Uganda 
Looting Ugandan rebels create food crisis

afrol News, 10 January - Aid organisations speak of a "critical shortfall of cereals in January 2003," which has caused the suspension of distributions of cereals to internally displaced in northern Uganda. The deteriorating security situation, due to terror attacks and abductions by the so-called Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), is causing the food crisis in this fertile area. 

According to information released by the World Food Agency (WFP) today, "generous donations" were needed in order to mitigate the unfolding humanitarian disaster in northern Uganda. The UN agency had issued an emergency appeal to its donors. 

The security situation in the Acholi and Lango sub-regions in northern Uganda was continuing to deteriorate, with frequent reports that the LRA rebels "continue to abduct and kill women and children, loot property and terrorise the civilian population," WFP reports from Uganda. Over 800,000 people were now displaced and affected by crop failure in the five districts and are in desperate need of food aid assistance due to the extreme insecurity in the area. 

According to the agency, the districts of Gulu, Kitgum and Pader are the worst affected, with approximately 70 percent of the total population displaced. Settled villages in Lira and Apac Districts have been attacked during the recent LRA insurgency, resulting in increased new displacements and increased reliance on food aid.

Internally displaced persons had told WFP that they have almost totally lost access to their fields, and consequently their second and last harvest of the year in August/September 2002. The increasing insecurity and the general disruption of economic activities had constrained their food acquisition strategies, and they now completely depend on food aid for their survival. 

The Acholi sub-region is reported to have received normal rainfall in some areas and heavy rainfall in others, meaning that harvests should have been plentiful. The population was nevertheless unable to open up new land and harvest crops planted earlier due to the increased terror by the LRA rebels. "As a result, an extremely limited January harvest is expected," WFP notes. 

Fighting in Northern Uganda intensified by mid-2002, after the Ugandan army had launched a mayor offensive against LRA bases in Southern Sudan, with the blessing of the Sudanese government. The offensive, although initially successful, did not manage to root out the rebel units, which returned to Northern Uganda and launched a counter-offensive against civilians there. 

According to a paper published in October 2002 by the US-based group Human Rights Watch, the new LRA offensive had specialised in targeting "displaced persons and refugees and the agencies assisting them." The rebels seemed to be provoking a large-scale humanitarian disaster. 

The LRA rebel group was founded 14 years ago as a religious-ethnic reaction to the regime of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. LRA founder Joseph Kony mixed Christian and traditional spiritualism with ethnic resentments among the Northern Ugandan Acholi people against Mr Museveni's overthrow of the northerner, Milton Obote. 

Spiritualism soon developed into fanaticism in the mind of Mr Kony, who still leads the rebel group. Over the years, LRA became famous for its numerous abductions of children - at least ten thousand - and brutalising them into child soldiers. Mutilations and other blind LRA attacks on civilians have also been daily events in war-ravaged Northern Uganda over the past decade. The 2002-03 offensive against the civilian population has however been one of the harshest in brutal history of the group.

Sources: Based on WFP and afrol archives

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