Prosecuting International Crimes in Africa - PULP - University of ...

200 Chapter 9
officers full control of the army. The honeymoon was short-lived though.
In 1986 the NRA staged a coup, overthrowing Tito Okello’s Acholidominated
government. Museveni’s NRA rebellion had exploited the
ethnic tension between the southerners and northerners to marshal
support, and had gained access to power because of the Acholi Langi rift. 10
As a result, the war in the Luwero Triangle (the epicentre of the NRA
rebellion) was seen as a war between southerners and northerners (the
Acholi). 11
When the NRA took control of the government, it ordered the
subdued belligerent combatants to return to their barracks, which the
Acholi soldiers refused to do. The soldiers saw this as a repeat of the 1971
Amin massacre of Acholi and Langi soldiers after they were ordered to
return to the barracks. 12 They instead retreated to the north, determined
not only to defend themselves, but to regain political power. Reports
indicate that retaliation massacres were carried out against civilians in
northern Uganda by the forces of the new government. 13 This is in
addition to a witch hunt of UNLA soldiers by the NRA 35 th Battalion,
accompanied by ethnically-provoked looting of the Acholi people’s
properties. 14 To resist the new government, the UNLA soldiers reorganised
and decided to use the north as their base. However, later several
rebel groups sprang up. These included the Uganda Peoples Democratic
Army (UPDA), the Holy Spirit Mobile Forces (HSMF) and the Uganda
Christian Democratic Army (UCDA), later renamed the Lord’s
Resistance Army (LRA). 15
In subsequent years other groups, including the UPDA and HSMF,
either disappeared or joined the LRA, which endured for over two decades
as the symbol of resistance in Northern Uganda. At the mantle of the LRA
leadership is Joseph Kony who triples as a military, political and spiritual
leader. Under his spiritual leadership Kony claimed to represent a new
generation of Acholi on a mission to purify Acholi and implement a new
moral order. 16 Although support for the LRA was built around Acholi
nationalism, it does not have any identifiable political agenda. 17 Yet,
paradoxically, the majority of violent attacks, involving massacres and
abductions, were directed at Acholi people.
What over the years reduced LRA’s vulnerability to attacks was the
fact that it never established a base inside Uganda. It instead used Southern
10 As above, 25.
11 R Gersony The anguish of Northern Uganda: Results of a field-based assessment of the civil
conflicts in Northern Uganda (1997).
12 ICG (n 3 above) 3.
13 As above.
14 HURIPEC and Liu (n 9 above) 35.
15 HURIPEC and Liu (n 9 above) 34.
16 Lunde (n 5 above) 32.
17 ICG (n 3 above) 5.