Accountability V. Amnesty: The Case of Charles Arop
Last week, the Ugandan army confirmed that Charles Arop, the director of operations for the Lord’s Resistance Army, had surrendered to Ugandan soldiers in the town of Djabir in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This is a significant development in the fight against the LRA; as director of operations, Arop was in charge of planning and executing attacks. The Ugandan army has long maintained that Arop was in charge of the so-called Christmas massacres, a series of attacks against Congolese civilians on Christmas Day, 2008, in and around the town of Faradje in northeastern Congo. The LRA brutally murdered more than 140 civilians and abducted another 160.
I recently interviewed two former LRA fighters who told me Arop was in charge of the group which attacked Faradje. The most convincing and clear testimony was that of a southern Sudanese boy named Joseph. He was abducted and held by the LRA for a year from February 2008 until February 2009.
I was in a group of about 80 people who attacked Faradje. The group was led by Major General [sic] Arop. After they attacked Faradje, one group was told to take the loot to Central Africa where [LRA leader Joseph] Kony was. The group split, with the majority going to CAR under the leadership of Opiyo [Lt. Col. Opiyo Sam, presumably killed in DRC last month] and Opoka [unknown]. I stayed with Arop close to Faradje with 18 fighters where eventually 20 other fighters joined us.
Joseph managed to escape in February, and the 40 or so other fighters under Arop have been either killed or defected in the past few months.
Sources from the Ugandan military intelligence told me that on October 15, 2009, four members from Arop’s group surrendered to the Congolese army. At least nine more people under Arop, including one of Arop’s wives, surrendered to the Ugandan army on October 28 in Djabir, the same place where Arop would defect a week later with one remaining fighter.
Questions abound about Arop’s fate now that he has surrendered. Will Arop be prosecuted for the war crimes he committed in Congo, and if so, by whom? Uganda does not have jurisdiction for crimes committed in Congo. That would be the responsibility of the Congolese government or possibly the International Criminal Court, or ICC (though the ICC has not yet launched an investigation into the Christmas massacres). If Arop is not prosecuted for crimes in Congo, how will the Ugandan government deal with justice and accountability?
Arop is eligible for amnesty in Uganda as stipulated under the Amnesty Act of 2000 which says that former combatants are eligible to receive amnesty for having participated in an armed struggle. More than 10,000 former LRA fighters have so far been granted amnesty. The Amnesty Act does not differentiate between low level fighters and commanders. President Museveni has said that there will be no amnesty for top commanders but this has been understood as a reference to Kony, Okot Odhiambo, and Dominic Ongwen, who are indicted by the ICC.
A senior Ugandan official told me recently that the decisions about how to deal with former LRA commanders are strictly political. As a result, the Ugandan government’s treatment of former LRA commanders seems inconsistent to anyone without an insider’s understanding of the politics at play. Some, such as Opiyo Makasi, Kenneth Banya, and Sam Kolo, have been granted full amnesty and live now freely in Uganda. Yet this past June, the Ugandan government charged a recently captured commander, Major Thomas Kwoyelo, with kidnapping and intent to murder. He is the only former commander who has been charged in a Ugandan court. Kwoyelo is eligible for amnesty but he has not been granted it. The reasons are unclear.
The Ugandan government needs to clarify how it intends to deal with mid-level LRA commanders and make that approach permanent. Not granting amnesty to Kwoyelo, for instance, is a worry for other commanders who want to defect but fear prosecution.
At the same time, the Ugandan government needs to ensure that there is accountability for grave crimes such as the ones committed by Arop in Faradje. LRA commanders should know that they will not be prosecuted for acts committed if they decide to defect, but grave crimes of the scale of the Faradje attacks cannot be ignored. Otherwise, a precedent will be created where LRA commanders can perpetrate heinous crimes knowing they will not be held to account.
Photo: Hills in northeastern Congo (Enough/Rebecca Feeley)
Technorati Tags: 
