Relative northern quiet disturbed by Kitgum attack

Calm has returned to Lamwo County of Kitgum District, northern Uganda, following an isolated weekend attack on a market area by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), in which up to four people were killed, according to a government source in northern Uganda. About 300 LRA rebels on Saturday attacked a local defence unit detachment in the Agoro Market area of Lamwo County, the government-owned New Vision newspaper reported on Monday. Walter Ochora Odoch, council chairman of the neighbouring district of Gulu, who was in the Agoro Market area at the time, told IRIN on Monday that the rebels had raided the area for food, due to hunger in LRA camps as a result of the Sudanese government's withdrawal of support for the rebel group. Four people, two civilians and two soldiers were killed in the incident but Ugandan army reinforcements in the border district had been quick to repulse the attack, according to Odoch. "The border has really been reinforced, that is why the attack did not last," he said. Major Shaban Bantariza, the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) information and public relations director, said the army was pursuing the rebels, The New Vision reported. "We are pursuing them. We cannot just allow them to come and kill our people. LRA is a terrorist organisation which must not be allowed any room in the country," the paper quoted him as saying. The US in December included the LRA - as well as the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) operating in western and southwestern Uganda - on its "Terrorist Exclusion List" under the US Patriot Act. Led by Joseph Kony, the LRA has been fighting a guerrilla-style war ostensibly against Ugandan government forces but mostly against the civilian population of northern Uganda since the late 1980s. Operating from bases in southern Sudan and supported until recently by Sudan, it has waged a campaign of terror - brutalising, killing, and looting, destroying homes, and abducting people, particularly children, to act as fighters, sex slaves and porters for looted goods. However, it has become increasingly isolated in recent months, following the improvement of Ugandan-Sudanese diplomatic relations, as well as the Sudanese government's announcement last year that it had ended its support for the rebel group. Odoch said there had been no insurgency activity in the northern Kitgum and Gulu districts for some time, due to increased army reinforcement along the common border between Uganda and Sudan, and to improved relations between the two countries. "You can move in any part of Gulu now. Displaced people are returning to their homes, and we are now receiving tourists," he said. He told IRIN that he could not confirm reports by The New Vision to the effect that Sudanese government military aircraft had last week attacked LRA camps near Juba city in southern Sudan. "We don't know yet whether the Sudanese government was bombing LRA or SPLA [the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army] targets," Odoch said. According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), a total of 323 LRA abductees who escaped in southern Sudan during 2000-2001 have become part of a programme of repatriation to Uganda, under the auspices of UNICEF, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the governments of Uganda and Sudan. The latest group of seven former LRA combatants, including a former commander, who on 31 January voluntarily returned to Uganda under the terms of an amnesty offered by the Ugandan government, has estimated the number of people still in the LRA camps in Sudan at about 3,000, of whom only 300 are fighters, according to Odoch. "The majority of the people in the camps are children abducted from northern Uganda, whom Kony now calls his troops," he said. Former LRA Colonel Abdullah Sururu, reportedly the former head of the Obagatech LRA camp in southern Sudan, said he had joined the LRA in 1996 and turned himself in to the Ugandan embassy in Khartoum in December 2001, along with six other former LRA combatants, under the terms of the amnesty, which came into force in December 1999 and covers "political crimes" committed from 26 January 1996 until the present day. The group was currently in a rehabilitation centre run by a nongovernmental organisation in Gulu, according to Odoch. The improving Ugandan-Sudan relations and the return from Sudan of children and adults abducted by the LRA are being facilitated by a series of agreements between two governments, in particular the 1999 Nairobi peace agreement, which was brokered by the US-based Carter Center.