Inside West Nile

Book excerpt: West Nile is best known as the home of Uganda's notoriously violent dictator, Idi Amin. But the area's association with violence goes back much further, through the colonial era, when the district was significantly under-developed in comparison with most of Uganda, and to a pre-colonial past characterised by slave-raiding and ivory poaching. This book examines the relationships between these pasts and the present, between violence, narrative and memory in the former West Nile district. It draws on archival research and ethnographic fieldwork in the district capital, Arua town, during the late 1990s, when a low-intensity conflict between the government and local rebels became embroiled in wars spilling over from nearby borders with Sudan and the DRC. The book contributes to current debates in political anthropology on issues such as border areas, the local state, and the nature of the 'post-colonial'.