Peace or Justice?

The unsung churches of Northern Uganda have played a crucial role in what could be the best chance of peace after the 20-year war in this devastated land.

A cessation of hostilities agreement was signed in Juba by Ruhakana Rugunda, Ugandan Minister of Internal Affairs and leader of the Kampala delegation, and Martin Ojul, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) delegation.on 26 August. It was witnessed by Riek Machar, Vice-President of the government of southern Sudan and the mediator of the talks.

Vincent Otti, LRA deputy leader, the same day went on MEGA FM, the DfID-funded radio station based in Gulu, to tell his fighters to observe the ceasefire and head for the assembly points in southern Sudan. There are said to be just 500 fighters left in the Congo, and other small raiding bands still operational outside the Acholi towns.

While the international media adopt the mantras of secular peace discourse, the true enormity of the forgiveness and reconciliation being brokered by the churches - which have been offered as initial assembly points - has been played down. The churches are effectively the only public buildings or shelters there are.

Yet it has been a twin approach to ending the hell of this war that has made it possible - with huge potential lessons for other African conflicts.

Religious leaders have held out controversially but doggedly for conciliation, bolstered by unique international church networks. They have consistently opposed the threat of prosecution for crimes against humanity against Joseph Kony and four of his top brass - though there can be little doubt this threat was necessary.

When Reik Machar, Southern Sudan's Vice President, met Kony at Garamba National Park on 2 August on the border between Sudan and Congo, a significant contingent of Anglican and Catholic churchmen went with him, from both Sudan and Uganda.

Bishop Nelson Onono-Onweng of the Anglican Diocese of Northern Uganda based in Gulu, allowed himself to be photographed with Kony shaking hands. Incredibly, he told him the divine spark was as much visible in his face, as any other - helping re-humanise and diminish Kony whose demonic stature has caused almost universal social paralysis.

As reported by Diocesan Information Officer, Revd Willy Akena, Onweng quoted from the Bible story of Esau and his brother Jacob and told Kony: "For to see your face is like seeing the face of God".

The report continued: 'It was on the basis of this that the team went to meet Kony. [We] appreciated the fact that Kony is a human being like us. Kony himself said he is not a wizard who talks to spirit. "Now that you have come and seen for yourself that I am not a monster with a tail and huge eyes, you have confirmed that I am a human being. Go back and tell the people of northern Uganda that I want peace".

There can be no doubt that Kony has used sorcery to increase the terror with which he both controlled his forces, and augmented his fiersome reputation. Tales of cannibalistic rituals and other forms of psychic force have resulted in the virtual incarceration of 1.7million people in squalid camps, and impoverished the region. It is this dimension that has gone inadequately reported with churches trying to teach courage and the superior spiritual might of Jesus in the face of secular scepticism among aid workers and diplomats.

Peace in Southern Sudan has also meant that the new leadership there - which is also largely Christian - has been able to take its own decisive steps to create the conditions for peace. Malign interference by the Khartoum Regime which harboured Kony, enabling him to regroup after incursions into Uganda, has effectively ceased.

At the same time, ARLPI have insisted on using traditional and specifically Christian processes to build the conditions for peace:

• On 2 June, ARLPI representatives urged Interpol to suspend its arrest warrant, until peace had been given a chance. This followed two visits to the Hague last year, to seek to stall the ICC process. The Treaty of Rome allows for sovereign governments to rescind the process if they can mete out justice themselves.
• Offering the traditional ritual of penance and reconciliation called mato oput - drinking the bitter herb and 'bending the spears' - believed to be unique in Africa as adequate to meet the relevant requirement in the ICC mandate
• Organizing an unprecedented day-long face-to-face meeting with President Museveni in 2004 at his ranch to create trust
• Camping out with the 'night-commuters' - displaced children - to sustain morale
• Building trust between the Acholi - who are widely feared as the colonial warrior caste - and other parts of Uganda by bussing all the Anglican bishops up to spend several nights in the dreadful IDP camps.

Bishop Ochola Macleord Baker, the first Bishop of Kitgum has, despite the traumatic loss of his wife to an LRA landmine, done most to secure international credibility for a traditional form of peace-building, and has won two peace awards.

He said on the BBC's World Tonight on Tuesday (29 September): 'We have to get them to face up to their actions, to repent. Unless they do, it could start all over again.'

He fears a war-crimes tribunal will simply cut off the heads of the monster Kony created, without disabling its raison d'etre. Ominously Alice Lakwena, Kony's cousin and predecessor, has requested permission to return to the North from exile in Kenya.

Recent media coverage of the truce has expressed bewilderment at what journalists are describing as 'peace without justice'. This betrays a lack of understanding of the psychology of revenge. 'Homicide, in Acholi cultural belief . . . asks for revenge and, as a consequence, it provokes fear', says Fr Carlos Rodriguez, a Comboni Father who has been a key figure in internationalizing the peace process. Unilaterally prosecuting the LRA along western lines will not neutralize the inevitable backlash - especially since Museveni's forces, whose crimes are well-documented, appear to be immune from the ICC's sanctions.

It is the spiritual dimension to African conflict and its historic antecedents that have bedevilled the Ugandan war. Fear of Kony's brutality is compounded by fear of the marauding spirits let loose by unforgiven or unavenged wickedness. Military solutions including the disastrous US-backed Operation Iron First in 2002 have ridden roughshod over the facts of cultural life.

Yet, as fighters move to the assembly areas in southern Sudan, and money starts to pour in to rebuild the region, the stretched and traumatized churches of Northern Uganda will be hard put to find the spiritual resources necessary to reunite families with the killers - their own abducted children.

No one knows how many of the 25,000 who were abducted will return, or how may have died or were killed, never to be seen again. Trauma centres are preparing to receive back up to 1,500 women and children presently in the bush.

The 400 and more churches in Britain which generously supported Church Mission Society's Break the Silence Campaign in 2003/4 must be prepared to pray hard if the peace is to deliver justice too.