Contesting the Ugandan State: religionising ethno-political and ethno-regional power struggles

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Periodical article

Title:	Contesting the Ugandan State: religionising ethno-political and ethno-regional power struggles
Author:	Rwengabo, Sabastiano
Year:	2009
Periodical:	Orita: Ibadan Journal of Religious Studies (ISSN 0030-5596)
Volume:	41
Issue:	2
Pages:	137-157
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Nigeria
Subjects:	religion power Lord's Resistance Army ethnicity rebellions
Abstract:	This paper examines the instrumentalization of religious values, practices and beliefs to found and sustain ethnopolitical contestations for State power and resources in Uganda, manifested through the Lord's Resistance Army/Movement (LRA/M). The colonial legacy and the subsequent postcolonial State are used to explain Uganda's current predicament, where religion, ethnicity and politics contemporaneously haunt national security and thwart development. Drawing from existing literature on the LRA/M, interviews and discussions with former rebels, abductees, political leaders and intellectuals in academia, this paper concludes that the LRA/M is intricately linked to the local and the global, with religion as an instrument, and ethnicity as one of the driving forces. It also presents suggestions on how governmental and nongovernmental actors can help this slow-but-sure genocide, and how further occurrence of similar rebellions can be prevented. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]