“Survival Mode”: Rebel Resilience and the Lord’s Resistance Army

ABSTRACT

To date, scholarly work on armed groups has seldom considered the notion of rebel resilience, or the factors that enable these groups to survive despite time, military pressure, and the myriad contingent events of civil war. In an effort to develop an explanatory framework for resilience as a distinct outcome of civil war and rebellion, this article examines the conditions under which the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has persisted for nearly three decades. Based on fieldwork and original research, the article explains the LRA’s resilience in light of the group’s organizational structure and resource self-sufficiency, which have been well suited for the borderlands of East and Central Africa. The LRA is a key case of rebel resilience. It is important because it sheds light on the organizational foundations of armed groups, the relationship between resources and rebellion, and the broader study of conflict duration and termination. Understanding the sources of the LRA’s resilience can inform efforts to end such insurgencies.     

Uganda's decentralised primary education: musical chairs and inverted elite capture in School Management Committees

Decentralisation policies in Africa increasingly place responsibilities and resources for the provision of public services in the hands of public bodies at the lowest level, for example in School Management Committees (SMCs). This paper questions whether elite capture, which is considered a major reason for the ineffectiveness of the management of public services at a national level, also characterises SMCs. On the basis of field research in Uganda, it is argued that elite capture does not trickle down to the lowest levels in the management of public services. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

From victorious rebels to strong authoritarian parties: prospects for post-war democratization

ABSTRACT

In a number of cases, rebel movements that won civil wars transformed into powerful authoritarian political parties that dominated post-war politics. Parties whose origins are as victorious insurgent groups have different legacies and hence different institutional structures and patterns of behaviour than those that originated in breakaway factions of ruling parties, labour unions, non-violent social movements, or identity groups. Unlike classic definitions of political parties, post-rebel parties are not created around the need to win elections but rather as military organizations focused on winning an armed struggle. Key attributes of victorious rebel movements, such as cohesive leadership, discipline, hierarchy, and patterns of military administration of liberated territory, shape post-insurgent political parties and help explain why post-insurgent parties are often strong and authoritarian. This article seeks to identify the mechanisms that link rebel victory in three East African countries (Uganda, Ethiopia, and Rwanda) to post-war authoritarian rule. These processes suggest that how a civil war ends changes the potential for post-war democratization.     

When it pays to be a ‘fragile state’: Uganda’s use and abuse of a dubious concept

The labelling of certain states as ‘fragile states’ has often been portrayed as an act of domination by Western donors over the developing world. Nonetheless, this type of categorisation also presents opportunities to non-Western governments. This article suggests that the aid-dependent government of Uganda has increased its room for manoeuvre with donors by emphasising the degree of instability in the north of the country. By using this notion of state fragility, the Ugandan regime has successfully persuaded donors to continue their support, despite its domestic transgressions. The article will also attempt to explain the regime’s use of a contradictory, but equally persuasive, international discourse that presents Uganda as stable, strong and secure. In exploring how Kampala has successfully employed both narratives to carve out greater agency with donors, the article will emphasise the significance of donors’ physical detachment from the Ugandan ‘periphery’ in this dynamic.     

Fifty years of creativity,crisis, and cancer in Uganda

Abstract

This article tells the story of the Uganda Cancer Institute over the past 50 years. I discuss the fundamental dynamism of research collaborations and the ways in which they bring vital yet partial investments in improving the capacity of medical facilities in sub-Saharan Africa. I explore the ways in which patient populations and the needs of caretakers themselves shape research collaborations. I also show how extreme oscillations in the capacity to conduct oncology research and provide care were (and are) tied not only to shifting international research priorities, but also to broader upheaval and periods of stability in Uganda since independence in 1962. Rather than dwelling on the debris, ruins, or an emptying of capacity in the health sector in Africa, this article highlights how this experimental infrastructure in East Africa not only survived, but also fundamentally shaped a culture of care and oncology practice that lived on.     

Modes of influence: Participation in publicly administered development programmes

This article considers the way that farmers within a national agricultural advisory programme in Uganda were able to exert influence over that programme's policy and practice. Although the literature has tended to focus on engagement within formal programme structures as a major mode of participation, the analysis of the NAADS case reveals that farmers were able to exert an important influence over programme policy through their roles as political constituents. The brokerage role of supportive programme staff also worked to allow farmers' views to influence the programme, as did the collective weight of decisions commonly made by farmers, and to a lesser extent, the lobbying efforts of national NGOs. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Land grabbing or economic development? A modernisation debate enacted on Bugala Island,Uganda

ABSTRACT

Globally, the phenomenon of large-scale land leasing, or ‘land grabbing’, is the subject of increasing concern. At the heart of the criticism of this phenomenon is the debate over the most appropriate methods of achieving economic development within the context of a rapidly globalising world. This paper analyzes the process and outcomes of establishing an oil palm plantation on Bugala Island, Uganda. The author asserts that tensions over land use within Uganda reflect incompatible understandings of the relations between land and society and distrust amongst stakeholders. In this case, in spite of these incompatibilities and distrust, the plantation has resulted in positive results for both local land users and the national economy. Yet at the same time, it demonstrates a traditional approach to land use that ignores past injustice and does not recognise power differentials.     

The Crime Preventers Scheme: A Community Policing Initiative for Regime Security in Uganda

ABSTRACT

For decades, Uganda has received substantial support from development partners to implement Security Sector Reforms (SSR). Using the crime preventers’ scheme that has been implemented by Uganda Police as an element of community policing, I argue that SSR achievements in the country seem unclear and limited. Based on an ethnographic study I illustrate that the widespread crime preventers’ scheme has had contrasting effects on the Ugandan security architecture. The scheme seems to have reduced the police-citizens social distance and augmented police presence while simultaneously cased operational excesses and is routinely used in regime security strategies. To provide a better conceptualization I ask and answer a number of questions; how and why has the crime preventers’ scheme been initiated? How is the scheme related to community policing as we know it? What is the political role of the crime preventers? What motivates people to become active members of the crime preventers’ scheme? How does the scheme empirically operate?     

Decentralization and Development in Contemporary Uganda

Abstract

There has long been an emphasis on the importance of decentralization in providing better quality public services in the developing world. In order to assess the effectiveness of decentralization I examine here the case study of Uganda, which has seen major decentralization of power over the last quarter-century. In particular the current government has introduced a five-tiered local government structure, decentralized both fiscal and political power to local governments and introduced regular local government elections. However, initial excitement about Uganda's decentralization programme has tapered off in recent years due to a number of problems outlined here. In particular, I show that decentralization in Uganda has suffered from a lack of independence from central government control, which has led to a lack of effectiveness in the provision of high quality public goods.     

The Isolated Islamists: The Case of the Allied Democratic Forces in the Ugandan-Congolese Borderland

This study investigates the absence of substantive linkages between locally based Salafi Jihadist movements and their more transnational counterparts such as Al-Qaeda or ISIS. While studies have addressed the heterogeneity in Jihadi alliances, the question of why inter-Jihadi ties are completely absent or tenuous at times is under-theorized in the literature. Given ISIS’s recent inexorable advance through the Middle East and North Africa and its ever-growing ties with local Jihadists, it is timely to investigate under what conditions locally based militant Islamists are less likely to forge ties with global Jihadists. Using the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF)—a militant Islamist group in the Ugandan-Congolese borderland—as an illustrative case study, the research sheds light on conditions under which inter-Jihadi ties are less likely. These include the extent of ideological divergence between local and global Jihadists, the degree of relevance to the local community, and the fear of attracting new enemies in the form of more stringent counter-terrorism operations.