LRA walk out of meeting on eve of signing peace deal 

Sixteen years ago last week (February 22, 2008), a delegation of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) team stormed out of the meeting room in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, moments after they had just got a major concession from the government delegation.

The government had just signed on the dotted line, committing itself to give northern Uganda better representation in public offices and armed forces.

Next on the agenda was the signing of a landmark permanent ceasefire agreement, as part of a peace process that was launched in July 2006, but uncomfortable that they were being pushed so hard and so fast, the LRA team marched out.

The walkout was to protest the insistence by the chief mediator, Mr Joaquim Chissano, the former president of Mozambique, who was the United Nation’s envoy at the talks that the LRA commits to a date at which a final peace deal would be signed.

That final agreement that Mr Chissano was pushing for would have brought the curtain down on a conflict that had raged since 1988, when the LRA emerged out of the ashes of self-styled priestess, Alice Lakwena and her Holy Spirit Movement (HSM).

Lakwena and her fighters marched into Busoga sub-region on October 16, 1987, in what was meant to be the last leg of their march to kick the government of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) out of power, but that proved a fatal error in judgement.

A botched attack on Magamaga ordinance depot and several battles in the Busoga area left them badly beaten and in disarray. That marked the end of the HSM as a fighting force. 

Alice Lakwena fled into exile in Kenya. The LRA then emerged, saying it was fighting to establish a government based on the 10 Commandments.

LRA condition
The rebels insisted that such a date could only be set once the International Criminal Court (ICC), which aims to help end impunity for the most serious crimes of concern to the international community, granted their leader, Joseph Kony, immunity from prosecution.
“We will not sign anything unless the ICC indictments are dropped,” Mr David Matsanga-Nyekorach, the head of the rebel’s delegation, told the Juba meeting as the rebels stormed out.
The court had by then indicted the warlord, who was at the time believed to be holed up in a crude encampment near Garamba National Park in the Congo, along with two of his deputies for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Uganda since July 2002.

The charges
The court brought up 33 counts, 12 of crimes against humanity and 21 counts of war crimes against Kony.

Crimes against humanity included murder, enslavement, sexual enslavement, rape, inhumane acts of inflicting serious bodily injury and suffering. The 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.

There were 32 counts, 11 of crimes against humanity and 21 of war crimes brought up against Vincent Otti. They included murder, sexual enslavement, inhumane acts of inflicting serious bodily injury and suffering, inducing rape, intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population, forced enlisting of children, cruel treatment of civilians, and pillaging.

The other commanders – Okot Odhiambo, Dominic Ongwen and Raska Lukwiya – faced similar charges only that the counts were in their cases fewer than those brought up against Kony and Otti.

Warrants of arrest
That had been preceded by the issuance by the pre-trial chamber on October 13, 2005, of warrants of arrest for Kony, Otti, Lukwiya, Odhiambo and Ongwen. The warrants were the first to be issued by the ICC since its creation by the Rome Statute, which was adopted on July 17, 1998.

The chamber in justifying the issuance of the warrants of arrest argued that “there are reasonable grounds to believe” that the five “ordered the commission of crimes within the jurisdiction of the court”.

The warrants were issued to “ensure the safety or physical or psychological well-being of” and to “prevent the disclosure of the identity or whereabouts of any victims, potential witnesses and their families”.

The chamber requested for the arrest and surrender of the five and decided that the registrar of the ICC transmits the warrants to the Government of Uganda.

Rebels’ U-turn
The rebels, however, returned to the meeting room the following day and signed an agreement that extended the cessation of hostilities between themselves and the government forces.

It remains a mystery why they did, even when their biggest concern had not been addressed. Did government weaponise the ICC indictments?

The Guardian reported in the article ‘Uganda defies war crimes court over indictments’, which was published on March 12, 2008, that President Museveni’s decision that the LRA commanders would be subjected to traditional justice systems, which emphasise apologies and compensation over punishment as part of the deal to end the rebellion, had set him on a collision course with the ICC and the international community.

“What we have agreed with our people is that they should face traditional justice, which is more compensatory than a retributive system,” Mr Museveni was quoted to have said in an interview in the United Kingdom.

“That is what we have agreed at the request of the local community. They have been mainly tormenting people in one area, and it is that community which asked us to use traditional justice,” he was quoted to have added.

Mr Museveni’s stand was that his government had the right to get Kony off the ICC’s hook because it was at his government’s request that it had investigated him.

That position led sections of the international community into believing that Mr Museveni had used the ICC indictments as a bargaining tool to pressure Kony into a peace settlement. Was that what drove the LRA team back to the table? We may never find out.

Signing
The signing of the ceasefire agreement was presided over by the mediator and vice president of South Sudan, Mr Riek Machar, and witnessed by Mr Joaquim Chissano.

Dr Ruhakana Rugunda signed on behalf of the Government of Uganda while the LRA chief negotiator, Matsanga-Nyekorach, signed on behalf of the rebels

“This agreement is an important landmark and a turning point… This is a demonstration by both parties of their determination to work towards expeditious signing of the final peace agreement,” Mr Chris Magezi, who was the spokesperson of the government delegation, said.

“It is the laying down of arms. It is the end of the war,” Mr Chissano said after the parties signed the “permanent ceasefire” agreement, which was the fourth item on a five-point peace talks agenda.

Under the terms of the deal, Uganda would set up a special division of the High Court to hear cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity and also ask the UN Security Council for a resolution requesting the ICC to “defer all investigations and prosecutions against leaders of the Lord’s Resistance Army”.

“The parties hereby declare and shall observe a permanent ceasefire commencing 24 hours after the signing of the final peace agreement,” Mr Chissano said

The terms 
The LRA was under the terms of the agreement prohibited from making any further recruitments or rearmaments, or movement beyond an assembly area in South Sudan.

It created a 10km deep buffer zone around an LRA assembly area that would be guarded by the South Sudan army.

The next stage would be discussions on how the rebel force would be demobilised with a view of having its men integrated into the UPDF.

“This is another major step towards achieving peace in northern Uganda. The agreement means the LRA must disarm, demobilise and re-integrate into the national army,” Mr Magezi said moments after the truce had been signed.

The guns eventually went silent, but the integration into the national army never happened.