"...the ability to foresee the future...."
Few people outside Uganda know that in the north the government is fighting a fanatical and murderous cult - the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) - whose fighting force is made up in large part of abducted children.
Up to 95 percent of the population in these areas have been forced from their homes by the war. Nearly two million Ugandans out of a population of 24.7 million now live in refugee camps for fear of being attacked and killed in their villages.
Children have told how they were forced by rebels at gunpoint to abduct and murder other children. A former commander of the rebel group told how he forced villagers to chop up, cook and eat their neighbours before he killed them too.
The LRA is led by a self-proclaimed prophet, Joseph Kony, who says he wants Uganda to live by the laws of the Ten Commandments. He and most of his fighters are from northern Uganda's Acholi tribe, as are most of their victims.
Kony says he is guided by spirits who tell him what to do and who to kill. The UN says he may have abducted more than 20 000 children, 90 percent of the LRA's fighters
[...]
Why has the rebellion gone on so long? Many Acholi believe that President Yoweri Museveni underestimated the rebels. Others claim he is not unhappy to have a continuing low-level insurgency, because it keeps the Acholi occupied, hence they are not able to meddle in politics.
The conflict is also tied to the crisis in Darfur, Sudan. Khartoum has supported the LRA for its own reasons as Uganda has, for years, been backing rebels in southern Sudan.
Tim Judah/Independent(Africa)Online 24.Oct.04
