As such no one group or sub-region enjoyed both military and economic power simultaneously, and discourses of ethnic difference were established which live on to this day. The promotion of Acholi to major positions in the security establishment for example, was, after independence, reframed as proving that they were militaristic, a notion which many Acholi themselves bought into.
Colonisation by the Catholic and Anglican churches added further complexities, with combinations of religious and ethnic divisions inexorably coming to underpin the political parties formed in the run-up to independence. The Uganda National Congress (UNC) formed in 1952 was predominantly Protestant, while the Democratic Party (DP) formed in 1956 was predominantly Catholic. The Uganda People's Congress (UPC) formed in 1960 opposed both the Catholic political movement and claims for an independent Buganda state, while the Kabaka Yekka (KY) party created in 1961 represented the predominantly Protestant Buganda kingdom's drive for autonomy. As such, by the time of independence in 1962, the organising principles of ethnicity, sub-region, religion and politics could only be extricated from one another with considerable difficulty,7 but rather than creating a unified whole they had generated what – in a reference to Winston Churchill's description of Uganda as the ‘Pearl of Africa’ – has been described as a ‘fragmented pearl’ (O'Brien, 1997). Indeed, the independence constitution reflected a hierarchy of different ethnic groups, granting federal status to the kingdom of Buganda, semi-federal status to the kingdoms of Ankole, Bunyoro and Toro, and district status to Acholi, Bugisu, Bukedi, Karamoja, Kigezi, Lango, Madi, Sebei, Teso and West Nile (Mutibwa, 1992: 24). Following the coup by Obote, a northerner from Lango, in 1966, this independence constitution was suspended. The reformed constitution of 1967, which officially de-ethnicised the polity, angered those who had been at the top of it (in particular the Baganda), aggravating ethnic tensions and strengthening their importance as an axis of anti-government mobilisation. The whole question of the status of ethnic kingdoms and leadership remained live, resulting in concessions from the NRM Government such as the reinstatement of the Kabaka of Buganda in 1990, followed by the Omukama of the Banyoro, and the anointment of the Rwot Moo of the Acholi in 2000. However, these ethnic structures were weaker than in the past – not least because they could no longer collect taxes, this function having been taken over by county chiefs.
Ethnic/religious/sub-regional tensions increased incrementally over the following decades, and not just along north-south lines.8 Examples often given in conversation include Idi Amin's use of soldiers from West Nile to persecute Acholi and Langi in the 1970s, the Karamajong's extension of cattle-raiding westwards to the Acholi sub-region in the early 1980s, and the involvement of Acholi soldiers in atrocities in the central Luwero triangle in the early 1980s.9
Phase I (1986 to 1988)
For people in northern Uganda, the period immediately after the capture of Kampala by Museveni's National Resistance Army in January 1986 was a strange time of holding one's breath while preparing for the worst. Someone who was fifteen at the time recalled how:
When the news broke that the government…was overthrown by Yoweri Kaguta Museveni…there were repeated calls in the form of public addresses and rallies for [the] public to join the army of Tito Okello Lutwa to defend our land and properties from the invading Banyarwanda led by Museveni and others. The population were convinced beyond doubt by the army that no one would escape death if the NRA rebels captured Gulu district…
Day by day the numbers of UNLA soldiers who were coming from Kampala increased. Their arrival in town also meant increases in the numbers of vehicles as most of them were able to come back with vehicles and other looted items. One of my uncles came back with a lorry full of assorted looted items from Kampala.…There was no news of the NRA advance. In reality they were closing in from various fronts, but had not yet reached Karuma [where there is a key crossing over the river Nile].
He went on to describe how the UNLA soldiers forcibly rounded-up civilians, took them to the barracks and armed them with guns, pangas, spears, bows and arrows ‘for confrontation with the NRA around Karuma bridge’.
By March 1986 the NRA had reached and taken Gulu town. A brief and deceptive lull soon gave way to extreme turmoil marked by the formation of a number of different insurgent groups. The Uganda People's Democratic Army (UPDA), known as ‘Cilil’, was made up of UNLA members who had fled northwards following the overthrow of Obote in July 1985 and Tito Okello in January 1986. Having passed through Gulu on their way north, they initially based themselves in southern Sudan, and made links with the Equatoria Defence Force (Allen, 2005b: 4) but, following problems with the Sudanese Peoples’ Liberation Army (SPLA), came back to Gulu district and began attacks on the NRA.
In 1987 they managed to surround Gulu town, and people were not able to go more than 1/2 kilometre from the centre of the town…Life was so difficult in terms of food, feeding, recreation, education-wise and in all other aspects…The government soldiers were so weak that the rebels could come to town and do what they wished to do without any resistance…The rebels could go up to the barracks and exchange bullets with the government soldiers.
As well as the UPDA, a less conventional force, the prophetic Holy Spirit Movement (HSM), was built up under the leadership of a woman known as Alice Lakwena, who claimed to be possessed by a Christian spirit known as Lakwena (‘Messenger’). The HSM's military wing, the Holy Spirit Mobile Forces, began operating in August 1986, only months after the NRA had established control over northern Uganda. This has been described in some depth by Heike Behrend (1999).
The NRA, after consolidating their position and reinforcing their numbers, responded to these various insurgencies with considerable force and brutality. As they moved outwards from Gulu town, their behaviour confirmed people's worst fears, as they ‘started killing people, burning houses, looting food items and doing all other bad things to the local population’ (see Tables 1-5 below for examples). By December 86 the NRA was seeking to capture ‘Cilil’ and ‘Lakwena’ and their collaborators. One respondent, after hearing gun-shots, fled his home, but:
All our family members who did not hear the gun shot were captured and died very terribly. The army moved into the whole area and captured every civilian within the surrounding area and assembled them within the Divisional Headquarters. At about 10.00 A.M. out of 33 people who were assembled 28 were killed and left at the Division along the road side…From that day the Government army killed many people in various places within the Division. I slept in the bush for one and a half weeks and later on decided to move away to Kampala where I remained for three years up to 1989 November when I came back to Gulu.
Another respondent described how the army pursued them as they fled:
Now when we saw the smoke of our burning houses, we decided to run and hide in a nearby stream called Lacwii. But as we were crossing…it seemed the NRA realised [where] we were hiding…because they started firing and bombing the Lacwii. This was a day I knew God protects and preserves. Bullets were pouring in our direction like drizzling rain, and their sounds were like popping simsim [sesame]…
Although NRA features heavily in accounts of violence from that period, UPDA and HSM were also guilty of much looting, killing and burning (see Tables 1-5). There was also considerable destruction of infrastructure such as dispensaries and schools, and the beginnings of large-scale internal displacement.
Having reached Jinja in a circuitous march on Kampala, Lakwena's HSM was militarily defeated in October 1987. Lakwena fled to Kenya where she retained refugee status at the time of writing (2005). When a peace accord with the UPDA followed in May 1988, it seemed the worst might be over. However, it was an incomplete peace. Some remnants of both HSM and UPDA fed into the developing strength of the Lord's Army under Alice's father Severino Lukwoya, and the Lord's Resistance Army under Joseph Kony. Somewhat confusingly Kony's group began as the Holy Spirit Movement, changed its name briefly to United Democratic Christian