The Wizard of the NileAlmost forgotten in the West is a ghastly war in northern Uganda in which thousands have been murdered, raped and enslaved.
In 2005 the International Criminal issued a warrant for the arrest of the head of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) leader, 46-year-old Joseph Kony. He is wanted for 12 counts of crimes against humanity, including murder, enslavement, sexual enslavement, rape, inhumane acts of inflicting serious bodily injury and suffering and 21 counts of war crimes, including murder, cruel treatment of civilians, intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population, pillaging, inducing rape and forced enlisting of children. He is one of the world’s most dangerous and ruthless men. Former Reuter reporter Matthew Green, now West Africa correspondent for the Financial Times, has published his account of the LRA insurgency and its enigmatic, charismatic leader in his book The Wizard of the Nile. Green’s description of the complex historical and political background is succinct and incisive. He traces the roots of this war to the north-south divide fostered under colonial rule and worsened by the cycles of post-Independence bloodshed. Kony was a convenient excuse to make it easier for Museveni’s supporters in the West to ignore his failure to deal with the conflict. For years, Ugandans have been told the rebels are about to be crushed for good, but since Museveni is a useful ally of the West, sandwiched between war and plunder zones, eastern Congo and oil-rich, Islamic Sudan, few questions were asked. The conflict is 22 years old now. But even though the US and Britain are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, 20 years had passed before the conflict was discussed in any detail. Blame must be laid, too, on the Ugandan government for forcibly confining almost two million people of the region in displacement camps “for their own protection” and to ensure they didn’t collaborate with the rebels. The result has been hundreds of camps of indescribable squalor and misery, the traumatisation of a huge population, and the transformation of a formerly fertile region into wasteland. For northern Ugandans the war continues until Kony is captured, killed or signs a peace agreement. Meanwhile, millions have suffered and thousands been killed, largely unreported by the international media. The book is more than a factual account or a political analysis; it is an odyssey in search of the arch-villain, to speak with him and shake his hand. To track down his quarry, the author gets on a bus from Kampala and travels 350 km north to Gulu, the base of Kony’s people, the Acholi. There he stays for some weeks, interviewing people associated with Kony, and his descriptions of the ambiance of the town are just right. He follows a lead to Juba, southern Sudan, but misses his man. Third time lucky, on the Sudan-Congo border, together with a select scattering of journalists, he finds his man. In an interview he asks why he originally began fighting. Kony answers that Museveni’s men had killed his family members and destroyed his and others’ property. After the interview he dashes back and shake the “great man’s” hand before being whisked away. What kind of person is Joseph Kony, a man who claims to want to overthrow the government, restore the culture of his people, and rule Uganda according to the Ten Commandments – all of which he and his men have broken thousands of times? In northern Uganda, immediately one gains even a little confidence with people, they will start talking about the character of Kony, and the insurgency, which has dominated their lives and led them in and out of displacement camps for over 20 years. Kony is a witchdoctor, who mixes his beliefs with what he learned as a child from a catechist. He is a psychopath, a schizophrenic, whose gentle face, sad eyes and shy smile disguise a man who can order brutal executions on the spot. Some think he is possessed. Deserters from his rebel army speak of atrocities which were used to bind them together and to their superiors in a kind of perverse loyalty. New recruits are forced to carry huge loads, walk long distances on an empty stomach, and not to complain or steal food on pain of death -- death at the hands of one of their own. It is kill or be killed. One escaped recruit told me they use machetes to kill, because gunshots would alert the enemy; it’s also cheaper. Boys and girls as young as 10 and 11 are abducted and initiated quickly into brutality, so they become inured to violence and dispassionate towards life. The callousness of those brutalized by a spell in the LRA ranks is one of the biggest sorrows of their parents’ generation, for whom life holds the greatest value. Where Green’s account comes unstuck is in almost overlooking the relations of the Acholi with the transcendent. To define Acholi beliefs, he relies almost exclusively on the explanation of the Acholi poet and anthropologist, the late Okot p’Bitek, who, despite his brilliance, saw everything in terms of spirits and diviners, and had little sympathy for the deep Christian beliefs and faith of the Acholi. He also makes little of the sexual immorality and alcoholism in the camps. On a recent visit to Gulu and Lira, towns worst affected by the insurgency, the people I spoke with made special mention of these. Despite Kony’s intention of “restoring” the traditional culture and values of the Acholi, he has, in effect, together with Museveni, his sworn enemy, damaged their moral fabric, indirectly, by simply bringing about conditions in which families of 12 people or more live in and do everything inside a tiny mud-floored, one-roomed thatched hut. He also fails to mention that the Christian clergy were forced to stay in the towns in the first years of the insurgency – for their protection, but, more likely, under suspicion of being collaborators with the rebels -- and removed from their mission stations, which were left for the catechists to administer. Nevertheless The Wizard of the Nile is an essential book for understanding this tragic and forgotten war. Green’s lively, suspenseful, almost chatty style, which gives a sense of immediacy, is an extra plus. It is the first of the serious books on Kony. Hopefully more will follow, to stir a few consciences, on the international scene, and closer to home. Martyn Drakard writes from Kampala, in Uganda.
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Comments (7)
charles nixon said...Canada | Sunday, 22 June 2008 at 8:06 am
Adebowale Oriku said...It's all very well that charles nixon narrows down the degree of separation between Idi Amin and Kony to a rather droll visceral link of rebirth.
For me Kony recalls Jim Jones of Jonestown. In a way they are similar: twisted theomania drives both.
Mad men (and women) would enlist anything to bolster their delusions, to justify or orchestrate their excesses - politics, race, power, sex, religion, even something as innocuous-seeming as family, witness Josef Fritzl.
-- | Monday, 23 June 2008 at 8:50 am
charles nixon said...Amin, Kony, Jones et al. : not all seriously disturbed people are in closed wards . . . Charles+
Canada | Wednesday, 25 June 2008 at 7:59 am
msafiri said...United Kingdom | Thursday, 26 June 2008 at 1:17 am
Adebowale Oriku said...Although most of Msafiri's comment is opaque, I think the two closing sentences above point to the fact the he does not disapprove of what Kony is doing. If that is what his statement implies, it's as good as seeing some sense in the the occultic superstitions of the Nazis. Many of the followers of Hitler saw - and the neonazis still see - in him the incarnation of sociopolitial Messiah. But does anyone need reminding that Hitler was a sociopathic little monster with a mad mission? Kony is a littler sociopath with just as mad mission. In spite of the fluidity of what a madman may consist in, I reconfirm that Kony falls in the sphere of the requisites.
And we should be very careful about patronizing a whole society as where the 'supernatural is the norm rather than an exception.' I am an African and I am pretty familiar with the place, we often do not need 'Western paradigms' to separate the so-called 'supernatural' from anomalies like Kony and his brutalities.
-- | Thursday, 26 June 2008 at 4:56 pm
diss_the_disingenuous said...Nigeria | Wednesday, 2 July 2008 at 11:55 pm
Adebowale Oriku said...There is a sophomore word called 'simile,' which would describe my reference to Nazism...
By the way thanks for the concise tutorial on the semantics of Swahili...
Even so, let us desist from using this otherwise respectable forum to bait one another in an immature, pointless way. Your last sentence betrays your preprogrammed and, I daresay gratuitous, grievance.
-- | Thursday, 3 July 2008 at 8:27 am
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