 It's my great pleasure now to welcome to our conversation about presentations here at the conference Stephen Tokawase, who's seconded to the Eastern Africa Standby Force from the Uganda People's Defence Forces. Thank you so much for agreeing to talk to us. You've just given a presentation as part of a panel on preventing conflict in Africa and you've talked about lessons that you've learned about stopping insurgent groups within your society of Uganda, particularly the Lord's Resistance Army, but my understanding is that really back since the 70s you have had many different insurgencies. I'd like to focus, if I may, on the lessons that you've learned about how to stop insurgency and rebuild a society. One of the lessons you spoke about was the importance of good relationships with the population, with the people, protecting the people in camps and communicating with the people. Could you explain that and what you did in Uganda? Yes, thank you. It is the government policy, it is our military policy to train the soldiers in good relations with the public, pro-people attitude. So all our training, they include the pro-people training, political education. In the political education each soldier is taught how to relate with the people, to respect the people, to know that we are soldiers of the people. They are our masters, we are there to serve them. So when you take that attitude in the counterinsurgency tariffs, you find the population, we are running off from the rebels coming to the government side, which is good. So that's how we protected them and that's how we managed to end the insurgency. So it's about building a trust relationship with the population. You mentioned internally displaced persons camps, because the Lord's Resistance Army, for example, were very violent to the people, they mutilated the people. Tell us about those camps and how you tried to protect the people and build that trust. The camps were there to, because the Rogers' army was abducting people from villages. They forced them to join the, those who refused, they killed them, they cut their lips. So this would run away, run from their villages, and eventually it was necessary to put them in, at least a good, easier place to protect. So that's why in the camps, the rebels would not have access to go to kill the people and to be easier to protect them. How long did you have to keep people in camps to protect them? Well, until the war ended, that's how the camps and how they were demobilized people, went back to their villages after the war. This conference is focused on transitions. So when you're in that period of transition, from the people leaving the camps and going back to their villages, what lessons have you learned there about what helps the society to rebuild, to rebuild the economy and so on? The government was very active. They gave special treatment to the war area. They gave special funds like the Northern Uganda Reconstruction Program and other programs. So the government puts in special funds to facilitate this but to return their areas. They provide the people with building material. They have been providing iron sheets to each family to go and build good housing. They have been providing agriculture implements, seeds, tools for agriculture, and now the people are producing their own food in their villages. And the government is constructing roads, schools, hospitals, infrastructure. So all these, they have helped the people to settle. And did the government need international money to help do that? That must be so expensive. We remember in the military, some of those government international relations, I cannot go into them. Another thing you mentioned was the importance of good discipline from the commanders when you're working with your troops. Tell me about the good discipline. How do you train that discipline into people? Okay, the training of the good discipline starts from the recruitment. The process of recruitment in Aimee goes to somebody's village, is vetted by the local administration. So there's a vetting up to anti-recruitment. So from recruitment, they recruit somebody with good discipline. That's one. Two, the training itself is based on tactics and also discipline. Political education is about making a conscious person who is also well-behaved. Then also on top of that, generally, it's education to educate a person to be good. That's how we have good discipline in the army. You also said, though, that insurgents need to be rehabilitated when you're rebuilding a society that's been in this conflict to have a good future. What do you do with the men who have been the insurgents? How do you rehabilitate those people and build them back into the population? You see, there was an Amnesty, which the government gave to the rebels. So that one was one. That is at a higher level than me. They come back. But when they come, some of them who are willing to remain in Aimee are trained and integrated in the army. Others who got the public are given skills to start a new life, a vocational training. So some you would bring into your own army? Some of them were, very many of them were, trained in political education, and they joined the army and they are good. How hard is that? You talked about patriotism and commitment. How hard is it to build that into someone who's been on the other side? But many of them could have been misread, they were ignorant of what they were doing. So human mind can be taught the good and the bad. So if the other side taught them what is bad, for us to teach them what is good, they change. That's very optimistic. They change and they become good. My final question so relates to weapons. You spoke with great passion that it's expensive to build a building or a school or a hospital or a road and it's cheap to blow it up. And you are critical of the people who make profit from the weapons. What needs to happen to people who sell good weapons to people who are destroying societies? What do you want to happen? You see the rebels like RRA, they were using new weapons, new info. Yeah you said they weren't spears, they were new weapons. Yes, they were not old weapons. So it means there is a factory which was supplying them. And I think these factories are aiming at profit, they are not humanitarian. So they should vet their customers. But they may have profit as their motive. So that's what I was saying, they are aiming at profit. I thought they should make guns which would come and protect people. But they are making guns for profit. And so you mentioned the international criminal court and the importance of local courts to hold people to account. Are you saying there should be international rules about who is allowed to buy weapons? Is that something for the United Nations? No, the ICC I did not talk that should determine those who buy weapons. I was talking in relation to the RRA, because it invited the Kony and his commanders. Yes, I did not relate it to the weapons issue. Sorry, thank you for that correction that the International Criminal Court was more about the Lord's Resistance Army and so on. But I'm just wondering, how could we stop arms producers from selling new weapons to rebels? How could we stop them? Because these arms producers, they have judgments of the buyers. I would expect that they verify the buyer. I expect that they sell to national governments. But how do they come to sell to rebels? That should be telling them that if you are selling to a rebel, you are selling to a wrong group. They should limit themselves to selling to national governments, not to any other groups. That one will stop the robots from getting their arms. Thank you so much for giving me time to interview you today. Thank you very, very much. Thank you.