Is This What Peace Looks Like?

Last week, I explained to my professor, Steve Coll, that I signed up for his 'Armies and Spies' reporting class because the army is a huge part of public life in Uganda. At that point, I was thinking of oddities like: the UPDF runs agricultural extension, the Miss Uganda beauty contest and as of last week, spraying urban pests and rodents! Plus, that, for 15 years now, the police has been headed by active army generals. 

Saying out loud that "the army is a huge part of public life",  got me wondering what our actual lives then look like, seen through the barrel of a gun.  So I went to ACLED, a service which curates incidents of political violence in Africa and Asia to check that out. Using their data for 1997 to 2015 , I created the heatmap below. Behind it are reports on 4612 events of political violence: battles between warring parties and unreturned violence on civilians.  That is; one armed conflict incident for every 36 hours of the period. I suppose the bloodbath picture in northern Uganda isn't suprising, because there was a war there, but look at the rest of the country!

Right after I pulled that data, I saw a TV clip in which Museveni was boasting to a crowd that because of NRM, Uganda is peaceful for the first time in 500 years. Really?! How did we survive extinction in the 500 years prior to NRM?  4612 incidences of political violence in the most recent 18 years of the NRM epoch and that is what peace looks like? What did the opposite of peace look like? 

Then again, maybe the army has just been proactively defending us from the bad guys. Of course it has been. 40% of the time. In many (but a minority of those reported incidents), the defenders of our freedoms were totally doing battle (or getting set to) for us.  

Reported Incidents of Armed Violence Events in Uganda (1997 - 2015)
Type of Incident	Number	Percentage
Battle-Government regains territory	41	1%
Battle-No change of territory	1683	36%
Battle-Non-state actor overtakes territory	12	0.3%
Headquarters or base established	41	1%
Remote violence	66	1%
Riots/Protests	673	15%
Violence against civilians	1705	37%
Total	4611

However, while the defenders of our freedoms were away somewhere, more than 80 different groups of armed bandits and the Uganda Police (for I dare not call them bandits ) were having their day shooting at civilians. Of course,  the LRA ranks highest, followed by the ADF and Karimojong militia. The Uganda Police holds fourth place. Hey, even the UPDF got in on the action against civillians -- in 22 of the reported incidents, taking fifth place. After those five, the arena of armed men against civilians splits into a riot of actors. See all them below. Bokora Ethnic militia? Banyole Ethnic militia? Ikuruk? Really? Is my household the only grouping of Ugandans left out of the action?

Mr Museveni, considering the national picture, I suggest we now start to measure peace in per capita units. That will keep us on message.