Government rejects accusations over northern war

The Ugandan government has rejected a report by an international organisation accusing it of failure to fulfil its responsibilities to defend people in war-ravished northern Uganda, saying the report was "completely unfair". The report by the aid organisation, Christian Aid, condemned what it described as a shirking of the government's responsibilities to protect the people of the north "borne out of a lack of will". It accused the government of herding civilians into camps ostensibly to protect them from the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels without offering those living in camps the protection they need. The LRA has for 18 years carried out a terror campaign in the north, frequently attacking villages and trading centres, murdering or torturing civilians and abducting scores of children for forcible recruitment as soldiers, porters or sex slaves. "Government ordered the population into camps in 1996. This imposes a duty on government to defend the camps so that the interned civilians can speedily resume a normal life. The government has failed to fulfil these international responsibilities," the report said. The report cited Labuje camp near the town of Kitgum. Christian Aid officials claim that they visited the camp one night and there were no Ugandan army soldiers anywhere in sight. Speaking to IRIN in a telephone interview, the spokesman for the Ministry of Defence Maj Shaban Bantariza, said: "There have been virtually no abductions near Kitgum for a while. How do you think this is possible without army protection? [Vincent] Otti [LRA vice chief] is under orders to abduct as many children as possible. If a camp is not protected, he would do this." He added: "These are military operations and of course the soldiers are not always visible. But there is no camp without soldiers." The report also said that the government's Operation Iron Fist - a military crackdown on LRA bases in southern Sudan - had been "a catastrophe for the people of northern Uganda" and that the war in the north was being sustained by army officers who make money out of opaque accounting procedures in the payment of soldiers' salaries. It referred to the "ghost soldiers" scandal, in which thousands of dollars were misappropriated for salaries of nonexistent soldiers. Bantariza described the statement as "nonsense". "The army would be a lot richer and better off with no war. Every penny is being spent on fuel for vehicles, weapons because of this war," he said. The LRA killed more than 300 internally displaced people (IDPs) in February when they attacked a camp in Barlonyo, near Lira town. The army blamed the deaths on the laxity of local commanders who, it said, had allowed the IDPs to set up a camp in an area that was not well protected.