Spotlight on Uganda

Yesterday, we featured an excellent piece by Kenyan journalist Charles Wachira on the ongoing conflict in Uganda and the prospects for peace there.

That conflict has raged for almost two decades, and the destruction it has reaped has gone largely unnoticed in much of the world’s media. If you think the world is ignoring the crisis in Darfur, take a look at Uganda.

Peace talks in the conflict are in danger of falling apart, Wachira reports:

NAIROBI, Kenya — Six months of peace talks to end more than two decades of conflict in northern Uganda have been virtually for naught, and their progress is now being held up by a simple question of geography.

Bellicose rhetoric from Sudan President Omar al-Bashir that the Lord’s Resistance Army would be expelled from the south of his own embattled nation “by the end of this month” has emboldened the shadowy rebellion to demand a new host — and mediator — for negotiations to end the war that has made night travellers of tens of thousands of children and displaced some two million people from their rural homes.

Neither Kenya nor South Africa, the rebels’ chosen successors to Sudan for the thankless task of mediation, have shown themselves disposed to host talks between the LRA and the government of President Yoweri Museveni.

We’ll continue covering the situation in Uganda, but to follow the day-to-day developments, and for more information about the background of the conflict, we recommend the Web site of the Uganda Conflict Action Network.

Also, the International Crisis Group report Wachira references in his article can be found here.

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