Seize the moment
Jul 11, 2006
TALKS are due to get underway today to find a lasting solution to the insurgency in Acholi. A high-powered Government delegation and a team from the rebels Lord’s Resistance Army are in the southern Sudanese city of Juba for face-to-face talks.
TALKS are due to get underway today to find a lasting solution to the insurgency in Acholi. A high-powered Government delegation and a team from the rebels Lord’s Resistance Army are in the southern Sudanese city of Juba for face-to-face talks.
This is a huge opportunity to end the suffering of the people of Acholi for once and for all. The insurgency has been running, in one form or another, with different leadership for twenty years. For most of this time the LRA, under Joseph Kony, has brutalised the people, leading to hundreds of deaths, thousands of maimings, tens of thousands of abductions, and a million or so displaced.
The statistics aside, the mental scars and the social and economic upheaval are difficult to quantify, yet they may, in the end, be the most significant.
There have, in the past, been attempts at peace settlements that have not come to fruition. At times half-hearted, many times due to the erratic nature of the rebel leader, and also because the LRA was being used as a weapon of instability by a foreign power, the efforts got to nowhere.
Now there is a genuine chance that must be taken. The Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS), which is brokering the talks, has a stake, a legitimate interest in their success because its people have also borne the brunt of the LRA atrocities.
The geopolitical interest is greater still because the GOSS has the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, assented to with the national government in Khartoum to implement. It would be difficult for this to take root when marauding Ugandan rebels are still at large.
LRA rebels are currently camped in the Garamba National Park in Congo, this at a time when the Kinshasa government is all set for elections that aim at stabilising Congo.
It is in the interest of Acholi, Uganda, southern Sudan, northeastern Congo, and indeed regional stability that the talks succeed. Let us seize the moment.
This is a huge opportunity to end the suffering of the people of Acholi for once and for all. The insurgency has been running, in one form or another, with different leadership for twenty years. For most of this time the LRA, under Joseph Kony, has brutalised the people, leading to hundreds of deaths, thousands of maimings, tens of thousands of abductions, and a million or so displaced.
The statistics aside, the mental scars and the social and economic upheaval are difficult to quantify, yet they may, in the end, be the most significant.
There have, in the past, been attempts at peace settlements that have not come to fruition. At times half-hearted, many times due to the erratic nature of the rebel leader, and also because the LRA was being used as a weapon of instability by a foreign power, the efforts got to nowhere.
Now there is a genuine chance that must be taken. The Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS), which is brokering the talks, has a stake, a legitimate interest in their success because its people have also borne the brunt of the LRA atrocities.
The geopolitical interest is greater still because the GOSS has the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, assented to with the national government in Khartoum to implement. It would be difficult for this to take root when marauding Ugandan rebels are still at large.
LRA rebels are currently camped in the Garamba National Park in Congo, this at a time when the Kinshasa government is all set for elections that aim at stabilising Congo.
It is in the interest of Acholi, Uganda, southern Sudan, northeastern Congo, and indeed regional stability that the talks succeed. Let us seize the moment.