Uganda calm after a weekend of riots

Uganda appears to be calm again after weekend riots that killed at least 21 people, injured 100 and saw 560 people arrested. The riots broke out after a row between the central government in Kampala and Buganda, one of Uganda’s four traditional kingdoms. The clashes took place mainly in and near the capital Kampala. While unexpected, they were spurred by long-simmering rows over land, power and corruption. Human rights groups said the Ugandan military response was heavy-handed. They used live ammunition on crowds, beat and arrested journalists and shut down five radio stations (photo credit: AFP/Getty Images).

According to London-based media writer Roy Greenslade, a photographer with Kampala’s Observer newspaper named Edward Echwalu was detained and beaten yesterday by security forces for taking pictures during a riot. Echwalu said he was arrested after he "took pictures of military men passing near a dead boy". He then suffered beatings after he rang his boss to complain. Greenslade also said that a Buganda radio station, CBS, went off the air.

Uganda’s four kingdoms, (Buganda, Busoga, Bunyoro and Toro) enjoyed a level of autonomy under British colonial rule but were abolished in 1966 by then-national leader Milton Obote. However, in a move to gain popular support, current President Yoweri Museveni restored the cultural and ceremonial powers of the traditional leaders, who were still revered by their subjects. The kings are constitutional barred from playing an active role in national politics but the law remains vague on many points. Government officials and the Buganda kingdom remain at odds over land, sovereignty and political power.

The latest trouble erupted after the Bugandan monarch, known as the Kabaka was banned from visiting a disputed part of his kingdom to celebrate National Youth Day. The Kabaka had attempted to visit the flashpoint town of Kayunga north-east of the capital on territory claimed by his kingdom. Kayunga is an area where a small tribe called the Banyala has for years agitated to be recognised separately from Buganda. However the central government has been keen to keep a lid on the problem as other tribal areas might follow suit and the system of kingdoms could unravel and with them, Museveni’s support base. Museveni could not guarantee the Kabaka’s security in Kayunga and banned the visit.

But when the Kabaka announced that the trip had been cancelled it triggered angry riots in Kampala and several central towns among Baganda youths, which are Uganda’s largest ethnic group. The riots escalated after local radio stations announced rumours that Buganda leaders were arrested. Rioters burned tyres and cars, set buildings afire and looted stores. They then strewed the streets with the debris of torched cars and burned tyres. Police reacted by firing tear gas and live ammunition. Human Rights Watch’s Africa director Georgette Gagnon said the available evidence raised serious concerns that police used excessive force in confronting demonstrators. "A thorough investigation is needed to find out who is responsible for yesterday's violence,” she said.

Museveni blamed former ally and now opposition leader Kizza Besigye for inciting the riots. The president claimed Besigye, head of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) wanted to see more bloodshed. Besigye rejected the accusation and said the protests were triggered by the government's actions. The opposition said major reforms were essential if the next election in 2011 was to be free and fair. While multi-party elections have only been in place since 2005, Uganda has made a remarkable transition to political and macroeconomic stability after years of civil war during the 1970s and 80s.

Uganda’s economic prospects received another boost last month when the US-based Tullow Oil company announced a major oil find. Tullow said its drilling site in the Congolese border town of Ngassa may contain significant oil resources. It and partner Heritage Oil have so far discovered 700 million barrels of oil in the Lake Albert region of Uganda with estimates that Ngassa could contain three times as much. The oil lies within the boundaries of Bunyoro which could become the epicentre of economic power further fuelling tensions between Kampala and the kingdoms.

Yet Uganda has been relatively stable since Museveni grabbed power in 1986. He won an election in 1996 and two more in 2001 and 2006. He faces re-election again in 2011. Analysts say the president is trying to build tribal alliances and weaken rivals through divide-and-rule ahead of that election. But he is risking a growing underclass of angry, unemployed youth in Buganda or Bunyoro will be alienated. As the country’s Daily Monitor said, "nothing unites them more than poverty and a sense of disenfranchisement -- and that is one war that cannot be fought with bullets.”

Uganda signs truce with LRA

On Saturday, there was a breakthrough in one of Africa’s most intractable and bizarre wars. Uganda’s government signed a deal with the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) that commits both sides to end the bloodshed and cease hostile propaganda. The LRA rebels have now three weeks to leave their hideouts in Uganda and northern Congo and assemble at two south Sudanese camps. The deal offers the best chance yet of ending the 20 year old war.

Thousands have died during the conflict in northern Uganda, and more than one million have fled their homes. The chief mediator, southern Sudan's Vice-President Riek Machar said he hoped the two principals will take action so that the guns can go silent. The two principals that Machar is referring to are the two towering figures of Ugandan politics, President Yoweri Museveni and LRA commander Joseph Kony.

The conflict in Northern Uganda began shortly after Museveni took power in 1986. Remnants of the previous government fled north and formed the Ugandan People’s Democratic Army (UPDA). The UPDA were routed but formed several splinter groups. One of these groups was led by the ‘spirit moved’ Alice Lakwena. Her 3,000 strong army was defeated and she fled to Kenya. But her nephew Joseph Kony re-mobilised the Acholi opposition and renamed the movement the Lord’s Resistance Army. Kony also claims to be a “spirit lead”. His apocalyptic spiritualism gives him Stockholm Syndrome powers over the young boys he has abducted into his army. He also claimed clairvoyant powers that allowed him to predict attacks, or detect attempts by abductees to escape. Former fighters describe how he would appear in a blue cassock or white robe to conduct nocturnal rituals by the light of flickering charcoal fires, or speak in tongues in a special yard reserved for communion with the spirits. The LRA rebels say they are fighting for the establishment of a government based on the biblical Ten Commandments. Kony practices a strategically syncretic religion and celebrates the Islamic holy day of Friday as well as the Christian Sunday. Many believe this is deliberate to broaden his appeal to the Islamists in Sudan as well as the Christians in Uganda.

The LRA is notorious for targeting civilians, mutilating survivors -- often by cutting off their lips or ears -- and for kidnapping over 30,000 children to serve the cult-like movement as fighters, porters or sex slaves. Kony is an Acholi tribesman who was born in 1962 in a small village near the town of Gulu. The town of Gulu is now the site of a major child refugee crisis. He has been supported by the Arab Sudanese government in Khartoum who used him to fight their own southern rebels, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). This was in revenge for the Ugandan support of the SPLA. Sudan equipped Kony with Soviet-made anti-tank weapons, machine-guns and mines and his fighters engaged both the south Sudanese rebels and the Ugandan army. But it was civilians in northern Uganda who bore the brunt of their attacks. There are signs that the LRA may now be moving away from their call to overthrow the Kampala government. Their demands now include a negotiated solution to the conflict, an end to Acholi marginalisation, and reparations for cattle rustled by pro-government factions shortly after Museveni took power. There is an another external stumbling block to peace. Kony and his senior leaders were indicted by the International Criminal Court in October 2005. Kony told reporters on 1 August this year that he would not be willing to stand trial at the ICC because he had not done anything wrong.

The 62-year old Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni is a member of the south-western Ugandan ethnic group the Banyankole. His surname Museveni means "Son of a man of the Seventh" in honour of the Seventh Battalion of the King's African Rifles, the British colonial army in which many Ugandans served during World War II. In the 1960s, he studied economics and political science in Tanzania where he embraced Marxism and Pan-Africanism. After a stint with a guerrilla movement in Portuguese Mozambique, he returned home in 1970 and worked for the intelligence service of then-president Milton Obote. When Idi Amin seized power a year later, Museveni fled to Tanzania. Amin attacked Tanzania in 1978 and Museveni led a force of exiles which worked with the Tanzanian army to launch a counter-attack. As a result the Amin regime was toppled in April 1979. Museveni was named Defence Minister in a new national government. He formed a political party which was defeated by ex-PM Obote in a disputed poll in 1980. As a result, the losing parties refused to recognise the new regime. Museveni cobbled together a new army which fought a 5 year campaign from their rural Western stronghold.

By 1986, his forces were strong enough to take Kampala and that same year Museveni was sworn in as president. At the time, he argued that political party activity splits underdeveloped countries like Uganda along ethnic, tribal and religious lines. He brought in a new system which he described as a broad based, alternate system of democracy in which people compete for political office on individual merit. The downside meant political party activity was restricted. Over the next 10 years Mr Museveni became a favourite African leader of the West. US President Bill Clinton visited Uganda in 1998 and described him as the head of a new breed of African leaders. Uganda's economy began to grow steadily and poverty levels dropped by 20% through the 1990s. He doubled primary school enrolment, and controlled HIV levels with a concerted anti-AIDS campaign.

However dissatisfaction is now growing within Uganda over his long-term leadership. Despite saying that his 2001 election victory would be his last, Museveni nominated again in February 2006 and won another bitterly disputed election which was narrowly upheld by the Supreme Court of Uganda. His reputation has also suffered due to Uganda’s involvement in the long running Congo Wars when Uganda and Rwanda united to overthrow long-term dictator Mobutu and then his replacement Laurent Kabila. With Uganda now extricated from Congo, Museveni has been able to concentrate on halting the LRA offensive in the north.

The ceasefire between the Ugandan army and the LRA appears to be holding. Saturday’s truce has furthered hopes that the end may be in sight. On Sunday LRA second-in-command Vincent Otti called on all rebels and officers to assemble to the meeting camp and said “LRA rebels who harass people during this time of the peace struggle would be punished accordingly”.