Foreign Policy magazine has released its 2007 Failed States Index, which ranks "177 states in order of their vulnerability to violent internal conflict and societal deterioration." Uganda was ranked 15th, right after Burma and before Bangladesh. Uganda's poor ranking can largely be attributed to the continued instability and displacement in northern Uganda. Read more at the Failed States Index.

Security forces in southern Sudan are in desperate need for training and funding to protect civilians against attacks by LRA rebels, World Vision said in a report yesterday. Civilians and officials in Western Equatoria state, where LRA rebels had been staying under a Sudanese-brokered truce, have blamed the fighters for looting, raping, killing and abducting children in the area. The LRA deny any attacks or abductions, but local residents have no doubt who is to blame. "They took six girls up to now," said Zachariah Nzari, a tribal chief in the area close to the LRA assembly site Ri-Kwangba. The report urges the local government should clear bushes alongside roads immediately to increase safety and support the local economy. Read more at Reuters.

An IRIN News special report features Nimule, a South Sudanese town on the border of Uganda that has prospered through its trading and cultural relationships with neighboring Uganda. However, continued LRA presence in the area has displaced whole villages, slowing the region’s recovery from decades of civil war that ended in 2005. The LRA has also complicated efforts to allow returning Sudanese refugees to reclaim to their homes and fields. Read more at IRIN News.

Carolyn Davis writes a moving portrait in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer of one young girl who has courageously struggled to deal with the legacy of war in northern Uganda. Davis, a longtime advocate for northern Uganda, tells the story of Jennifer, a young girl who suffered severe injuries during an LRA attack about seven years ago that also killed her father. Carolyn met Jennifer when she visited Uganda in 2004 and facilitated Jennifer’s recent trip to the US to undergo surgery to help heal her injuries. Read more at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Former LRA commander Onen Kamdulu was discharged from hospital yesterday where he had been admitted with multiple injuries as a result of an attack by unknown people. Kamdulu, who is also a key witness in the treason case against opposition political leader Kizza Besigye, said he was attacked on Monday night. The investigations by the Police and army have not yielded any results yet. Kamdulu was for several years the LRA commander in charge of military operations. He surrendered in February 2005 and has been granted amnesty under the Amnesty Act. Read more at The New Vision.

LRA violence – or the paralyzing fear of it – continues to disrupt life in southern Sudan. Attacks by LRA rebels, who have been active in southern Sudan since 1994, are hampering efforts to rebuild the region after decades of civil war ended in 2005. Despite a dramatic decrease in rebel attacks on civilians in southern Sudan since peace talks between the LRA and the Ugandan government began last July, fear of renewed hostilities has meant that fields are not cultivated and whole villages are abandoned. Abductions and attacks by the “tong-tong”, as the LRA are known in southern Sudan, have also provided cover for bandits to act with relative impunity. Read more at IRIN News.

Three Karimojong cattle-raiders were killed in Nakapiripirit district on Thursday, the UPDF has reported. In the last four months, the UPDF has recovered a total of 1,179 illicit guns in Karamoja as part of its forcible disarmament campaign. Meanwhile, gunmen in Karamoja ambused a convoy of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) trucks earlier this week, killing a driver. This led the agency to temporarily suspend operations in the area. The agency started distributing food to half a million people in Karamoja, an area hit by a third drought in six years, in January. The region is the poorest in Uganda and has a single rainy season from June to August; almost 70 percent of its inhabitants, nomadic pastoralists, receive aid. Read more at IRIN News.