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The war

The nearly two-decade long Civil War in Uganda shaped the society that remains. The history of that war is hard to understand from the outside. Here is a very simplified timeline and summary:

The National Resistance Army (NRA) and the current president, Yoweri Museveni took power from the former dictatorship of Idi Amin Dada in 1986. The soldiers of the deposed government either fled to Northern Uganda or south Sudan or stayed to fight the new government.
 

The NRA, now the government army, committed human rights violations throughout 1986 and displaced much of the northern Ugandan population. In response to the violations, Alice Lakwena created the Holy Spirit Movement in 1987. Tribes in northern and eastern Uganda supported this movement and it was relatively successful, but was defeated by the end of the year.
 

Joseph Kony formed the LRA out of Holy Spirit followers and some remaining members of the deposed government army. The LRA was centered on a desire to have a government based on the Ten Commandments, but proceeded to kill, mutilate, sexually enslave and rape members of the northern Uganda population and burn and loot their fields and shops.
 

The LRA’s use of children began in the late 1980s and peaked in 2002-2004. Up to 2,000 women and children were estimated to remain in the LRA in 2007.
 

In 2002 the Uganda people’s Defence Force (UPDF) launched “Operation Iron Fist,” which caused an escalation of conflict when the LRA intensified its attacks and expanded into the south and east. “Operation Iron Fist II” launched in 2004, which led to another increase in LRA attacks.
 

The UPDF and local defense units committed several human rights violations. The UPDF also recruited and used children.
 

An estimated 1.7 million people, 90% of the northern population, were displaced from their homes.
 

The Sudanese government sustained the LRA from 1994 to 2005, when a peace agreement was signed. The LRA fled to Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2005.
 

Peace talks between the Ugandan government and the LRA started in July 2006 in southern Sudan.
 

No violent incidents by the LRA have been reported in Uganda since 2007.

*Information on this timeline and summary is compiled from a variety of sources

Summary:

Click on the events to expand and get more information.

School children at the Martyrs Shrine in Kampala, Uganda.

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