Friends For Peace In Africa

"We are familiar with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch documented cases of rape, sodomy, extrajudicial killings, forced displacements and forcible recruitment into both rebel and government paramilitaries and militias by both sides. It is not coincidental that the LRA and the Ugandan state both are strident proponents of mato oput; this is not because of any real possibility for truth-telling, but a means for escaping accountability and punishment for their criminal motives, behaviour and actions in the course of the war."

By Okello Lucima

The perception of justice or injustice committed in the course of a war takes two possible lines of assessment. First, some look at the general accounts of the conduct of the conflict to make a judgement. Second, one may choose to look at individual acts or events in the course of the war to characterise how just or unjust the conflict was. However, we want to argue that this exercise need not be an “either –or” judgement of the two strands that glosses over complex and serious issues that in the end focuses more on finding one side just and the other unjust. We find that the famous Acholi traditional justice mechanism, Mato oput, and partial ICC indictments of the LRA, suffer from such generalisation, over simplification, and limited focus to a truncated period of the conflict. The focus for justice and accountability in this case, is only for acts committed from 2002 –when ICC-came into force-to the present. Consequently, the most horrendous period in the history of the conflict, from 1986 to 2001, is left out. This seems to exculpate the Ugandan state armies-the NRA and later UPDF-and may not be inadvertent. It is partly for this reason that I would like to argue against mato oput - the Acholi traditional practice of conflict resolution -and the limited and selective ICC investigations and indictments, as suitable, complementary models for war termination¹ in northern Uganda.

First, mato oput as a model for war termination makes no distinction between degree of gravity of crimes and categories of responsibility of perpetrators –abducted children, those who abducted, trained and deployed them and the crimes they committed. The principle of retributive justice demands that there must be proportionality; the punishment must be commensurate with the crime.

Second, war crimes, crime against humanity are committed against individuals as subjects of human rights discourses.² By overemphasising the fears, misery and psychological trauma of a collective, faceless, nameless mass of Acholi survivors and their wish for a quick fix, focus is removed from the necessity of exacting justice also for those who died horrible deaths because of abuses. Adopting this approach obscures the ultimate objective of war and war termination-the vindication of human rights by punishing unjustifiable abuses committed in the conduct and duration of the conflict.

Third, to have mato oput and supplemental state or ICC special courts that will try only alleged LRA perpetrators, biases the whole process of mato oput as a war termination model to favour the ethics of national security against ethics of human security.³ In effect, we would not be punishing the LRA for crimes committed against northern Ugandan non-combatants, for which the NRA / UPDF are equally culpable, but for crimes against the Ugandan state. Therefore, mato oput as a war termination model that ought to lay claims to justice and equity, would not be ensuring equal justice, but abetting a possible NRA / UPDF victor’s justice,⁴ a justice girdled by political expediency.

It is a truism in the just war tradition that no peace can come out of an unjust war. And a just peace⁵ cannot prevail if war termination rules are dictated by assumed victorious NRM/A which waged a war in violation of other’s rights in the first place. Lives, property and security have been destroyed through vindictive, politically motivated counterinsurgency strategies.⁶ The defeat of violators or their punishment is the only means to vindicate those rights, and mato oput as a model, seems inadequate to make these transcending moral and political arguments. In ending the northern Uganda war, we must not only concern ourselves with what can be done but also what ought to be done,⁷ a proposition that mato oput as a model for war termination is incapable of making. In other words, justice of the ends and justice of the means of war must be central to the contemplation of a just peace at the end of the northern Uganda war.

For a just peace to be concluded, judgements about motives of the war and how the war was conducted and ended are critical. The most important goal at the end of a conflict is the securing of human rights⁸, and a just peace. On the scales of the principles of the just war tradition of Aquinas⁹, Grotius,¹⁰ Augustine¹¹ and their followers, both the LRA’s and the Uganda government’s motives and means used in prosecuting the northern war cannot be morally justified. In view of what has transpired in northern Uganda, neither the LRA nor the Ugandan state can benefit from grudgingly accepted contradictions in the just war tradition which proclaims that lives may have to be destroyed in order to save other lives; and that, sometimes destructive war is a necessary evil in the defence of certain values that constitute fundamental social and moral mainstay of society.

Our objection to mato oput and reservations about the ICC indictments of only the LRA as models for war termination and a just peace in northern Uganda, further rests on moral considerations that rely on two streams of thought in the just war tradition. These are (1) jus ad bellum, which is the period preceding entry into war, and (2) jus in bello, which is the succeeding period after entry into war. The moral justifications for war (jus ad bellum) considers the legitimacy of authority, a just cause, a moral and just motive, and the choice of armed conflict as the least of a range of more devious options available to right a wrong or defend human rights. On the other hand, the moral justification for the means and conduct of war (jus in bello) concerns itself with the means used and the behaviour of combatants towards non-combatants and captured enemy combatants.¹² As Olara Otunnu has so judiciously demonstrated, the incentives, behaviour and actions of the LRA insurgents and Ugandan state both, are indictable.

Are we better or worse off than we were before the war?

Under the purview of the just war tradition, a war of liberation or one fought in defence of human rights must not cause more harm, deaths and misery on the people in whose name it is fought. This is to ensure that no unjustifiable killings and abuses are perpetrated under the cover of a just war. As a key test for justice, in the course of the war or at the end of it, we must not be left worse off by the outcomes of the war than we were under prior and prevailing alleged unjust conditions the war sought to right. In the case of northern Uganda, there is no debate about how doubly worse off we are, and none of the belligerents on either side of the war comes out of this unscathed as vindicators of human rights. In other words, no persuasive case can be made, particularly in defence of the Ugandan state, that war was the last resort and the least of several more devious and immoral courses of action that would have harmed more than protected social and economic infrastructures and the fundamental rights of the people who have suffered in northern and eastern Uganda.

To apply mato oput and partial ICC indictments to end the northern Uganda conflict and as a basis for a just peace, is tantamount to consciously promoting impunity and acquiescing in state-led propaganda that seeks to absolve the Ugandan state from responsibility to protect, and its own unjustifiable counterinsurgency strategies that like the LRA’s insurgency methods, victimised unarmed women and children; targeted entire ethnic group for collective punishment in order to discourage support for insurgency. We are familiar with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch documented cases of rape, sodomy, extrajudicial killings, forced displacements and forcible recruitment into both rebel and government paramilitaries and militias by both sides. It is not coincidental that the LRA and the Ugandan state both are strident proponents of mato oput; this is not because of any real possibility for truth-telling, but a means for escaping accountability and punishment for their criminal motives, behaviour and actions in the course of the war.

Proponents of mato oput fail to appreciate the facts that war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed in northern Uganda centre around issues of the exercise of state power, human rights, and those who claim to have picked up arms to defend themselves or have challenged the legitimacy and powers of an unjust state.

Obviously, the state and human rights are subjects of both municipal law and public international law, but specifically, the individual is the subject of international humanitarian and human rights laws. Therefore, war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, are international crimes that must be subjected to the exigencies of international norms, justice and appropriate punishment without exception. The northern insurgency, which was originally organised around Acholi factions of ramparts of a former national army, was a contestation of state power and response to perceived persecution by the state¹³. Over the years, it permutated to co-opt regional and geopolitical dimensions of politics, ideology, natural resource economics and other aspects of strategic international calculation that had nothing to do with Acholi grievances or internal Uganda national politics. Consequently, its termination and just resolution cannot be adequately captured by Acholi traditional or cultural jurisprudence as a war termination model that ought to address outstanding grievances and issues in order for a just and durable peace to be established by the resolution of the conflict.

In any case, the model of mato oput popularised by its varying local and international proponents, is a bastardised form and convoluted concept of classical Acholi mato oput. First, the practice was only relevant in inadvertent commission of grievous harm, manslaughter between families, clans, and villages, but never between Acholi and non-Acholi communities. Second, in classical Acholi practice, inter-tribal and inter-chiefdom conflicts, killings and grievances were evaluated on lapii or casas belli, which gave rise to a just ad bellum or the moral justification for a war of revenge. The defeat of or suit for peace by the perpetrators, leading to culu kwor or proportionate indemnity or punishment, led to a settlement that ended with gomo tong or bending of spears by both sides to signify conflict termination, but never mato oput, which was inter-family, inter-clan and an intra-Acholi practice for accidental harm. Therefore, the LRM / A and the NRM/A conflict as deliberate acts of abuses does not qualify for mato oput; and its assumed social, psychological and metaphysical potency could not be thought to be of any value in remediation of rights abuses including unjustified killings in or outside Acholi. In other words, mato oput is a poor substitute for a necessary robust, aggressive and vigorous application of international humanitarian and human rights laws to vindicate the human rights of the people of northern Uganda and provide a basis for a just peace.

For the purpose of our arguments, we consider mato oput without any practical merits in extra-Acholi conflict context. Despite its moral relativism, the practice has attracted strident interlocutors, some with compassionate merits, but most with indefensible positions relying on faith, speculation and deliberate unwillingness to look at the history and facts of the conflicts to inform the design of the best framework and process for termination and a just peace.

Proponents of Mato Oput

Advocates and promoters of mato oput can be loosely divided into four subgroups with their international barnacles. The first group are a section of Acholi elite imbued with imposed self-doubt and collective guilt, who have internalised Museveni and NRM/A propaganda of Acholi collective complicity in Uganda’s historical socio-political pathology, perceiving their current predicaments as some just divine retributions for past evil deeds of their forebears or kith and kin. For them, mato oput is just penitence.

The second group of Acholi who embrace mato oput and support its use in northern Uganda over post-Nuremberg international humanitarian and human rights norms and special war crimes tribunal practices, are those who see its adoption as a matter of cultural pride and international recognition for an otherwise obscure and nationally marginalised minority group. While the sentiments of this group flow from a needed cultural self-assertiveness and objective displeasures with self-serving West European realist and racist international moral order and political domination, its parochial emotional impetus isolates them from the preponderant imperatives for efficacious justice and deterrent opprobrium for which tested and predictable international humanitarian and human rights laws are axiomatic.

The third and fourth groups are the belligerents in the northern Uganda conflict theatre- Joseph Kony and the LRM/A, and Yoweri Museveni and the NRM/A. These indicted and implicated war criminals are amenable to mato oput because it offers both parties a cloak of impunity that seeks to shield them from international scrutiny and accountability for their respective roles in the northern Uganda genocide. For the LRM/A, there is nothing they want out of the war termination model of settlements more than reintegration into normal society as free men and women without any formal trial, possible conviction, imprisonment and stigmatisation as murderers, rapists and perpetrators of genocide.

For Museveni and the NRM/A, it suits them well for mato oput to give credence to their propaganda that the northern insurgency was nothing more than an internal Acholi brigandage by remnants of a former criminal state army dislodged from power, who resumed a life of violent robbery and murder among their own people, who in turn rejected them. According to Museveni and the NRM/A, insurgencies in Acholi were rebel retributions on the Acholi for their rejection by the population. Therefore, mato oput is the best way to reconcile these criminals with their own kith and kin whom they have victimised over the years. In other words, the NRM/A or the Ugandan state had no role in the destructive consequences of the war; the rationality being that the LRM/A was not fighting the Ugandan state or that the Ugandan state was not contested. Therefore, the state has no actions and behaviour to account for, and there is no role for international justice institutions for what has gone on in northern Uganda, because the LRM/A criminal activities can be competently handled by municipal laws, and also by the Acholi traditional jurisprudence of mato oput. However, international justice in the form of the ICC, is conveniently welcome to complement mato oput, as long as its focus is limited to non-state parties and the LRA.

The main purpose of such arguments is to deflect international focus away from the state’s own counter-insurgency strategies and tactics under the principles of jus in bello, and shield as well as absolve state elements from culpability and any role by action and behaviour of their troops and officials, in the perpetration of the northern Uganda genocide. But the history of this war tells a different story; a narrative that mato oput as a model is ill-equipped to grapple with.

Accordingly, stumbling blocks to a just peace and preventing future conflicts in Uganda stem from the following actions:

Adoption of mato oput as an exclusive or major plank for concluding peace and resolving the northern Uganda conflict;

1. 
   

2. Rejection of the ICC indictments of the LRA, and reluctance and refusal by the ICC to expand its investigations to cover all parties to the conflict; indict, try and punish both state and non-state parties convicted of their roles in war crimes and crimes against humanity in the northern Uganda genocide;

3. Scare-mongering that the ICC indictments are impeding resolution of the conflict and peace for northern Uganda; and speculations that the LRA will resume offensive stance should the Juba Peace talks fail.

There is no doubt that both the LRA and the Uganda government are afraid of the ICC indictments and the possibility of expanding its investigations to cover all belligerents in the northern Uganda conflict. An expanded ICC investigation would mean bringing the behaviour and actions of the UPDF and state officials under international scrutiny, expert examination of evidence and possible trial and cross examination of witnesses. This would not be welcome development by the regime in Kampala. Therefore, rather than acting as a setback, the ICC indictments of the LRA and necessary investigation of Museveni and elements of the UPDF are a boon to the prospects for peace in northern Uganda. What may drive the LRA back into their trenches is not the ICC indictments, but their politicised, partial and selective applications that have cut holes through the net of international justice large enough for Museveni and his henchmen to wiggle through. Were there possibility of the ICC considering dragooning both Joseph Kony and Yoweri Museveni to the docks at the ICC, everyone around the table at the Juba peace talks would be at their best behaviour.

In any case, the fears of a return to war by either party, particularly the LRA, are based on fanciful talks and speculations, rather than on any hard evidence of war preparations and credible intent. Nonetheless, were the subjects of these speculations even likely, the best means to dissuade a return to hot conflict is not through mato oput, but through international and national support for the ICC indictments of the LRA and the expansion of its investigations to include Museveni and his generals and let the evidence rather than political decisions, implicate and convict or inculpate them in the erection of the architecture and perpetration of genocide in northern Uganda. Failing that, an international tribunal for northern Uganda would be the best hope for a just peace.

 

Okello Lucima is a poliitcal analyst. Read more of his writings at northernugandablogspot.com.

1 For further readings on war termination, see Pillar, Paul R. (1988) Negotiating Peace: War Termination as a Bargaining Process. Princeton: Princeton University Press; Taylor, A.J.P. (1985) How Wars End. London. H. Hamilton; Walter, B.F. ((2002) Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; Licklider, R. ed., (1993) Stopping the Killing: How Civil Wars End. New York: New York University Press; Zartman, I.W. (1995) Elusive Peace: Negotiating an End to Civil Wars. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press; Doyle M.W., and Sambanis, N. (1995) International Peace building: a theoretical and quantitative analysis. American Political Science Review, 94(4), pp. 779-801; and Licklider, R. (1995) The Consequences of negotiated settlements in civil wars, 1945-1993. American Political Science Review, 89 (3).

< Prev