Epilogue

Summary

The war in northern Uganda is still not over. Instead, it has gained an international dimension. Joseph Kony and his movement, which now calls itself the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), have not only been able to continue the war against the Ugandan government, but also to find new allies. They have cemented relations with the Sudanese government, which provides them with weapons and means of transportation, since the Ugandan government supports the SPLA. Kony's guerrillas also use the border between Uganda and Sudan to give the Ugandan government army the slip. In addition, other movements have formed to fight the government (such as the Uganda Freedom Movement in the country's northwest, the West Nile Bank Front in Arua District and the Allied Democratic Forces in western Uganda).

In Uganda, the militarization of politics has thus led to a multiplication of guerrilla movements violendy combating state power. Ideological goals seem to be fading into the background. One fights primarily to get rich, to lead the ‘high life’, and to take revenge. The biographies of individual fighters reveal that their membership in a particular group is often arbitrary or coincidental. Many young men in the North began their careers as ‘rebels’, then changed sides (often after a defeat), continuing to fight in militias, the Local Defence Forces, or the government army. In disappointment or because they were discharged when the World Bank demanded a reduction and rationalization of the government army, some returned to the ‘rebel’ camp.

For most of the soldiers, whether they fight on the side of the government or its opponents, the war has become a business and one which is more profitable than peace. They have thus developed an essential interest in keeping the fighting going or extending it to other terrain, for example Rwanda (cf. Behrend and Meillassoux 1994) or Congo. Since current economic conditions - not only in Uganda, but all over the world - are turning more and more people into ‘losers’, many see war, especially civil war, as their only possibility of imitating the life made familiar and seemingly desirable by war videos.