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The Endless War
By anitamckay on 2009-02-03 08:43:49
Uganda has been caught up in a civil war for twenty years. Although most of the fighting has been in the northern part of
the country (and now spreading to the east), 2,000,000 people have been displaced and 30,000 killed. The group fighting
Uganda's government calls itself the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Their goals are to take the country over to rule by the
guidance of the Ten Commandments, and to highlight the difficulties of the Acholi people, who live in the area where the
LRA leadership is from. The LRA's Christian principles seem not to preclude taking women and children as sex slaves and
forcing children to become soldiers. We could learn a lot by studying Uganda's two decade war. The current estimate of the
number of soldiers in the LRA is 650. Not thousands. Just 650. Period. This fact makes our goal of stamping out the
Taliban by military means look pretty naive. In a civil war setting, the folks we're fighting tend to look more like the ones
we're protecting than they do us. In other countries, unlike our military, the people fighting are not primarily adult males
fighting on foreign soil. Our soldiers stand out. Theirs do not. There do seem to be supporters of the Taliban (or its tenets)
who have traveled to fight in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but how quickly can an American tell the difference between a
friendly Afghani or Pakistani and a hostile person from either group, or - say - a Saudi? We wind up killing or capturing a
lot of civilians, which makes us more enemies. We also miss a lot, because they can simply put their weapons aside and
smile, and we think they're friends. Another fact to ponder is that the militaries of four governments have been chasing the
LRA for parts or all of the twenty years. Major resources have been expended chasing a small number of elusive people. We
are fighting the wrong war against terrorism. The days of military fronts being broken through by determination and might
are gone. In Afghanistan, we destroy more than we gain, making enemies as we go, playing into the hands of al Qaeda.
Some are proud that there have been no further attacks in the United States since 9/11. The people who think that don't seem
to wonder whether 9/11 was planned knowing the United Staes would react rather than plan and go bulling around the
world, losing support and bankrupting our economy. Have we been left to destroy ourselves? There is one other interesting
point about the conflict in Uganda. One current impediment to peace talks is the Hague's indictment of LRA leaders for war
crimes. Many Acholi people, for whom the war is, in part, being waged, live where most of the fighting is and bear the
brunt of the war. They want the indictments dropped. Most believe that as long as the indictments stand, peace talks will
remain stalled, and the war will continue. They have called for a reconciliation process. They would rather live in peace
and reconciliation than continue living in the midst of an endless war.
