Plea From Uganda

Human Rights Watch visited our offices last week with a delegation of proud, troubled clergy and humanitarian workers from Uganda. The group has been haunting the halls of Congress and the State Department and making the rounds of editorial boards throughout North America in a bid to stop the carnage in northern Uganda.

After 18 years of civil war, between the government of Uganda and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army, the situation has devolved into chaos. The LRA has abducted 22,000 children and turned them into unwilling hostage-soldiers. Another 20,000 youths flee the abductors nightly, running from the cities to hide in rural churches, hospitals, and stores until daybreak, then returning home.

While the rebels deserve condemnation, the government at Kampala has botched peace efforts by sending disastrously mixed messages. A tentative amnesty offered to the rebels, for instance, was recently followed up by an all-out military campaign, Operation Iron Fist, that has displaced more than a million non-combatants while failing to rout the LRA.

This looks like a situation in which America can do good at relatively small cost. The pro-peace camp is asking Washington to use its diplomatic and moral clout to demand a halt to the child abductions and get an effective peace process started. Over the last two decades, America has learned the hard way that turning a blind eye to instability in places like Uganda and Sudan can provide the shadowy confusion in which terrorists can operate and global epidemics like HIV/AIDS can take root. A diplomatic effort now could save America from much higher costs in the future.