When NRA launched Operation North

On April 1, 1991, Operation North, the first major military operation aimed at neutralising the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) under Joseph Kony, was launched. 

According to the paper, ‘Protracted conflict, elusive peace - Initiatives to end the violence in northern Uganda’, which was authored in 2002 by several writers, including journalists who had been active in the theatre of the insurgency for Conciliation Resources in collaboration with Kacoke Madit, the LRA had emerged out of the ashes of Alice Lakwena’s Holy Spirit Movement and remnants of the Uganda People’s Democratic Movement/Army (UPDM/A).

After registering a number of initial victories against the National Resistance Army (NRA) in Acholi sub-region, the HSM moved south. 

Writing in the book Understanding Alice: Uganda’s Holy Spirit Movement in Context, Mr Tim Allen says Alice Lakwena left Acholi land in July 1987 with an estimated force of 6,000 men, promising that the River Nile would part at Jinja as her force advanced towards Kampala where she was sure to topple President Museveni’ government. 

The self-styled priestess and her forces moved through Teso, Bugwere and Bunyole sub-regions before entering Tororo District where her forces had a major battle with the NRA in Iyolwa Sub-county. 

Her forces then moved through Busitema and entered Busoga where she met her Waterloo in the third week of October 1987. She, along with 118 of her fighters, fled into neighbouring Kenya where they were arrested on December 26, 1987, and charged with illegal entry. 

UPDM and its armed wing the Uganda People Democratic Army (UPDA) had been formed a few months before HSM was formed. 

The force was mainly made up of former soldiers of the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA), but it had in June 1988 concluded a peace agreement with the government. 

Despite Lakwena’s defeat, remnants of her forces continued operating in parts of northern Uganda. 

Those were joined by factions of the UPDM/A which did not subscribe to the provisions of the peace agreement that had been reached with the government. The two groups eventually morphed into the LRA.
 
The operation
Maj Gen David Tinyefuza, now Sejusa, then the minister of State for Defence, was deployed to take charge of the operation in April 1991.

There are conflicting accounts around the extent of the area that was placed under a security lockdown to allow for a hunt for the rebels and their collaborators. 

Whereas some reports indicate that it was only the districts of Gulu, Kitgum, Apac and Lira that were locked down, others indicate that the entire northern Uganda, to the border with South Sudan, was locked down.

The search and destroy operations were, however, soon marred by reports of brutality and arrest of unarmed and innocent civilians, including some high-profile politicians who were picked up from different locations in Kitgum, Gulu and Kampala on different days, but all within one month of the commencement of the operation.

Minister arrested
Among those who were arrested was Gen Tinyefuza’s Cabinet colleague, Daniel Omara Atubo, a Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) politician who had been named State minister for Foreign Affairs in the NRM’s broad-based government.

After their arrest, the 18 were held without charge or trial in military barracks in Gulu and Lira before being transferred to Kampala where they were on May 7, 1991, arraigned before the Chief Magistrates Court and charged with treason. They were sent on remand in Luzira Upper Prison.

However, the High Court ruled on August 12, 1991, that the treason charge was defective. The case was never fully concluded though.

Brutality
The operation against LRA was, however, soon marred by accusations of high handedness and brutality on the part of the NRA soldiers.

Minister Atubo and the other politicians who were arrested as part of the operation soon accused Gen Tinyefuza of having ordered soldiers to cane them as he took a mug of porridge inside Lira army barracks. 

They also claimed that soldiers had forced them to do rigorous physical exercises and menial jobs.

Other violations
It, however, soon emerged that the NRA had committed other serious human rights violations during the course of the operation.

In September 1992, the London-based global human rights watchdog, Amnesty International, released a report in which it alleged torture and unlawful arrests by the NRA and failure by the government to safeguard human rights during the “cordon-and-search” operations that had been “personally supervised” by Gen Tinyefuza.

Writing for the International Herald Tribune on October 9, 1992, Ms Mary Anne Fitzgerald reported that there had been “further unsubstantiated                                                                 allegations of mistreatment at the hands of government forces from lawyers based in Gulu, the seat of a rebel insurgency”. 

“At Palengo, 19 kilometres south of Gulu, three suspected rebels were arrested by soldiers and buried from the neck down in holes they had been forced to dig themselves. All three died. Another three men were allegedly tortured to death while in custody, according to the lawyers,” she wrote.

Ruzindana defends
Government took exception to the Amnesty International report. Mr Augustine Ruzindana, who was then Inspector General of Government (IGG) was one of those that defended the government against accusations of brutality and gross rights violations.

“It’s in a way grossly unfair...It gives the impression the human rights condition is very bad and deteriorating, which is not true,” Mr Ruzindana said during an interview with the International Herald Tribune in October 1992.

Mr Ruzindana said he had had a three hour interview in the offices of Amnesty International in London on June 26, 1992, but that never did his hosts make mention of any pending report or consult any other government official about it.

Impact
It has never been established whether it was because of the bad press that was precipitated by his handling of Operation North, but the man who had earned himself the nickname the “Schwarzkopf of the North” in reference to the man who commanded the United States-led coalition forces that battled Saddam Hussein’s forces during the 1991 Gulf war was soon removed from his position of command in the north and Cabinet. 

He was named defence advisor to the President.

Whether the tactics employed were effective remains the subject of debate, but some defence analysts have since suggested that the search and destroy operations coupled with the setting up of local militia known as the Rhino militia in Lango, Arrow Boys in Teso and Elephant Brigade in Acholi sub-regions  had greatly succeeded in weakening the LRA.

The army reported in May 1991, one month after the operation had been launched, that up to 3,000 rebels had been taken out of action in Kitgum alone.

Could the army’s decision to end the infamous operation have inadvertently prolonged the insurgency?