From the diaries by susanhbu. Sirocco’s diary is the first of ten of the most overlooked stories in the world. Sign up here to cover another ignored story.

Every day at sunset in northern Uganda, a unique phenomenon is seen: Up to 40,000 children leave their rural homes for the towns, spending the night under streetlights or in empty buildings. Known as ‘the Night Commuters,’ they are afraid of monsters coming to carry them off in the night. Their fear is justified.

Indeed, the ‘monsters’ used to be children just like themselves. Now they obey Joseph Kony, a self-styled mystic claiming to embody the Holy Spirit, wield magical powers, and wage a righteous war against the government of Uganda. During two decades of warfare, his shadowy slave militia – the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) – has abducted up to 30,000 children down to 7 years of age, forcing them to maim and kill other children or their own families, or to join the harems of its officers. Such is the nature of the world’s arguably most bizarre and destructive war, and according to the UN, one of its ten most under-reported stories.
UgandaIn 2003, the UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland called it the most ignored of all humanitarian disasters. It has since deteriorated further. A truce between the Kampala government and the rebels expired on February 22, the LRA soon resuming attacks on civilians. “In the last few months we have seen a significant rise in violence,” Oxfam country chief Emma Naylor said on Tuesday in connection with a session of the UN Security Council to address the crisis. She summed up the situation thus:

The Lord’s Resistance Army has committed horrific atrocities. In turn, the military strategy employed by the Government of Uganda is not protecting its civilians; instead we are seeing increased suffering and numbers of civilian casualties. We need a renewal of commitment from all sides to finding a peaceful solution to this conflict.

Such a need has long been felt in the war-ravaged region. Since August 2002 the two sides have taken turns rejecting each other’s terms. Recent talks stalled when the LRA’s negotiator defected.

KonyPart of the problem is that Kony is a rebel without a cause, lacking any clear policy objectives aside from regional self-rule based on the Ten Commandments. What began 19 years ago as a struggle on behalf of the northern Acholi people has turned into a war against that very people – Kony’s own. The kidnapping strategy, pursued since the early 1990s, both resulted from and reinforced a failure of voluntary recruitment. According to Kony, the only real decision-maker in the LRA, it is a legitimate means of forcing the Acholi to fight. However, it seems to have become an end in itself for him and his high command, who maintain a comfortable and relatively risk-free lifestyle with an abundant supply of young sex slaves.

The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)

  • The LRA grew out of an earlier militia, the Holy Spirit Movement. This arose in 1986 to oppose Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Army, which had just ousted the dictator Tito Okello. Led by self-styled prophetess Alice ‘Lakwena’ Auma and pitting magic against modern weapons, it was crushed in 1987. ‘Lakwena’ fled to Kenya where she now lives in a refugee camp.
  • Joseph Kony, the LRA leader, is her nephew. He carries on her strange blend of Christianity and animism, claiming to be guided by spirits and able to divine the future. Like his aunt he professes to represent the Acholi people and fight for theocratic regional self-rule. Now in his forties, he is thought to have between 30 and 100 children with his extensive harem.
  • Kony has also inherited his aunt’s policy of forced recruitment. At least 26,000 children have been abducted into the LRA, mostly during nightly raids on communities. Tied together, they children are marched off to secret bases, carrying loot. They are forced to maim and kill other children and often, parents or siblings; anyone refusing is beaten, hacked, or trampled to death, as are all caught trying to escape. Successful fugitives are severely traumatized and usually carry STDs.
  • Rebels prefer children of 14 to 16 but sometimes abduct ones as young as 7. The fighting age is 10. Officers are recruited among older boys that excel in cruelty, and are entitled to harems of ‘wives’ as young as 12. When reaching their 20s, abductees are generally assimilated into the cult.
  • The LRA has exploited the porous border to Sudan, establishing bases and attacking civilians in the war-torn south. As part of the Sudanese peace settlement, the government in Khartoum pledges to end its supplies to the militia. However, the latter is still estimated at thousands of fighters (though the UPDF puts the number much lower) and has lately expanded its operations in Uganda outside of Acholiland.
  • The war has cost tens of thousands of lives so far. Nonetheless, surrendering rebels have largely been welcomed back to their communities upon confessing and undergoing rituals of purification. In a spirit of forgiveness, many Acholis reject a current government-prompted investigation by the International Criminal Court, fearing that arrest warrants will discourage the rebels from giving up.

But also perpetuating the disaster is the government of President Yoweri Museveni with its preference for a military solution. Two weeks before a peace agreement was to be signed in 1994, it reverted to the use of force. In December 2002 it ordered the rebels to gather in a designated area, causing them to withdraw an offer to talk. And two years later, when they requested more time to consult on a draft, it launched a new offensive.

Despite constant vows of a final victory, escalation by the Ugandan People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) invariably triggers increased attacks against civilians. For instance, in July 2002 the army chased the LRA deep into southern Sudan where it is based. This ‘Operation Iron Fist’ accomplished only the butchery of Sudanese civilians by the hundreds as the rebels were pushed north. Subdividing into smaller units, they later trickled back over the border, upscaling their activities. In February 2004, after Museveni boasted another ‘routing’ of the rebels, 200 of them appeared at a displacement camp near Lira and murdered more than 300 civilians, immolating families alive inside their grass-thatched huts.

So why is the army so ineffective? One reason is the sheer challenge of fighting agile child soldiers in heavily forested terrain. Another is the Sudanese government’s backing of the LRA since the mid-1990s in retaliation for Uganda’s support of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM). Not least, many Acholis are wary of cooperating with the army, knowing well that this might contribute to the slaughter of their stolen children. And with 12,000 abductions between 2002 and 2004 alone, everyone has kin on the other side. The tragic dilemma is that 90% of the war criminals are also victims.

Children’s tales

Selected testimonies of former child abductees from the Human Rights Watch report The Scars of Death (1997).

Thomas, fourteen:

In our village, we realized the rebels were coming, and my whole family hid in the bush at night. At dawn, we thought they were gone, and I went back to the compound to fetch food. But they were still there, and they took me. It was very fast. The rest of my family was still in hiding. The rebels had already abducted about a hundred children, and they had looted a lot of foodstuff. But they would just give you only very little food to keep you going.

Stella, fifteen:

On the third day a little girl tried to escape, and they made us kill her. They went to collect some big pieces of firewood. Then they kicked her and jumped on her, and they made us each beat her at least once with the big pieces of wood. They said, “You must beat and beat and beat her.” She was bleeding from the mouth. Then she died. Then they made us lie down and they beat us with fifteen strokes each, because they said we had known she would try to escape.

James, fourteen:

Every day, each rebel had to get abductees. Our team’s major work was to abduct other children. They would have contests to see who could get the most captives. We worked a lot. The abductees were made to dig, making granaries. They told us we were fighting to overthrow the government, but we didn’t do fighting. When we saw government soldiers, we just ran.

Timothy, fourteen:

We walked very long distances. All I could think about was home and being with my family. Sometimes there were helicopter attacks [by government forces]. I was injured: my skin and my chest and arms were burned during an attack. Many children were killed, and others lost legs from bombs.

Catherine, seventeen:

We would walk through villages where the civilians had fled . . . we would sleep in deserted villages, and eat and stay in the houses. Sometimes there were villagers who had stayed behind . . . the rebels would accuse them [of supporting the government]. One day, they found a man riding a bike. They just cut off his foot with an ax. When his wife came out of the house, they told her to eat the foot. I turned away not to see what happened.

Sarah, sixteen:

In Sudan they gave us training for three weeks. Kony sent a message to send the young ones to him in Palataka. Kony wanted those who had been in schools to be trained as nurses, to give first aid to the rebels. I was one of those. But I was also trained to shoot, and how to put together guns and handle the weapons–antipersonnel mines, antitank mines, SMG, LMF, PKM, mortars. The weapons were brought by Arabs in uniforms.

Sarah, seventeen:

After the military training, I was given to a man called Otim. There were five women given to one man. The man I was given to was very rude to me: he thought I wanted to leave him and escape. He beat me many times with sticks. He thought I wanted to escape. Now I’m going to be a mother soon.

I don’t want to be a mother at this age. But it happened and I must accept this.

Thomas, fourteen:

At times when the war was coming some would be selected to go fight. You were just selected at random. It did not matter if you were young or old, or if you had a gun or not, you just had to go fight.

Going to the battle you must clap your hands and sing. There are many songs: some are prayer songs, some soldier songs. Some are both. For an example: “God, God, God, you come and help us, we have prepared to come to you.” If you fail to clap your hands while you sing, a bullet will hit your hand. If you fail to sing, a bullet will hit your mouth. If you fail to walk always forward, a bullet will hit your leg.

We were told not to take cover. When you started fighting, as soon as you would fall down to take cover, the bullets would cut you up. If you stood strong you would be protected and there would be no need to retreat.

Stephen, seventeen:

It happens like this: Kony himself, he says he works with the Holy Spirit, and it talks to him, and he translates to the soldiers. So some days he says: “Today, you must burn the earth and kill the people.” That is the reason the rebels make so much destruction.

(…)

We used to question ourselves: this man, Kony, why is he sending us to go kill our brothers, our sisters, our fathers and mothers, to burn their houses, eat their food? Why are we having to do this? But there was no answer at all. We cannot see an answer to that question.

Some contend that the government actually wants the conflict to simmer on indefinetely. The British publication Oxford Analytica noted earlier this year:

Should the fighting stop, the government would be unable to continue resisting donor pressure to scale down the size of its armed forces and the budget that goes with it. Army commanders would also have to cut back on their lavish lifestyles and ability to milk the military budget by pocketing the salaries of ‘ghost soldiers’ and other forms of corruption.

Such allegations are not new. In a 2002 article in The Parliamentarian, former member of Uganda’s parliament J.L. Okello-Okello claimed: “The budget of the ministry of Defense is always blown out in the name of insurgency in the north, but then the bigger portion of the budget is used to fight wars elsewhere.” Presumably this would be the DR Congo, where Uganda has been heavily involved and is believed to still sponsor warlords for commercial gain.

Whether or not these suspicions are well-founded, the Kampala government undeniably shares responsibility for the desperate plight of the north. Up to 2 million, over 90% of the regional population, are relegated to displacement camps ‘for their own protection.’ Starting in 1996, the UPDF have reportedly destroyed entire villages and killed civilians found outside the camps. And the latter are in fact mostly unprotected. As recently as last Thursday, rebels with axes, machetes, and guns killed 14 southwest of Gulu town. There are even accounts of rape and other abuses by the UPDF itself. Humanitarian conditions in the over 200 camps are dire, says UNICEF.

Photo: Francesco Zizola, 2004

How come this disregard for an entire region? In brief, the governing elite has its power base elsewhere. In colonial times, the Brits drew their army from the north while otherwise favoring the south. After the 1962 independence, the north dominated through military dictators: Amin, Obote, Okello, and Okello Lutwa. However, when Museveni in 1986 seized power after a five-year war, the south took over politically as well. Itself arising from resistance to this transition, the LRA is possibly seen by Kampala as useful for restraining the north. Anyhow, little love is lost between Museveni and Acholiland, where the vast majority is destitute and the great agricultural potential remains largely untapped. Its 12% HIV prevalence rate is nearly double the rest of Uganda.

MuseveniEvidently it is time for a policy of reconciliation, economic redistribution, and political inclusion. Above all, President Museveni – now maneuvering for constitutional change to allow himself a third term after his second one expires next year – should be forced by his Western allies to give peace a chance. However, the most important patron of his regime is the USA, whose Bush administration seems to favor a military approach, having defined the LRA as a target in the ‘Global War on Terror.’ It is no secret that Uganda is receiving arms, training, and intelligence to combat the LRA under a $100 million US-East Africa counter-terrorism programme announced in 2003. And while a troika of Britain, The Netherlands, and Norway is trying to revive the peace process, that appears to be the extent of Washington’s involvement. The International Crisis Group recently criticized its passivity, urging it to push for:

…a comprehensive settlement that includes guarantees for Kony and other LRA commanders, international monitoring in all aspects of implementation to counter corrosive distrust that could potentially spoil the deal, and a peace dividend to help rebuild war-ravaged communities.

Unlikely though this now seems, it is probably still the best hope for Uganda’s forgotten children.