What to do about victims of Kony?

Former rebel Thomas Kwoyelo’s incarceration in spite of a court order that he be granted amnesty for alleged war crimes highlights the dilemma presented by the end of two decades of civil strife in northern Uganda.

Abducted as an innocent only to mature into a leader in the vicious rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, Kwoyelo is a victim of a conflict whose effects linger in Acholi sub-region. There are many like him who went from terrified victim to tormentor in what was Joseph Kony’s war of attrition. Their quandary is at the core of the subterranean debate about whether peace is possible without justice.

Six years after the guns fell silent, one view is that the retributive justice that the government seeks in trying Kwoyelo for murder, kidnap, and destruction of property as opposed to restorative justice cannot bring closure. Those here and abroad who clamour for the former form look to the notion that people must get what they deserve, while the counter view is that amnesty facilitates the taking of personal accountability by perpetrators who must then fulfill certain obligations within their communities as they try to somehow make things right.

Clouding issues is the vexed matter of who bears ultimate culpability: Is it the government which failed to protect the people, the officers who reportedly did not want the war to end because they were profiteering from the chaos, or the depraved rebel killers? There is also the untidiness brought on by victor’s justice.

The Army’s rebuttal has always been that any soldier who committed crimes was court martialled. Unfortunately, validation of this claim is impossible as independent verification has never been allowed. And yet the horror images of rape, torture, forced displacement, extra-judicial killings and conscription of under-age Acholi youth into the army, etc, are unvarnished.

Kwoyelo’s unlawful detention hangs on the speculative belief that he will rejoin rebellion if granted amnesty. Assuming it were true, does it justify the State’s willingness to flagrantly disregard due legal process?

Perpetrators of grievous crimes against humanity as happened in the north must be brought to book. But the context within which they were committed cannot be ignored. As efforts to ferret Kony out of the central African wilderness continue, the search for accountability must be tempered by a consideration of the whole, including resolving the reparations issue.