain the multiple political, religious, ethnic and economic conflicts that have been torturing Sudan over the last several decades here, nor will I try to describe the influence of international actors ranging from Chevron to the UN to Osama bin-Laden — such an effort would require much more space than I have and is beyond my capacity and authority. I will say that this weekend has been an invaluable lesson in the need to constantly re-evaluate my perceptions of what’s going on in the world around me and to strive to seek out and examine the complexities of not only the particular issue on which I focus but of the surrounding conflicts and regions and of both local and international actors. I realize I may be preaching to the choir, and for those of you who started with Texas Barbecue Pringles and ended here and feel like that’s seven minutes of your life you’ll never get back, I apologize. Still, I wanted to offer up what I’ve learned, if only to remind myself that there is still so much about this place I don’t know.