plays havoc with the subjectivities of people in war, indeed it silences them.2 By focusing attention on some actors and diverting it from others it simultaneously discounts the importance of historical process and the possibility of ‘external’ involvement in and responsibility for the state of affairs in a given place. Its function is thus exculpatory (in that it casts silence on the sins of the past and present), justificatory (in that it justifies particular patterns of intervention), and politically oppressive (in that subjectivities are silenced, knowledge gaps created, and wars depoliticised). In short, the discourse on internal war (and the representations of northern Uganda which reflect it) has similar mechanisms and functions to those on good governance, democracy and development. Indeed it can be regarded as an extension of them.
To create a resilient counter-narrative to such mainstream discourses requires a firm empirical basis. This has been amply demonstrated by a number of fine-grained context-based analyses of particular conflict-related situations. The importance of external involvement in the dynamics of supposedly internal situations resonates throughout these readings, whether in the political economies of assistance (Harrell-Bond 1986, Keen 1994, De Waal 1997) and war (Berdal and Malone, 2000), or in the de facto cultural and political connections between very local dynamics and wider social and political processes (Girling 1960, Allen 1991, 1994, 1998, Richards 1996, Behrend 1999, Finnström 2003, Keen 2005). Work on the constructed nature of war and ethnicity (Jabri 1996, Turton 1997), as well as broader ranging political economy analyses linking ‘new wars’ with processes of globalisation (Kaldor, 2001) and global governance (Duffield, 2001) offer further support for such perspectives.
From a more psychological angle, Zur's work on Guatemala (1993, 1998), and Mamdani's work on the genocide in Rwanda in which he highlights the importance of understanding the complex interplay between a ‘victim-consciousness’ and a perpetrator role (1997b), offer important analyses of how ordinary people are drawn into and contribute to the dynamics of a conflict situation. Mamdani's work on the truth and reconciliation processes in South Africa also suggests the imperative of considering not just the visible perpetrators, but also the indirect beneficiaries of their acts (1997a, 1997b).
Gilligan, having spent twenty-five years working in and observing the American penal system, combines a psychoanalytical perspective with a public health agenda and a socio-political analysis to create an epidemiology of violence. He isolates humiliation and shame – notably in relation to men's sense of their masculinity – as the ‘pathogens’ causing violence. He suggests that perpetrators of violence have themselves generally been the victims of extreme forms of physical and psychological violence which weaken their self-worth and make them vulnerable to processes of shaming and humiliation. He argues that a penal system which punishes the violence born of humiliation by systematically ensuring the perpetrators are subjected to further humiliation and shame might appear self-defeating and counter-productive, but is in fact the result of deliberate choices made by the ruling classes. The latter wish to ensure that the lower classes (both black and white) turn the shame-induced violence of their social position against themselves and each other rather than against the ruling classes (Gilligan, 2000). While Gilligan's work is not directly addressed at the ‘new wars’, the importance of humiliation in the perpetuation of conflict – and linked to that, the withholding of dignity and recognition – is increasingly recognised (see, for example, Keen, 2005), though rarely addressed in policy or practice.
A reading of this more empirically based literature highlights the way in which reductive accounts draw attention away from the systemic dimensions and linkages of today's conflicts and violence, and the consequent involvement of multiple actors at all levels. It reinforces the importance of building a picture both of local involvement, and of the true extent of external involvement in supposedly internal dynamics. There is considerable power in the different ways in which Mamdani, Zur and Gilligan are all able to integrate historical, economic, political and socio-psychological factors into their analyses. These readings also underline the value of taking a ‘bottom up’ starting point which ensures that the subjectivities which are silenced by mainstream discourses are heard and inform the counter-narrative.
It was such ‘bottom up’ views which ultimately prompted me to explore the relationships between the situation in northern Uganda and the literature on torture. I was repeatedly struck while working there by how often people referred to what was happening to them as ‘torture’, and as a form of persecution. Many would describe the ‘protected villages’ as ‘concentration camps’, and even talk of a ‘genocide’. Equally, it was very common for people to say ‘we are all traumatised’, and this language of ‘trauma’ had become common currency by the time I was in northern Uganda. UNOCHA, for example, argued that the LRA's practice of abduction had ‘profoundly traumatized the entire population’ (Weeks, 2002: 28), and a consultancy report for NURP II reported that:
…the districts of Gulu and Kitgum were found to be the most affected…It was established that there was only a variation of intensity, otherwise in one way or the other, everybody was found to be traumatised (COWI, 1999; 68).
Initially I dismissed such usages, thinking they were due to English being a second language, or to rhetorical exaggeration in the interests of making a political point. After all, there is nothing unusual about the use of protected villages as a counter-insurgency strategy. Similar strategies were used by the Sandinistas in the mountains of northern Nicaragua, by FRELIMO in the fight against RENAMO in Mozambique, and perhaps most uncomfortably as a point of comparison, by Ian Smith in Rhodesia.3 Moreover, when I asked what people meant by this use of ‘torture’, it turned out to refer to anything from various degrees of beating through being unlawfully detained under gruelling circumstances, to extreme violations such as the mutilations of the LRA. Effectively a whole range of abusive behaviours were being put under the rubric of torture. There seemed little connection between this broad picture of torture, much of which could be seen happening to the population at large in their daily lives, and the more conventional notions of torture as something which sets out to destroy targeted individuals in places well-hidden from the public gaze. And, given that there were instances of abuse which clearly did qualify as torture,4 it seemed there was a danger of diluting the force of the term by seeking to apply it more broadly.
Article 1 of The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, defines torture as
any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.5
Although this definition puts an explicit emphasis on the intentionality of perpetrators, and appears to narrow the possible range of perpetrators to public officials or other persons acting in official capacity, it is in many other respects a broad and wide-reaching one. The phrase ‘for such purposes as’ suggests that while obtaining information, punishment, intimidation and coercion are major objectives of torture, they are not exclusive. The inclusion of suffering ‘for any reason based on discrimination of any kind’ makes the possibilities even broader. And while Article 1 talks of pain or suffering inflicted ‘on a person’ by ‘a public official or other person acting in an official capacity’, in other words implies a focus on individuals, Article 3 of the Convention, which prohibits the refoulement of an asylum seeker ‘where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture’, defines substantial grounds as including ‘flagrant or mass violations of human rights’ (emphasis added).
I therefore increasingly wondered if there were indeed parallels to be drawn between what happens to individuals in torture chambers and what was happening to the population living in the war zone,
