Suchergebnisse

An examination of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which killed more than 40 civilians in a 2004 attack on a camp of internally displaced persons near Lira, notes that such events are becoming commonplace in northern Uganda. Four theories about the LRA are considered: (1) LRA's leader, Joseph Kony, is a "madman" carrying out a purposeless campaign of violence; (2) the conflict is the result of legitimate complaints of northern peoples; (3) the struggle is a "byproduct of the larger geopolitical rivalry between the Sudanese government & Uganda;" & (4) Uganda is the site of an emerging "political economy of conflict" in which various actors are economically benefiting from the war. It is contended that none of these theories explain all of the circumstances surrounding the conflict. Attention is called to the increase in LRA attacks on civilians, especially children; recent LRA attacks outside its usual zone of conflict; & the failure of the Uganda People's Democratic Army's "Operation Iron Fist" project. The chances for peace are assessed. 7 References. J. Lindroth

On 13 October 2005, the International Criminal Court unsealed warrants of arrest for five senior leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) for the forced conscription of children and other war crimes in northern Uganda. We compiled a database of 25,231 children and youth who had been registered by receptions centers in northern Uganda after their return from the LRA. Most of the LRA returnees were thirteen to eighteen years old (37 percent) and nineteen to thirty years old (24 percent). Twenty-four percent of the LRA returnees were female and 76 percent were male. The average length of abduction was 342 days, and the median number of days of abduction was ninety-two days. Among women aged nineteen to thirty years old, the average length of abduction was four and one half years. At the multivariate level, gender, age, and the interaction between them were associated with length of captivity (F-Statistic = 229.8, p-value = 0.0001). Using triangulation methods, we estimate the LRA abducted 54,000 to 75,000 people, including 25,000 to 38,000 children, into their ranks between 1986 and 2006.

The LRA's war in Uganda, like many conflicts in Africa, may appear illogical to the outsider (and especially to the Western media), but it contains an internal logic that makes it rational to the participants.