Northern Uganda: Why only faith can end the fighting

'Northern Uganda: Why only faith can end the fighting' by Dr Jenny Taylor, Director of director of Lapido Media, a worldwide church media consultancy

reproduced, with kind permission, from The Church Times 8 September 2006

The unsung churches of northern Uganda have played a crucial part in what could be the best chance of peace in 20 years of war in that devastated land.

An agreement to cease hostilities was signed in Juba by Ruhakana Rugunda, the Ugandan Minister of Internal Affairs, and Martin Ojul, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) delegation, on 26 August (News, 1 September). Vincent Otti, the LRA deputy leader, the same day went on MEGA FM, the radio station based in Gulu and funded by the Department for International Development, to tell his fighters to observe the ceasefire, and head for the assembly points in southern Sudan.

While the international media adopt the mantras of secular peace discourse, the true enormity of the reconciliation being brokered by the churches - which have been offered as initial assembly points - has been played down. Yet it has been a twin approach to ending the war that has made peace possible - with huge potential lessons for other African conflicts.

Religious leaders have held out, controversially but doggedly, for conciliation, bolstered by unique international church networks. They have consistently opposed the threat of prosecution for crimes against humanity against Joseph Kony and four of his top brass - though there can be little doubt this threat was necessary. Kony has never publicly courted his own people in this way before.

When Riek Machar, the Vice-President of Southern Sudan, met Kony on 2 August, on the border between Sudan and Congo, a significant contingent of Anglican and Roman Catholic churchmen went with him.

The Anglican Bishop of Northern Uganda, the Rt Revd Nelson Onono-Onweng, is the founder of the respected Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative (ARLPI). He allowed himself to be photographed with Kony on 2 August, shaking his hand - a picture that was widely circulated.

Incredibly, he told Kony the divine spark was as much visible in his face as any other - helping to re-humanise and diminish Kony, whose demonic stature has caused almost universal social paralysis.

As reported by diocesan information officer, the Revd Willy Akena, Bishop Onweng quoted from the story of Esau and his brother Jacob, and told Kony: "For to see your face is like seeing the face of God." The report quoted Kony as saying: "Now that you have come and seen for yourself that I am not a monster with a tail and huge eyes, you have confirmed that I am a human being. Go back and tell the people of northern Uganda that I want peace."

There can be no doubt that Kony has used sorcery to increase the terror with which he controlled his forces, and augmented his fearsome reputation. Reports of cannibalistic rituals and other forms of psychic force are well documented, and have resulted in the virtual incarceration of 1.7 million people in concentration camps.

It is this dimension that has been inadequately reported, as churches try to teach the superior spiritual might of Jesus in the face of secular scepticism among aid workers and diplomats.

ARLPI has insisted on using specifically Christian processes to build the conditions for peace:

• ARLPI representatives urged Interpol on 2 June - again - to suspend its arrest warrant, until peace had been given a chance. This followed two visits to The Hague last year, to seek to stall the International Criminal Court (ICC) process. The Rome Statute of 1998 allows for sovereign governments to rescind the process if they can mete out justice themselves.
• It has offered the traditional ritual of penance and reconciliation, mato oput - drinking the bitter herb and "bending the spears" - which is believed to be unique in Africa, as adequate to meet the relevant requirement in the ICC mandate.
• It organised an unprecedented face-to-face meeting with President Museveni in 2004 to create trust.
• It has camped out with the "night-commuters", the displaced children, to sustain morale.
• It has built trust between the Acholi, who are widely feared as the colonial warrior caste, and other parts of Uganda, by bussing all the Anglican bishops up to spend nights in the displaced-persons' camps.

The first Bishop of Kitgum, the Rt Revd Ochola Macleord Baker, despite the loss of his wife to an LRA landmine, has done most to secure international credibility for a traditional form of peace-building, and has won two peace awards.

He said on the BBC's The World Tonight on Tuesday of last week: "We have to get them to face up to their actions; to repent. Unless they do, it could start all over again." He fears that a war-crimes tribunal would simply cut off the heads of the monster Kony has created, without disabling its raison d'être. Ominously, Alice Lakwena, Kony's cousin and predecessor, has requested permission to return to Uganda from exile in Kenya.

Recent media coverage of the truce has expressed bewilderment at what
journalists are describing as "peace without justice". This betrays a lack of
understanding of the psychology of revenge. "Homicide, in Acholi cultural
belief . . . asks for revenge, and, as a consequence, it provokes fear," says
the Revd Carlos Rodriguez, a Comboni Father who has been a key figure in
internationalising the peace process. Unilaterally prosecuting the LRA along
Western lines would not neutralise the inevitable backlash - especially since
Museveni's forces, whose crimes are well documented, appear to be immune from
the ICC's sanctions.

The spiritual dimension to African conflict and its antecedents has
bedevilled the Ugandan war. Military solutions, including the disastrous
US-backed Operation Iron Fist in 2002, have ridden roughshod over the facts of
cultural life.

Yet the traumatised churches of northern Uganda will be hard put to find the
spiritual resources necessary to reunite families with the killers - who are
their own abducted children. The churches in Britain that supported CMS's Break
the Silence Campaign in 2003-4 must be prepared to pray hard, if the peace is
to deliver justice, too.

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Dr Jenny Taylor is director of Lapido Media, a worldwide church media consultancy.