By Churchill Lokoroi
The Commander of Land Forces, Lt Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who has been “decorated” by the social media constituency as a tweeting General because of his free flowing opinions and comments on social media, has been tweeting about the insecurity in Karamoja. In one of the tweets that was trending on social media, the General is quoted to have said thus, “we have begged…now we are coming and hell is coming with us.”
Hell! No one has come back from hell to tell us what exactly hell looks like. However, from the description given by preachers, hell is not a rosy place to be and nobody including the good General wants to be in this place.
The situation in Karamoja — where 309 warriors have been put out of action since the Usalama Kwa Wote operation started; where 20 warriors have been killed in the last 10 days; leave alone unaccounted number of killings by warriors themselves — is hell itself in my view.
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So, the General doesn’t need to bring with him another hell. Let us deal with “current hell” prevailing in Karamoja.
I dare say that coming with hell will not solve the insecurity in Karamoja. Instead, it will worsen the situation.
From the presentations made in a recent Karamoja Regional Council held in Moroto, especially regarding the killing of the geologists, one cannot help but deduce that there are many versions and emerging dynamics to the insecurity question in Karamoja that the current security strategy cannot address.
Going forward, unearthing what is underneath the insecurity situation in Karamoja is more urgent and a candid conversion, free of deceit, truthful and sincere, is required.
It is in such conversations that those who are facilitating insecurity through their actions/inactions can be brought to bear, exposed and dealt with.
In order to address current dynamics, review of the security strategy in Karamoja must be top on the agenda of this conversation.
The UPDF and its sister forces, leaders in Karamoja, religious leaders, kraal leaders ,non-state actors- among others, need to converge, rethink, and have an honest conversation and re-strategize with a view of reviewing and fine tuning the security strategy in Karamoja.
I am happy that the Commander of Land Forces, Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who loves peace, has accepted to have an honest conversation with the warriors — but this should not come with HELL.
Churchill Lokoroi writes from Amudat
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