Review of Chris Dolan’s ‘Social Torture: The Case of Northern Uganda, 1986-2006’

In ‘Social Torture: The Case of Northern Uganda, 1986-2006’, Dr Chris Dolan challenges the standard characterisation of the situation in northern Uganda as a civil war between a ragtag band of rebels seeking to rule the country according to the biblical Ten Commandments, and Yoweri Museveni’s government in Kampala, trying in vain to eradicate them. Dolan posits that there is no war in northern Uganda. Rather, the situation there is one of ‘social torture’ in which the Acholi people have for decades been subject to systemic torture through their enforced dependency on a protection system that is itself a primary source of violations. Such violations – of rights to a livelihood, to education and to healthcare and of physical and psychological well-being, among others – have subordinated a population that might otherwise represent a threat to Museveni’s hegemony, and have provided populations on the verge of dissent with a powerful warning. Dolan thus provides a convincing answer to the question of why the government of Uganda has been ostensibly unable to eliminate the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA): ending the conflict is not in its interests.

The introduction provides an overview of the book and its central argument, seamlessly incorporating the work of key critical scholars of conflict, aid and development. Following a section outlining research methodology, Dolan provides an overview of the situation in northern Uganda, adding value by discussing subjective experiences of conflict where most accounts focus on the objective. By considering the nature of the LRA and the disjuncture between the government’s stated intentions and its actions, the fourth chapter goes a long way towards demystifying this hitherto misunderstood rebel group and confronts the usual depiction of a war of insurgents versus central authority. The following three chapters detail the experiences of the majority of the northern population, demonstrating how in the name of protection they have experienced key elements of torture: violation (chapter 5); debilitation (chapter 6); and humiliation, particularly of men (chapter 7). In chapter 8, Dolan articulates his model of social torture – the narratives of chapters 5 through 7 evidencing its constituent elements – and details the interests social torture serves and explains how public discourses of intra-ethnic war, terrorism and humanitarian crisis are used to legitimate it.

Taken together, chapters 5 through 8 provide the evidence for Dolan’s central argument, that the oft-proffered Clausewitzian view of the situation in northern Uganda is flawed. If the government were truly committed to peace, the LRA’s self-limiting rejection of modernity would have allowed its military defeat years ago. The confrontation between the LRA and the government persists because it disguises a deeper process of social torture that supports a range of vested interests, namely, the Ugandan government’s interest in a process of ‘subordinate inclusion’ of the Acholi and donors’ interest in maintaining the government of Uganda in a subordinate position, to name but a few.

The primary sites of social torture are the government-devised and internationally supported ‘protected villages’ found throughout northern Uganda. Dolan exposes these ‘villages’ as nothing more than squalid internal displacement camps into which people were forced, in violation of international law, and where they suffered a range of violations, in many cases perpetrated by members of the army (the Uganda People’s Defence Forces or UPDF), the very actors charged with camp protection. When not actively committing violations, the UPDF often failed to protect people from LRA attacks and general crime, which in many cases were the result of the extreme social dysfunction engendered by the camps. Dolan argues that by supporting the camps materially and not speaking out against them, international humanitarian agencies are complicit in the violations that occurred there: ‘like doctors in a torture situation, they appear to be there to ease the suffering of victims, but in reality they enable the process to be prolonged by keeping the victim alive for further abuse’.

Dolan has not only skilfully demonstrated how powerful vested interests, most notably those of the government, allowed northern Uganda to become what the UN’s Chief of Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland famously called the most neglected humanitarian emergency in the world. Dolan has also provided a new theoretical lens through which to examine situations of protracted conflict, that of social torture. But perhaps most importantly, he has provided a rich, detailed and wide-ranging ethnography of Acholi suffering. The depth, rigour and humility with which Dolan describes Acholi people’s subjective experiences of the situation in northern Uganda actually serve to honour, and are a testament to, the conflict’s countless victims and survivors.

The depth, breadth and scholarliness of Dolan’s account set it apart from other work on northern Uganda. LRA crimes have, however, been well-documented in academic and advocacy circles. Much of the recent work in this regard relates to the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) investigation into the situation in northern Uganda. Thus far, the investigation has focused almost exclusively on the LRA. By exposing UPDF atrocities and those resulting from the government-backed system of encampment, and by querying government attempts to eliminate the LRA, Dolan provides an important counter narrative and a unique factual record demonstrating that all actors in northern Uganda – not just the LRA – have blood on their hands. Beyond having written an excellent book, Dolan’s real triumph will be if this counter narrative reaches beyond ‘Social Torture’s’ presumably academic audience. One can only hope that ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo will read this book.

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* Chris Dolan’s ‘Social Torture: The Case of Northern Uganda, 1986-2006’ is available from Berghahn Books.
* Marina Sharpe is legal officer and deputy director of the refugee programme at Fahamu.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.