UPDF MARCHING

HELICOPTER SHOTS

This is, by any standards, an awful war. In the five years since I first came here I've seen - and filmed - some terrible sights...

ARCHIVE

ACTUALITY: 

He's still alive,  still alive...  Still alive

These dead and injured women and children were members of Joseph Kony's Lords Resistance Army who died in a battle with Ugandan government forces.

Over the last 20 years the LRA has abducted thousands of children and forced them to terrorise their own communities with acts of unspeakable brutality.  Government forces too, stand accused of acts of indiscriminate violence and abuse.

But one of the most disturbing things about this war has been the attitude of the rest of the world.  It seemed that as long as the LRA were stealing children rather than oil or minerals, no-one anywhere else appeared to care.

For now though, the guns are mostly silent and there is hope the war may end.

But there is a problem

PTC

PTC: By a terrible irony the on-off peace negotiations have been deeply complicated by the actions of the international body whose very purpose is to bring international war criminals like Joseph Kony to justice:  The international Criminal Court.

CM DRIVING SHOTS

KAMPALA TOP SHOTS

FRANK NYAKAIRU SET-UP

I've come back to Uganda to try and understand this fragile peace process - and the hidden dangers of the West's new interest in this war.

Kampala based writer, Frank Nyakairo, is a close observer of the politics of this war

FRANK NYAKAIRU SYNC

FRANK NYAKAIRU SYNC:  I think right now we have a lull in fighting.  But there is fear at the same time - that Joseph Kony, right now,  has about six bases in North Eastern Congo near the Sudan border - can spring back and fight so there is that fear - because the rebels are still out there.

LRA TRAINING PICS

AMBUSH PICS

MORE PICS INCLUDING KID WITH GUN

PICS ON TAPE...

COMM: These photographs - taken by the LRA - show them living and training in the bush - and during their operations against the civilians of the north.

But where once they just terrorised the people of the north,  now they are seen as a threat to the interests of this whole African region - and the interests of the west.

GRAPHIC INSERT

MAP OF SUDAN SHOWING OIL FIELDS

MIX TO PHOTOGRAPH OF AL BASHIR

And the key to understanding that is Sudan and its oil.

Because during the civil war between north and south Sudan, Sudanese president Omar al Bashir (SP) in Khartoum, backed the LRA in exchange for their support in his war on the South

FRANK NYAKAIRU SYNC

FRANK NYAKAIRU:  When the Southern Sudan government signed an agreement with the North in May 2005 there was a deliberate effort to try and remove most the other elements that would destabilise Southern Sudan which is very key to the west in terms of its oil interests in the Sudan.

FRANK NYAKAIRU SYNC

Q:  But that's desperately cynical.  For twenty years, nearly, Joseph Kony has been kidnapping children by the thousand and its not until the area has become strategic, because of the question of oil, because of the question of Southern Sudan - that is why the west is interested?

A: Absolutely, absolutely.  Why are they picking up interest now?  Because the LRA is beginning to be an international threat - a regional threat to the interests of the west. 

DRIVING SHOTS

CUT TO GRAPHIC INSERT

MAP SHOWING ANIMATED ROUTE BETWEEN KAMPALA AND GULU

CUT TO LIGHTNING

It's a 360 km journey from Kampala to Gulu,  in the homeland of the Acholi people - and the area which been a war-zone for over twenty years. 

PTC IN CAR

PTC: We've just crossed over the White Nile and entered the lands that until relatively recently lived in terror of the LRA.  As if symbolically the clouds have opened.  Four years ago I would have been very very frightened to be on this road at this time of night.  But today its safe, for the time being. The lRA are a long way away to the north west and life here is beginning to reutn to some kind of normality.

GULU TOP SHOTS

KIDS PLAYING

These days Gulu has the feeling of a town emerging at last from a protracted nightmare.

BITEK ACTUALITY

So hello Bitek.. its good to see you...

BITEK ACTUALITY

Bitek Oketch was born here, and is now raising his own family.  He's is a local journalist who has become a friend - and helped guide me through this war.

BITEK SYNC

BITEK :  So Bitek since I last saw you. You've had a baby...

A:  Yeah, yeah, I have a baby girl. She was born into the relative peace.  I don't think she has heard gunshots or something like that. 

Q:  So you must hope that she will never hear gunshot. 

A: I very much pray that she lives in total peace. We have seen enough of what war brings..

KIDS PLAYING

Bitek warned that local people weren't taking the peace for granted.

BITEK SYNC

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BITEK: They fear that war can easily resume at any time.  They see the current peace talk as if it is something fragile if it is not handled well it may break

Joseph Kony was supposed to sign the peace agreement in April.  He did not.

ODEK IPD CAMP GVS

And as long as that peace remains in the balance hundreds of thousands of people will remain displaced from their homes.

PTC

PTC:  Huge internally displaced people's camps like this one provided the desperate security of numbers.  But they were dangerous, demoralising, disease ridden and subject to attack. 

But today some people are beginning to return to their villages, though others remain, out of fear that Kony may yet come back.

CHILDREN ON ROAD

FLORENCE ARCHIVE

As well as creating the camps, this war forced thousands of children make a desperate nightly pilgrimage into Gulu where they would sleep on the streets to escape rebel attacks on their villages.

I met one of them  - a girl called Florence Okonyo - five years ago.  She said then her father had been killed by the LRA.

FLORENCE SYNC

When I asked my mum how have they killed my father, my mum don't want to tell me. She said that if she told me I am going to be crying every time.

FLORENCE IN HER VILLAGE

Today Florence is back in her village and living with her mum.

Five years ago she told me three of her cousins had been abducted, so had she had any news of them since?

FLORENCE SYNC

My cousins - two of them were boys then one was girl - and out of them they abducted them in the evening. 

Then one of our cousins - she came back and she told us that the brothers are all being stoned and they cut even their necks. Can you imagine.

Yet, she was even there and they told her that you will also stone these people and she did it also.

LRA STILLS

Forcing kidnapped children to stone or beat their own siblings to death is a classic LRA technique - a process that initiates them  - and prepares them to commit further acts of grotesque barbarity as soldiers of the LRA. 

But Florence is clear what should happen to these brutalised soldiers.

FLORENCE SYNC

FLORENCE:  Forgiveness is needed.  If somebody did bad to you and you respond in a negative way then the fighting will not end. It will just continue.. Forgiveness is needed.

VILLAGE AND IDP GVS

This notion of forgiveness is not something that Florence has snatched from nowhere.  It has its roots in traditional Acholi culture.

There are very few people in this area who have escaped the ravages of this war.  And retired Anglican Bishop, Macleod Baker Ochola is no exception.

BISHOP SYNC

BISHOP SYNC Our first daughter was picked from our house and gang-raped by some of the rebels, and then after that terrible ordeal she came and committed suicide by taking some chloroquine tablets and she died.

That was the first experience.  It was very difficult for us as a family.  After ten years my wife was blown to pieces by a landmine allegedly planted by the LRA and that was another terrible experience for us.

You know I felt like a tree that has been split from top to bottom by lightning.  Her tragic death has become a great challenge to me and that is why I have dedicated my whole life to work for peace so that other people may not go through the same experience as we went through.  Two is to forgive those who have done it to us. Those who killed my daughter .  Those who killed my wife, those who killed many of my parishioners.

Q:  Can you forgive the people who did that?

A: Oh yes.  I have already forgiven them.  And honestly I have forgiven them.   You know forgiveness comes form the heart of the offended community or offended person.

And in Acholi culture there is a mechanism designed to achieve just that.  Mat Opot is a traditional Acholi process of truth-telling, forgiveness and reconciliation. And very many Acholis believe it is the best way to rebuild their shattered society. 

BISHOP SYNC

BISHOP:  In the cultural justice system the aim is to restore the broken relationship.  The aim is to bring transformation to the two sides.  To break the cycle of violence so that life can be given to those people again - and they can live in harmony and peace.  

FLORENCE'S MOTHER WALKING

Florence's Okonyo's mother must walk 10 kilometres to reach her fields.

Until recently the war made that impossible.  But now for the first time in years, she is planting crops.

FLORENCE AND MUM SYNC

Q:  How confident are you that the peace will last and you will be able to harvest these beans?

She is saying she still don't know if there will be war soon..  But if there is a war again, then she will not harvest this crops that she had planted. 

FLORENCE'S MOTHER WORKING

But the question of whether the peace will hold has now been complicated by the belated intervention of a world that until recently seemed not to care.

PTC IN CAR

PTC:  What we are approaching here is Odek camp.  Its one of the dozens of internally displaced peoples camps scattered all over the north of Uganda.  But what's particularly interesting about this camp is that it is very near the birthplace and home of Joseph Kony.

WALKING IN BUSH

We met two young brothers who agreed to take Bitek and I into the bush to find Kony's old home compound.

BITEK SYNC

BITEK: This is the place where Joseph Kony was born and raised... He grew up here.  His brother was a primary school teacher.  His hut stood where you can see some banana stems over there.  The brother was killed by LRA rebel fighters.

Q: His brother was killed by his own army?

A: Exactly..

VILLAGER - THOMAS KOMAKECH  SYNC

Q:  Did your family know Joseph Kony?

KOMAKECH A:  My father know.  But they all died in an IDP camp at a time when the LRA rebel attacks that IDP camp,  in the year 2004.

Q: Your family were killed?  Your mother and fa...

A:  My mother and father.

Q: What do you feel about the LRA?

A: They should come back home.

Q: And you would welcome them home to your village

A: I welcome them

Q: Why

A: You know forgiveness is better than revenge.  So we forgive them.

Q: Even though they killed your mother and your father?

A: I forgive them.  Because we want peace.

GV'S KONY'S COMPOUND

MOUNTAIN

WOMAN

MIX TO STILL OF KONY IN THE BUSH

That willingness to forgive is everywhere in Acholiland.  Partly it is a product of traditional culture, partly a product of the fact that so many of the LRA are their own children and partly out of sheer war- weariness.   But can forgiveness bring peace - or justice? Today Joseph Kony's army..

GRAPHIC INSERT

....is in the bush in the Congo, near the border with Sudan. But significant regional and international events are beginning to bear on what happens next.

PTC

PTC: Not least of these is that the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Kony and four of his lieutenants. These have massively increased Kony's paranoia and he fears he will be siezed as soon as he shows his face - he's given that as the reason for constantly postponing the signing of the long awaited peace deal.

And this has caused anguish to the war-weary people of the north.

BITEK SYNC

BITEK:  Our people.  Those who are so much affected by war are completely against the ICC system.   They say that the ICC came at the wrong time.  At a time when people are so hoping peace talk will succeed. 

To our people here they see the coming in of the ICC to be very close to a kind of sabotage.

Q: Sabotage of the peace process?

A: Yes. Why not wait, we have the peace and then you get your time, and you pick Joseph Kony - you take him.

DUSK:  STREET AND POLICE STATION GVS

The Ugandan Government - which first invited the ICC in - now want it to back off.   Many Ugandans are also asking how the ICC can investigate crimes of the LRA - but not the crimes by government forces. And to many people in the north, it feels that the world - having ignored them for so long - is now standing in the way of their peace.  Or even worse, doesn't regard their system of justice as good enough.

BISHOP SYNC

BISHOP:  The ICC has become a stumbling block in the peace process.  People really don't see the ICC as a solution to the problem of Northern Uganda. The problem comes when ICC uses punishment as justice, which is wrong because it will never bring people together.  It will never restore the broken relationship. They will never transform the lives of the people.

KAMPALA TOP SHOT

Outside the north, some observers like Frank Nyakairo are less convinced.

FRANK NYAKAIRO

FRANK NYAKAIRU:  This notion that it should be solved the Acholi way - Acholi is part of Uganda. What happened is not crimes against Acholi people its crimes against the country.  Its crimes against humanity.  And there's no way you can tell me you can just rub them off and shrug them aside and say we have done away with them or forgiven each other.

KAMPALA TOP SHOT

MIX TO ICC LOGO

STILL OF PRES. BASHIR OF SUDAN

But Nyakiaro does share one serious concern about International Criminal Court.  And that concerns another arrest warrant.  That of the president of Sudan, Omar Al Bashir who has in the past backed the LRA.

FRANK SYNC

FRANK NYAKAIRU:

The LRA - according to my sources - is still in contact with some elements in the Sudan Army.  That is very dangerous.

Renewed backing for the LRA from Khartoum would be a disaster.

But that week in Gulu hopes for peace rose with news of a possible significant development from Southern Sudan.

PTC IN CAR

PTC:  My driver Saidi and I are travelling along 300 kms of spectacularly bad road, heading for Southern Sudan and the regional capital of Juba.  Today delegations are gathering there and tomorrow they are travelling to a village called Rkwamba where Joseph Kony is supposed to come out and sign, for the first time in twenty years, a peace deal.

BORDER TERRITORY AND JUBA BRIDGE

RAHA HOTEL

The road from Gulu to Juba crosses the porous and insecure border between Sudan and Uganda -  the area which would bear the brunt of any new war.

The next morning,  in the headquarters of the peace negotiators in the Juba Raha Hotel, there was discouraging news.

PTC IN JUBA RAHA HOTEL

PTC: Well today's meeting in the bush with Joseph Kony is not happening, and the South Sudenese Vice-president, Riek Machar, who is also the chief negotiator in these talks is not available for interview.  However, a senior government source has told me Joseph Kony phoned Riek Machar last night by satellite from the bush and demanded food as a condition of coming t the meeting and the signing.  I'm told that the meeting has been re-scheduled for the 12^th of August. We shall see.

The twelfth came and went. And still Kony failed to appear.

For most local people - despite sporadic attacks and abductions -- the relative peace is a lot better than nothing.  But the rest of the world - with its eyes on stability and resources - is losing patience. And there is increasing pressure for a military solution.   

Henry Okello Oryem, the Ugandan minister for International relations,  says they are serious about finding peaceful solution.

MINISTER:  However this cannot go on for ever and it might reach a time when the govt of Uganda the other countries in the region might have to look at other options on how to continue defending and protecting the lives of the people of Uganda and the region

The other option is a military one.  But

a military campaign means an all out attack on an army consisting largely of kidnapped children and young people.  And I have seen with my own eyes what that means.  In this battle more than 50 rebels were killed - but some were as young as four or five.

MINISTER:  An armed option is terrible - considering that they're children on the other side.  But if the threats exist to the majority, and to the hundreds and millions of people the threat exists from the LRA, then there is a duty on the government of Uganda, there's a duty to the region to make sure that the people and their property are protected. 

This terrible two-decade-old war may at last be coming to an end.  But with so many factors are in play it is very difficult to see what form that end may take.  The conflicting strategic interests of the west and the regime in Khartoum, the need for justice versus the desperate local desire for peace.  And the rights - for they do have rights - of the child conscripts of the LRA.