UGANDA: Disarmament exercise leads to clashes in Karamoja

NAIROBI, 21 May 2002 (IRIN) - The Ugandan army has said it is facing difficulties in persuading one of the five ethnic groups in the districts of Moroto and Kotido in the northeastern Karamoja subregion of Uganda to disarm. The Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) has been carrying out a disarmament programme in Karamoja since December. The Karamojong, a traditionally pastoralist group living in Kotido and Moroto, have been accused of raiding neighbouring districts, notably Katakwi, causing displacement and untold human suffering. Shaban Bantariza, UPDF Director of Public Relations and Information, told IRIN that the Jie, one of the five main Karamojong groups, was resisting efforts to disarm them and had instead dug trenches around their huts, from which they were shooting at soldiers. "All the other ethnic groups in Karamoja are cooperating. The problem is only the Jie," Bantariza said. "When we go there, they shoot at us from their manyattas [settlements], and we shoot back," he added. Bantariza was responding to recent claims of alleged harassment of civilians in the Karamoja region by the Ugandan army. Ugandan media reported on Friday that the Karamojong in Moroto had been demonstrating against soldiers, whom they accused of looting property, beating and molesting civilians and assaulting girls and women. The protests allegedly followed an operation by the UPDF on 13 May within Moroto municipality, the government-owned New Vision newspaper reported. Bantariza said the Ugandan army had, on Thursday 16 May, carried out a major sweep of Kotido, in which a number of military uniforms, rocket-propelled grenades, more than 30 rifles and several hundred rounds of ammunition were recovered. Two soldiers died in the operation, while up to 13 Karamojong were killed, he said. "We lost two soldiers in the operation. Isn't that a battle? Why do they want us to be nice and courteous in battle?" Bantariza asked. The UPDF launched a forcible disarmament operation in Karamoja after the expiry on 15 February of a month's grace period which followed an earlier government deadline for the Karamojong to surrender illegally held weapons. President Yoweri Museveni had offered an amnesty for those who surrendered their weapons during a visit to the area in December 2001. In exchange for the weapons, the government promised investment and development projects for the area, and to deploy security personnel in security zones (along the borders with neighbouring districts and neighbouring countries) to guarantee the protection of the Karamojong from invasion by other tribes. After last week's clashes with the Ugandan army at Panyangara sub-county in Kotido District, and the army's bombardment of the area, the Jie warriors had fled to Kenya, the New Vision reported on Monday. The Jie were believed to have entered Kenya through Koten, a grazing area in Uganda largely used by Turkana tribesmen from Kenya, of which some were suspected to have joined the Jie in clashes with the UPDF, it said. The army had bombed homesteads in Panyangara sub-county during the recent fighting, setting houses ablaze and destroying crops, the report added. So far, the Karamoja disarmament exercise has yielded about 9,800 firearms - about a quarter of the 40,000 expected, according to Bantariza. He said the Ugandan government had now banned the wearing by Karamojong men of khangas, or loincloths, which, he said, were being used to conceal firearms. "The men must wear trousers and shirts," he added. The government initially supplied weapons to small groups of "home guards" within the Karamoja subregion on the grounds that the Karamojong were under threat from cross-border raids by the Turkana and Pokot pastoralists from Kenya. Other arms were acquired from rogue elements in the Ugandan army, from the northwestern Kenyan district of Turkana and from southern Sudan, where the 19-year civil war has given rise to widespread access to, use of and trade in small arms, according to military sources. The nature of traditional cross-border cattle raiding between the Karamojong and other pastoral groups from Kenyan, Ugandan and Sudanese tribes has changed enormously in recent years due to the widespread availability of small arms in eastern Africa, according to humanitarian sources. In Katakwi District alone, at least 10,000 households (over 80,000 people) have been moved into "protected camps" in Katakwi District alone, with many internally displaced persons unable to meet their daily food and nutritional requirements, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported in October 2001. Ugandan Minister of State for Karamoja, Peter Lokeris, said on Sunday that Kenya was not a safe haven for either Jie Karamojong or other armed warriors who might flee there, since the Nairobi authorities had resolved in recent border security meetings that any armed warriors who crossed would be disarmed on arrival and their guns handed back to their mother country, according to the New Vision. Kenya and Uganda agreed on Sunday in the Ugandan town of Amudat [1.57 N 34.57 E] to strengthen peace efforts along their common frontier and to engage in a major crackdown on illegal arms, cattle rustling and the free movement of criminal elements between the countries, the Kenyan government owned Kenya Times reported on Tuesday. The meeting observed that illegal arms were the main cause of cattle rustling and banditry (especially in Moroto and Nakapiripirit in Uganda, and West Pokot in Kenya) along the countries' common border, the report added.