10 - The War in Acholi, 1987-96

Summary

This chapter begins by describing the general situation in Acholi since 1987, before portraying the successive Holy Spirit Movements of Severino Lukoya and Joseph Kony. The preceding chapters have attempted to do justice to the religious pluralism of northern Uganda from a diachronic perspective. The three Holy Spirit Movements are now compared, elaborating their differences as well as what they have in common, the interest here being primarily the interplay of oppositions and thus the way in which differences are expressed in the context of spirit possession.

As already mentioned, since the outbreak of fighting in May and June 1986, northern Uganda has been increasingly isolated from the rest of the country. The NRA government declared Gulu and Kitgum Districts war zones. Roadblocks regulated access; transport and trade collapsed almost completely around the end of 1987. As early as March 1987, the NRA forced large segments of the population in Gulu District to leave their farms and take ‘refuge’ in camps or in the cities. I was told that many were fleeing, not from the ‘rebels’, but from the NRA, who stole livestock and burned houses, supplies, and fields. By December 1987, some 33,000 refugees were living in various camps distributed throughout Gulu City. There was not enough to eat, sanitary conditions were inadequate, and, except in Lacor, medical care had more or less collapsed (Lamwaka: 2/If.).

As early as June 1987, Museveni had offered an amnesty to anyone who voluntarily left the bush and surrendered to the NRA. In December 1987 alone, 1,500 to 1,800 ‘rebels’ surrendered. They were subjected to a screening exercise and then either sent home or into one of the politicization camps for ‘rehabilitation’ (ibid:2/3ff.). But since some of the promises made to the former ‘rebels’ were not kept, a number of them returned, disappointed, to resistance movements in the bush. Others were integrated into the NRA or the local militias, the Local Defence Units (LDU), where they now fought against their former comrades in arms.