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Ugandan academics give advice on Rwenzori conflict

Saturday June 25 2016
EAUPDFRwenzori

Uganda People’s Defence Forces in Kasese on a mission dubbed ‘Operation Usalama’. The UPDF is set to establish a specialised mountain warfare force with a permanent presence in Rwenzori. PHOTO | FELIX BASIIME

The approach by the Ugandan government to criminalise the discontent in the Rwenzori sub-region is a misdiagnosis of the problem there, academics at Makerere University have said.

Its decision to send the military to quell the recurrent conflict in the area is unlikely to bring communities to heel or resolve the underlying factors that fuel the clashes.

While the government should not slacken on its security obligations, it needs to change how it views the conflict in Rwenzori in order to address long-running grievances.

According to the Beyond Criminal Justice Research Group at Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR), the recurrent crises in Kasese and Bundibugyo districts is about the allocation of resources, political settlements, citizenship, and borderland pressures. The violent expression these issues have taken involve other actors besides the Bakonzo ethnic group.  

“Militant repression of conflict neither completely eradicates the ideas of opposing groups nor does it water down the sharp inter-group and intra-group differences which spark conflicts,” said David-Ngendo Tshimba, a PhD fellow at MISR and junior researcher in its Beyond Criminal Justice Research Group.

“Insofar as violence, for the most part of the colonial and post-colonial history of Uganda, remains a tenacious element in the state’s way of organising society, the former may win the war but the latter will always carry on with the struggle.

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“Winning both the war and the struggle would entail a divorce from the use of violence as the legitimate route to order, on the part of the state. Alternative routes to ensuring social order other than through violence must be sought and committedly pursued,” he added in his preliminary research report.

On April 7, the Ugandan army launched a two-month operation in the Rwenzori Mountain ranges in Bundibugyo to flush out “criminal elements,” suspected to have masterminded a series of attacks shortly after the February 18 polls in which several people were killed and millions’ of shillings’ worth of property destroyed.

READ: Museveni denies sidelining restive region, but critics say record points to disparities

ALSO READ: Uganda Parliament to probe Rwenzori violence

Without a clearly defined enemy or frontline, the army moved to areas mostly inhabited by the Bakonzo, the dominant ethnic group in the region, who reportedly harbour grudges about being marginalised by successive governments.

The army reportedly rounded up some 300 young men, mostly Bakonzo, and bolstering the perception that the military operation was biased against the ethnic group. But the operation’s leaders denied the claims, saying they were not discriminating in whom they arrested since they “fear nobody.”

While it appears that the army has restored sanity in the area, some leaders say there is no way of telling how long the peace will hold. In spite repeated assurances from the army, many people who were displaced by the clashes remain reluctant to return to their homes out of concern that they could be attacked again.

“We are experiencing some peace, but Bundibugyo is like a volcano. When you think there is peace, you don’t know what people are planning in their hearts,” said Alfred Makaasi, a lawyer who is providing legal support to 35 people who were charged with murder, attempted murder and assault relating to the February attacks.

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