Letters from the African Heartland: A Peacekeeper's Message.

Since the 2050's, the fight for who will control Uganda's primary export, coffee, has been quietly simmering under the surface of an emerging economy. However, with recent events in Uganda, primarily concerning the fall of the market value of coffee, the fight for who will control a majority of Uganda's prized crop has grown vicious. Three years ago, at the 2107 meeting of the L5 (The 5 leading nations in the world: USA, EU, India, China, Russian Federation) it was decided that a peacekeeping force would be sent to Uganda to assist in the re-stabilizing of a region that has seen so much violence since open battle commenced in 2102. When my international force arrived on the ground here, we were shocked how much the coffee crop meant to the people living with the frightening situation here and just how desperate everyone was for a workable compromise. Between the outbreak of conflict here and today, three main sides have developed in the fight for this precious natural resource. The Ugandan Coffee Alliance (UCA) has massive crops in the south and west of the country and their stocks of coffee have been largely unharmed by the conflict because of the ability of the UCA to hire protection services. The second group, the African Coffee Interests Coalition (ACIC) controls coffee harvests in the north f the nation and has had their interests only moderately harmed by the turmoil in the industry. The third group, the Ugandan Free Growers of Coffee Association (UFGCA) supports independent growers with a fair trade and human rights focus to the work done on their plantations in the center of the nation. While the UCA and ACIC can both afford to hire professionals to protect their crops and are suspected of hiring mercenaries to destroy the competition's crop, the UFGCA is left to its own devices and has had much difficulty in raising any good coffee or even keeping their plantations open so harsh have been the retaliations against these individual growers by their multinational opponents. The International Peacekeeping Force (IPF) has accomplished much since arriving, but the goal of Ugandan stability hasn't yet been achieved. My message to all citizens of the civilized world is: don't let the politicians remove the IPF from Uganda and destroy what stability and human rights they have now.