When Gelsdorf and his research team interviewed the army commander in the area in 2012, he denied that the army was involved, although he acknowledged that some errant soldiers may have got involved at individual level. He promised that punitive measures would be taken. But there is no evidence of any action taken against any military suspects on the matter either before or since.
On the other hand, the mistrust between the state and Acholi war debt claimants appears to have been rekindled when the government introduced new conditions which required all claimants to register afresh through the Local Government structures in readiness for the UGX 150 bn launched in March 2022. The LC I chair of Paduny in Awach told me that the ‘yellow form’ issued by the district LG was like starting the registration process afresh because those without it were deemed not to have registered even if they appeared in the original Association registers. So, he said, it is like the role of the Association has been tactfully overlooked and taken over by the government. But retired Justice Galdino, who chaired the newly established Compensation Committee, disagreed with this interpretation although he acknowledges that claimants form Omoro district who had not registered on the yellow form had been left out of the official lists forwarded for the March, 2022 payments.
Galdino said that in spite of the financial challenges facing the Association, he had had fruitful engagements with the Attorney General since his appointment on 16 November 2020. One was that the two sides agreed to tour the sub region in 2021 to meet the registered claimants. Although the Attorney General and team never showed up, the tour had gone ahead as planned. He said they started in Kitgum district in April and finished in Omoro district in October, which enabled them to verify all the claimants registered by the Association in Acholi sub region. However, when the Attorney General’s list came out, both Adyera, the pioneer chair, and Justice Galdino alleged that it contained ghosts (Independent 2022) even as it was short of 4, 320 genuine claimants.
He further explained that when the government technical team issued unrealistic conditions that all claimants must indicate their Tax Identification Numbers on the newly introduced yellow form (Okumu 2022), it was his committee that protested on behalf of the Association; and when the new claimants’ lists were displayed at the sub counties in March 2022, it was his committee that highlighted the anomalies on those lists such as ghost claimants (Independent 2021). They also contained under-age people who cannot have been born during the time the cows were stolen (1986-1989); many names were also missing as already observed, and the number of cows listed had a shortfall of 192, 546 (out of 436,811). In sum, in spite of the long delay to pay off the reparation claimants, the Association still played its role of defending the victims’ rights despite its internal challenges.
Conclusion
It cannot be denied that forming the Association was an innovative idea that played a great role in mobilising war victims in Acholi-land to demand their rights, thereby plugging a vacuum that had been filled neither by the state nor the international community. The creativity is underlined by the grassroots Association model that tapped into the Local Government structures to register and to verify claims yet remained outside the state machinery. This was quite unique as it articulated the community’s claims for reparations that could not be easily dismissed in spite of the absence of a policy on the matter. The other uniqueness lies in the nature of the claims being against their own country. Claims for justice made by the Iraqis against Danish forces, for example, were that they had been detained unfairly in their own country by a foreign force on a peace-keeping mission. Acholi claimants on the other hand, targeted the government.