'Terror' tag shifts Uganda's war

President Yoweri Museveni is in town. He moved into the barracks of the 4th Army Division three weeks ago – and is not leaving, he says, until his Uganda People's Defense Forces (UPDF) crushes the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) or his politicians make peace with the rebels. The on-again, off-again 16-year war, he vows, is about to reach its end.

Around the barracks, people carry out their usual business, seemingly unimpressed by their leader's presence. One woman sells onions; another hawks sugarcane. A few cows saunter by, barely budging for a group of army recruits singing and jogging with AK47s.

But as night descends, the mood shifts. Ragged children carrying sleeping mats are the first to arrive. Hurrying down dusty paths which wind into town from the outlaying villages, they rush to save a space inside the church courtyard or the hospital compound. Behind them, elders carry babies, small suitcases, the maize reserves, water.

All of these people, tens of thousands of them, are afraid to spend the night at home. After two years of relative calm, the civil war has intensified in the North. Raids on displaced people's camps, abductions of children, and attacks on vehicles have become a daily occurrence. The Acholi people – the main ethnic group in the region – say they have never felt so frightened or so vulnerable.

The change in dynamics of this war can be traced back to the aftermath of Sept. 11, when the previously little known LRA rebels were put on a US list of terror organizations. They were "thrown in," say senior Western diplomats, speaking off the record, mainly to show that the US was not targeting only Muslim groups – as far as Washington was concerned, it simply meant was that any LRA member found in America was liable to be deported. But in this part of the world, the terrorist tag had much deeper ramifications.

Relations between Uganda and Sudan have been bad for years, with each country supporting rebel groups fighting the other. Uganda backed the Southern People's Liberation Army (SPLA), a group of southern Sudanese rebels. Sudan, in turn, helped the LRA.

The US classification of the LRA as a terror group, however, changed this balance. Eager to prove to the US that it didn't back terror, Sudan quickly withdrew its support from the LRA and moved to thaw relations with Uganda – a darling of the West. "After Sept. 11, [Sudanese President Omar al] Bashir, got the message that he had to choose sides, and since Sudan desperately needed investment to get oil out, Bashir has cooperated with the US and against terrorism," says Harvard Kennedy School's Robert Rotberg. "The LRA has nothing to do with Al Qaeda, but it became too costly for Sudan to run these extra terrorist types."

So, with Sudan's blessing, the UPDF launched operation "Iron Fist" in March, attacking LRA bases in Southern Sudan in an attempt to hit the rebels and rescue thousands of child-abductees fighting with them. The operation failed by most accounts. The LRA was chased out of its bases, but simply relocated to Uganda, where it increased its campaign of terror.

"Common wisdom used to be that the reason for the LRA's survival was Sudanese sanctuary – but now its hard to see what the problem is," says Mr. Rotberg. "The LRA is just a couple of kids and a few fanatics, and they ought to be extracted pretty easily. It's a mystery."

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