Conflict Trajectory in Northern Uganda

Abstract

This chapter is a historical and critical survey of the protracted conflict in northern Uganda. It explores the factors associated with the beginning and duration of the conflict. Some explanations of Ugandan conflicts offered by scholars such as Ofcansky (1996) suggest that the colonial system of divide and rule in Uganda left behind a deeply divided society with differential access to economic development, political power; and a legacy of ethnic stereotyping and manipulation. Omara-Otunnu (1987) points to a militarized culture that emerged in postindependence Uganda, whereby the military became a key instrument for securing political power and access to resources. To explain the aforementioned suppositions, this chapter offers a synoptic presentation of the trajectory of violence in Uganda beginning immediately after independence and continuing until the Lord’s Resistance Army’s (LRA) insurgency in northern Uganda in 1986. The chapter then provides a retrospective analysis of how the various historical factors mentioned in the synopsis developed into mutually reinforcing causal factors that explain the intractable nature of conflicts in Uganda in general and northern Uganda in particular.