Museveni’s stick yields as carrot falters against LRA

May 02, 2005

It is scorching hot, dry and windy. On the roads, hardly a person can be sighted. At the Internally Displaced People’s (IDP) camps, people stare motionless, faces sullen, as cars pass by.

Onapito Ekomoloit

It is scorching hot, dry and windy. On the roads, hardly a person can be sighted. At the Internally Displaced People’s (IDP) camps, people stare motionless, faces sullen, as cars pass by.

Time check: February, 2004. Location: Lira.. President Yoweri Museveni’s convoy is slowly snaking its way as if to the middle of nowhere. His mind must be weighing heavy.

Not very far away from where he is passing, at Barlonyo, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) recently massacred over 200 people. And much closer, on the road the president is following, at Abia IDP, the terrorists butchered another 50 people.

A group of journalists, local and international, are on the president’s trail. Before leaving Lira town he has assured them the region is seeing the last of Joseph Kony’s bandits. Yet in the wake of the atrocities, the scribes are skeptical.

So President Museveni invites them along to where he is heading— the LRA hideouts in Otuke northeast of Lira town. He is going to camp at Barilegi, a primary school in Okwang sub-county. Only a few weeks ago, LRA terrorists, including Kony himself, using the school’s furniture as firewood, turned it into a cooking place.

At the camp, the feel of war is palpable. The impressive Presidential Guard Brigade(PGB) weaponry gets the tails of a BBC TV crew up. They literally run around the encampment lapping up every picture opportunity.

Dusk is fast approaching so the president gives the journalists a quick interview. They troop to the presidential helicopter. Moments later, it kicks up a cloud of dust as it lifts off to the safety of Lira town, a 15 minutes’ flight.

For the next one month, the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) commander-in-chief remains secluded in Barilegi. In between seeing a handful of state guests, who are airlifted to the isolated base, the president keeps his finger on every detail of the army operations to drive LRA out of Lango and beyond.

Day and night, he confers with UPDF commanders and also ventures into the field, where he gives tips to the army. When Acholi and Lango MPs come to the camp, the president assures them the worst for the region at the hands of the LRA is behind its people. They play Doubting Thomases and instead besiege him to declare the area a disaster zone.

He stands his ground and asks for time to prove his point. Having laid the ground work for flushing the LRA out, he gets back to Kampala for other state duties. Time check: April, 2004.

Fast forward: April, 15, 2005. President Museveni is heading back to Barilegi. It’s a new Lango he is passing through. Arriving at the entrance of Lira Hotel, he is mobbed by ululating supporters.
At Lira District Council chambers, concern about the LRA terrorism is residual, as the president addresses councilors.

Yes, as district chairman Franco Ojur notes, the majority of the people are yet to return to their homes from the IDPs. But now they are generally safe. The memories of Barlonyo and Abia are still fresh, but there are no fresh massacres.

The councillors have time to question the president on “small” issues, such as the headline grabbing return of exiled UPC leader Milton Obote, a son of the soil. After the president explains, a diehard UPC campaigner announces he is crossing to the NRM.

Dusk is fast approaching, but President Museveni is not spending a night in Lira town. In statement by action that LRA is now a residual factor, he hits the road for a night journey back to Barilegi.

Back in 2004, on the very first day the president camped at Barilegi, a landmine hit a car near the camp, hours after the presidential convoy had passed the spot. This time it all goes without a hitch. The president reaches the camp at 11:00pm!
As if to make a statement of its own, the weather too is pretty serene. The grass is already green and bushes fast getting lush, as the new rains set in. Strangely, it was still dry by this time last year.

Travelling between Barilegi and Lira town the following daylight tells more about the dawn of peace in the area. Where one would not see a person away from the IDPs last year, this time folks are cultivating in their previously abandoned fields.
At Apala and Okwang IDPs, where glum faces greeted one a year ago, a woman here and there is breaking into a jig in excitement, as a convoy of UPDF officers heading in and out of a meet with the commander-in-chief passes by.

The results are out: the stick in President Museveni’s stick-and-carrot strategy against the LRA has yielded. Some say he is a war monger, but ask Betty Bigombe. She is holding a big carrot in the hand, yet Kony will not bite.

The writer is the presidential press assistant

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