Violence taking toll on education in northeast

Armed clashes in the Karamoja region of northeastern Uganda have affected primary education, creating one of the lowest school completion rates in the country, a senior official said.

"Only 12 to 14 percent of girls who join primary school complete their education while only 19 percent of boys complete," Aston Kajara, minister in charge of Karamoja, said on Wednesday. "This is because of violence."

A recent programme by the army to disarm communities in the region recovered 4,500 guns in cordon-and-search operations between January and October. Of these, 3,267 were recovered in the past six months along with thousands of animals, including cattle and goats, looted by Karamojong warriors.

Speaking at a news conference, the state minister for defence, Ruth Nankabirwa, said the government was concerned that unrest in the region, traditionally over cattle rustling, had taken on a new dimension, posing a military threat.

"The situation is no longer cultural cattle rustling as it used to be," she said in the Ugandan capital of Kampala.

Nankabirwa said military casualty figures across the region in recent weeks were higher than those it had suffered elsewhere, including in battles with the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army in the north.

"[In the past, it took us a long time] to lose that high a number of soldiers even with the LRA," she added.

She said warriors in the northeastern Karamoja region, which has long been the scene of interclan violence fuelled by a high proliferation of arms, were currently operating under organised formations when attacking the army.

"The enemy has changed tactics," she said. "They operate under strict command and control, and everything is organised when they kill our soldiers."

Nankabirwa was referring to the killing in October of 16 government soldiers, including a senior army officer. However, she declined to say whether the government considered the unrest - heightened by the army operation to rid the region of illegal firearms - a war.

Karamoja is the least-developed region in Uganda, with a history of hostility towards authority because of the people's way of life and the importance they attach to cattle ownership. They believe that all cattle in the world were stolen from Karamoja and are always fighting to reclaim them.

Nankabirwa downplayed allegations that the army was involved in human rights abuses in the region, saying an investigation into excesses by the military was an "on-going process", and that those found guilty are dealt with.

The army has, for some time, carried out a cordon-and-search operation aimed at forcefully disarming pastoralist Karamojong warriors. However, many have managed to rearm, buying weapons from arms traffickers from Somalia and Sudan.

The Karamojongs have accused the government of taking away their guns, leaving them defenceless against armed neighbouring ethnic communities froms Kenya and Sudan who sporadically raid their kraals and steal their cattle.

They also accused the army of torture and rape; accusations Nankabirwa said were excuses against the operations. However, she admitted that an investigation had revealed cases of rape that had been handed over to the police for prosecution.

See related story:
UGANDA: Changing attitudes to education in Karamoja

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