Social Dynamics in Militarised Livelihood Systems: Evidence from a Study of Ugandan Army Soldiers

Abstract

This article discusses intra-familial tensions and related implications of fraught relationships for government soldiers’ livelihoods systems in war-affected areas of northern Uganda. While anthropologists have long recognised households as dynamic zones of contestation, development practice continues to perceive households as the central dwelling of cooperative families. Heads of household are assumed by humanitarian organisations to be benevolent representatives of the family, but this may conflict with the realities of compound-level tensions, leading to a loss of access to resources by the most vulnerable. The concept of livelihood units may be a more correct focus than the notion of households, but the former can be difficult to measure. Analysts must therefore take care to study households not only as units of analysis but also as units to be analysed. Relative wealth and poverty are shown here to exist under the same roof because soldiers and others practice inter- and intra-household discrimination. No family can be maintained on a private's salary, and some soldiers require additional aid from their families in order to support themselves in barracks. The itinerant lifestyle and stresses of frequent relocation of army families produce distinct social, health and financial liabilities. Soldiers’ wives and children were among the least healthy of all in the study, and the relations between soldiers’ wives and mothers were often characterised by bitter discord. Such micro-cleavages contrast with the expectations on the part of government and the international community regarding the need to forgive those who pursue violent, militarised livelihoods in northern Uganda.

Acknowledgements

I received invaluable support from research assistants Ocen Dickens and Rosemary Awany. I am grateful for financial support from the US–UK Fulbright Commission Oxford Development Studies, and the Oxford Research in Science and Humanities in Africa Fund, for guidance from Professor David Anderson, and for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article provided by two anonymous readers. Dr Angela Raven-Roberts and Tempa Lautze also gave assistance, and Abigail Snyder made refinements of my original drawings.

Notes

1. For studies that examine the motivations of foot soldiers in rebel forces in Eastern Africa see for example Arnold and Alden, ‘This Gun is Our Food’; Schubert, ‘Guerrillas Don't Die Easily’.

2. See for example Collier and Hoeffler, Greed and Grievance in Civil War; De Soysa, ‘Paradise is a Bazaar?’; Cramer, Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing.

3. Tosh, ‘Lango Agriculture During the Early Colonial Period’.

4. Regarding allegations of abuse by UPDF soldiers, see Human Rights Watch, ‘Uprooted and Forgotten’.

5. For a recent analysis of the north/south divide in Uganda, see Shaw and Mbabazi, ‘Two Ugandas’.

6. Statistics presented here are descriptive of this cohort and should not be extrapolated.

7. Rakodi, Urban Livelihoods; De Haan, ‘Globalization, Localization and Sustainable Livelihood’.

8. Beall, ‘Living in the Present, Investing in the Future‘.

9. Lautze and Raven-Roberts, ‘Violence and Complex Humanitarian Emergencies’.

10. Niehof, ‘The Significance of Diversification for Rural Livelihood Systems’, 323.

11. Davies, Adaptable Livelihoods: Coping with Food Insecurity in the Malian Sahel, 73.

12. De Haan and Zoomers, ‘Exploring the Frontier of Livelihoods Research’, 38.

13. Niehof, ‘The Significance of Diversification for Rural Livelihood Systems’, 323.

14. Ambrose-Oji, ‘Livelihoods Synthesis Study’, 7.

15. Ambrose-Oji, ‘Livelihoods Synthesis Study’, 7.

16. Beall, ‘Living in the Present, Investing in the Future’, 75.

17. Kaag et al ., ‘Ways Forward in Livelihoods Research’.

18. Household Economy Analysis by the Food Economy Group is described as ‘a holistic framework for understanding how poor rural and urban populations make ends meet and cope with shock’. For further information, see: www.foodeconomy.com.

19. Since 2002, the World Food Programme has altered this practice so that senior women in households are provided with a family's ration. See World Food Programme, ‘Gender Policy (2003–2007)’, 3. This still assumes benevolent egalitarianism, however, by senior women in household networks (such as mothers-in-law).

20. All names used in this article are pseudonyms.

21. We did not attempt to match the 336 people enumerated in the Lango households with the original 411 people identified by the soldiers, but it should be assumed that we enumerated individuals in these households that soldiers may not have considered to be part of their own livelihood units.

22. Rakodi, ‘A Livelihoods Approach’, 7.

23. Here it should be recalled that we likely enumerated some individuals that the soldier may not have considered to be integral members of their livelihood units.

24. Soldiers’ children comprise about one-third of the total population of children (63/194) in the sample. Although 13 per cent of these children were fostered, soldiers and their wives were the least likely of all adults to serve as guardians of foster children or orphans. Soldiers’ children who were less than 18 years old were on average under 8 years old. Only 57 per cent of soldiers’ children under 18 years old (36/63) were old enough to attend school. Soldiers’ children were the most likely of all children to be in school, due in part to their younger age demographic (although 10 per cent of school aged children of soldiers were not in school).

25. There were no children or partners of female soldiers interviewed in this study.

26. Unless otherwise stated, the data presented is based on interviews conducted during multi-day immersions with households rather than the soldiers’ interviews. This is because longer exposure to households, compared to the shorter and more formal interviews with soldiers, was likely to yield more accurate information, as well as providing opportunities for verification through observation.

27. Curley, Elders, Shades, and Women, 169.

28. Curley, Elders, Shades, and Women, 90.

29. Some soldiers underreported their actual number of wives (and ex-wives). Four ‘wives’ said they were formally unmarried and were instead cohabitating with a soldier. Three were separated from previous husbands and another had been abandoned.

30. The soldiers who had been married to these women, however, refused to be tested for HIV and had since remarried. At least one wife was now HIV+.

31. The other wives were either married to soldiers who did not give us permission to visit their families, or were living outside of Lango at the time of the study (e.g., in barracks in central or southern Uganda). There was one exception. We visited one soldier's wife in Lango but it became apparent that she was abused by him and was facing exceptionally difficult times. After informally interviewing her for an afternoon, I decided not to impose the research team on her and her children.

32. We did not visit these locations because the focus was on Lango.

33. Note, for example, the disproportionately high number of security forces-related families in the Anai Ober area of Lira town.

34. For humanitarian issues, see Wendo, ‘Northern Uganda Humanitarian’; Emry, ‘No Safe Place to Call Home’; Anderson, Sewankambo, and Vandergrift, ‘Pawns of Politics’. For critiques of ‘traditional’ justice, see Allen, Trial Justice; Dolan, ‘Inventing Traditional Leadership?’.

35. For micro-cleavages and their interplay with supralocal dynamics in conflict, see Kalyvas, ‘The Ontology’.

36. Beall, ‘Living in the Present, Investing in the Future’, 83.

37. Moorehead, Dunant's Dream.

38. Chronic, communicable diseases are seen by the UPDF as a serious threat to its armed forces. At a passing out of soldiers at Jinja, on 30 March 2006, UPDF Brigadier Kayemba noted: ‘The army was losing more soldiers to HIV/AIDS than the battle front.’ Abubaker and Kairu, ‘HIV+ Soldiers Won't Be Trained’. Much of the literature on HIV/AIDS in northern Uganda discusses dramatic risks of infection (e.g., abduction of children, rape by LRA, militia or UPDF personnel and transactional sex in IDP camps). See Westerhaus et al ., ‘Framing HIV Prevention Discourse’. Aside from living in IDP camps, however, soldiers’ wives and children faced more subtle risks of infection that were directly related to women's inability to negotiate condom use with their soldier-husbands. HIV/AIDS testing in the UPDF is not mandatory and many soldiers refused to use condoms with their wives, including those soldiers who had already lost partners to HIV/AIDS.