90% OF POPULATION IN NORTHERN UGANDA SHELTERING IN 180 REFUGEE CAMPS - 1.6m have fled their homes - 30,000 abducted as slaves and soldiers

Re the never-ending war between Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army, the following extracts and photos [via Associated Press] have been copied, with thanks, from a recent post at Demagogue:

As the world focuses on the crisis in Darfur, three times as many people have been suffering for many more years in two other conflicts involving the Sudanese government.

And, while money has flowed in to help the 2 million people in Sudan's Darfur region who have been caught in 18 months of civil war, few funds are available for the 6 million Sudanese and Ugandans affected by related conflicts that have lasted more than 18 years.

A UN official recently returned from a trip to northern Uganda, where more than 1.6 million people have fled their homes because of an 18-year-old civil war between government forces and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army.

The rebels, operating from bases in the southern region of neighboring Sudan, rarely try to hold territory in Uganda and concentrate their attacks on civilians. The group has abducted more than 30,000 women and children to use as servants, concubines and child soldiers, according to UNICEF.

As a result, more than 90 percent of the population in northern Uganda has taken shelter in 180 refugee camps.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Ugandan government supported the southern-based Sudan People's Liberation Army in its battle with the Sudanese government in Khartoum. Sudan's government, in return, backed the Lord's Resistance Army, a cult-like group that has little contact with the outside world.

UNICEF reports that more than 12,000 children have been abducted by the LRA since June 2002. [Photos from the AP]

Two young boy's get treated for severe burn wounds in the Lira hospital in northern Uganda, Monday, Feb 23, 2004, after a massacre believed to be committed by the Lord's Resistance Army rebel group in the Barlonyo camp 26 kilometers north of the town that killed at least 200 people. (AP Photo/Karel Prinsloo)

A Ugandan soldier walk past a charred body, Monday, Feb 23, 2004, in the Barlonyo camp 26 kilometers north of the Lira in northen Uganda after a massacre believed to be committed by the Lord's Resistance Army rebel group in which at least 200 people were killed. (AP Photo/Karel Prinsloo)