The vice-president of southern Sudan is clearly losing his patience.
It is July 12 and Riek Machar has been camped out here in a remote jungle clearing for five days, waiting to meet the elusive leader of Uganda’s notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) — self-proclaimed prophet and mystic Joseph Kony.
Machar has bided his time calmly, leafing through the pages of a book on conflict resolution. But the mysterious Kony, one of the world’s most-wanted men, has stood him up, and his frustration was now beginning to show.
He is anxious to begin mediating in peace talks between the Kampala government and the LRA to end northern Uganda’s two-decade civil war. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced nearly two-million and now spilled over into southern Sudan.
But Kony and the LRA leadership, holed up just across the border in the north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), seem to be stalling, testing Machar’s resolve.
No stranger to peace talks, Machar helped negotiate the 2005 accord that ended the 21-year civil war between the Sudanese government and his own former rebel army. He is now charged with the daunting task of rebuilding the south.
But northern Uganda’s conflict has become his problem too, as attacks by LRA rebels on southern Sudanese territory are hampering the daunting reconstruction task there.
”Imagine us, to have just come out of a war and become entangled in a war that is not even ours,” Machar tells Agence France-Presse. ”That is a big concern to us.”
”That’s why we decided to make these people talk,” he explains, referring to intense efforts to cajole the LRA to the peace table.
But getting the two sides to sit down has not been easy given intense rebel suspicion, fuelled by the war crimes charges lodged against Kony and four top LRA commanders by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
They are accused of gruesome atrocities, cutting off the noses, ears and lips of their victims, slaughtering entire villages and abducting thousands of children to serve as soldiers, porters and sex slaves.
Kony has denied the allegations, insisting in a rare interview last month that he is not a ”terrorist” but a ”freedom fighter” commited to the cause of northern Uganda’s Acholi minority.
But he continues to play a cat and mouse game with Machar, who at their first meeting in early May gave him $20 000 in cash and promised to supply food and medicine to the rebels for as long as peace talks continue.
Despite a Ugandan government offer of total amnesty for the rebel war crimes suspects and pledges from the southern Sudanese of protection from extradition, Kony has stayed away from the talks in the southern Sudanese capital, Juba.
The rebel supremo has sent a delegation to Juba but rebuffed calls to send more senior members of his movement, including possibly himself or his deputy, Vincent Otti.
This is why Machar was waiting in the bush, hoping for an audience with the guerrilla chieftain to convince him to ”upgrade their delegation”.
Finally, LRA fighters begin to emerge from the dense forest.
Wearing rubber boots and mismatched uniforms or civilian clothes, they shoulder weathered AK-47s, some with bayonets. Many are in their late teens and early 20s, with intense and intimidating eyes and dreadlocked hair.
One wears a string of .50 caliber bullets around his neck.
Toward the back of the procession, Vincent Otti enters the clearing, clad in full camouflage. The LRA number two is short, skinny and affable but he has bad news for Machar — Kony will not be there, nor will he go to Juba.
He further sours Machar’s mood by ruling out his own presence at the talks, saying: ”I won’t be coming this time.”
The vice-president is annoyed. ”If there is to be a ceasefire, it is you or Kony that must negotiate it,” he says. ”My patience does not last that long. You don’t often get people that will stay down in the bush like we did waiting for you,” he scolds.
He and the government of southern Sudan have taken huge political risks in agreeing to mediate between Kampala and the LRA rebels. And they have been criticised for meeting and offering aid to a group whose leaders are wanted for war crimes.
”We defied the whole world so you could have a chance to come and say your viewpoints,” he tells Otti.
But the latter is unmoved and predicts long and protracted talks before either he or Kony will appear.
”Peace cannot take one day,” Otti replies. ”It can take two or three years. You do not start climbing a tree from the highest branch. You must start at the bottom.
”We have fought for 20 years,” he says. ”We should take it step by step until it all comes out.”
Observers believe the LRA is afraid speedy negotiations will not give them enough time to air their grievances, including allegations of Ugandan government atrocities for which they say they have been wrongly blamed.
Those fears are borne out when the peace talks finally open in Juba two days later, on July 14. The rebel delegation accuses Kampala of massive corruption and threatens to fight on unless all their issues are addressed. The Ugandan team reacts by threatening to walk out unless the LRA apologises.
Machar manages to patch things up but on July 17 the rebels again lash out at the government, demanding the entire Ugandan army be dissolved, a position flatly rejected by Kampala.
A former rebel leader himself, Machar understands that peace can take a long time to achieve and as a mediator in these talks, he is fully committed to the process, however long it takes.
His boss, southern Sudan’s president Salva Kiir remains optimistic, telling reporters in Nairobi on July 17 that he expects ”a peaceful solution to the conflict” by the September 12 deadline Uganda has set for a deal.
After days of waiting in vain for Kony on the border, Machar could be forgiven for differing with that opinion, but he is not.
”The government of southern Sudan is committed to these talks,” he says. ”We are committed to peace, as long as it takes.” – AFP
