Amid peace talks, Uganda's war-displaced reluctant to return By Henry Wasswa

dpa German Press Agency
Published: Saturday September 30, 2006

By Henry Wasswa, Otaka, Uganda- In the shades of a mango tree, several men are lazily focusing on a board game, using bottle caps as pieces and a broken chair seat as the board. Several meters away a woman is pounding grains in a wooden mortar, flanked by raggedly dressed children.

Under the hot East African sun, the Otaka settlement in north Uganda seems like any other typical African village, but despite appearances, this place was intended as a temporary shelter for the Ugandan war-displaced - one of 200 encampments that harbour nearly 2 million people displaced by a 20-year rebel insurgency.

But with peace talks ongoing between the Ugandan government and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels that led the uprising, the government and aid agencies are seeing hundreds of thousands of war- displaced who just don't want to go home.

"We have lived in the camps for long," George Odongo, who has lived in Otaka since 2002, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

"You cannot just take people from where they have been for 20 years. I have made friends. I yearn to go back to school but which school is there in those bushes? I do not even know where my home is," he said.

The Ugandan government is currently decongesting the huge camps and setting up smaller ones closer to the abandoned villages until the army feels it is safe to move the displaced to their homes, but officials acknowledge that there is a silent resistance to the resettlement programme among the displaced.

"The reason is that there is some infrastructure in the camps, schools, health and water services which are not in the villages," a military official based in the region said.

"People are not moving as we had expected. They are now finding life easier in the camps after staying there a long time," said the army officer, who did not want to be named.

The LRA insurgency led by internationally wanted rebel Joseph Kony has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced nearly 2 million. Kony and his guerilla soldiers are known for badly mutilating their abducted victims, sawing off limbs, noses and lips in their brutal campaign.

As the rebellion continued, more and more Ugandans left their villages for the rough, bushy terrain of the north and then settled in camps.

The government and the rebels are engaged in peace talks, which are said to restabilize the region, despite threats by both sides this week to abandon the negotiations taking place in south Sudan.

In August, the Ugandan government launched a 346 million dollar post-war reconstruction programme for the war-ravaged region, which involves resettling the displaced.

But during the insurgency, the camps became home, as aid agencies and the government cared for basic needs there.

Relief workers have also got themselves into a predicament. After years of providing for the war-displaced, they now fear they have become dependent on that aid.

"We have found that just a few people want to return home. It will be difficult to take people from the camps. It is a major dilemma we are faced with," said Gaylord Thomas of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, which provides aid to the camp dwellers.

He said refugee camps in other African countries have faced similar problems, remaining open for years, even after some security has been restored outside.

And while life in the camps is no luxury, residents here fear the unknown of returning to the remains of their abandoned villages.

"Life in the camps is not good for me and my children but I do not know what life will be in my village. I doubt it will be any better," 60-year-old Christopher Okot said.

"We don't know what is out there."

© 2006 dpa German Press Agency