Lord’s Resistance Army sows terror

Since Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni came to power in 1986, Uganda has been the envy of many developing nations, achieving high economic growth rates and posting encouraging social development indicators, including stemming the upward trend of HIV/Aids infection rates in the country.

But these indicators are primarily a reflection of the development of the southern and central areas of Uganda. In the north, a very different situation prevails.

For the last 17 years, residents of the northern Acholi subregion (comprising Gulu, Kitgum, and Pader districts) have lived under the terror of killings and abductions by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA); an insurgent group, whose leader Joseph Kony is seeking to replace Museveni’s government with one ruled by the biblical Ten Commandments.

The LRA insurgency has made children its main target in the war against Museveni’s government, and has committed some of its worst atrocities against civilians. The group routinely attacks villages in ‘Acholiland’, killing civilians and abducting children to be forced into its ranks or to be used as sex slaves for commanders. Yet, due to Uganda’s overall macroeconomic successes, the LRA insurgency remains an under-reported conflict, and its toll on the Acholi society has continued to be underestimated.

The horrors of captivity

Children who have managed to escape from LRA captivity tell horror tales of the extreme physical and psychological violence with which they were initiated into the ranks of the rebel army.

Peter Ochan (14) was abducted while asleep and made to walk through the night and the next day, before he and other abducted children were finally allowed to rest. During the subsequent ten months he spent in LRA captivity, the clubbing of children to death by rebel commanders became a daily ritual in the bush.

Ochan, now accommodated at the Gulu Support the Children Organisation (Gusco), a rehabilitation centre set up to help children returning from captivity, tells of how he and others were forced to carry the decomposing body of a boy killed for trying to escape.

“We carried the body on our shoulders everywhere we went. It was smelling very badly. We were told it was part of our training. The commander then told us to scoop out the brains from what was left of the body and show around to others,” he said.

Sixteen-year-old Tony Ulanya was abducted when he was only ten and stayed in Kitgum district for only three months, after which he was made to walk to southern Sudan in a group of some 300 abductees, where he was forced to undergo military training. Of the three hundred abductees, only about 50 survived. The rest died of diseases or lack of food, or were murdered by rebel commanders, he says.

Ulanya has met Kony several times and describes the rebel leader as a “possessed” man.

“He would preach to us on Sundays for many hours. He always told us that he spoke with the angel who told him that he would one day be the president of Uganda and the young people he has abducted, and the children born in captivity would take over the country. Sometimes he leaves people and stays on his own for a long time,” he said.

Opportunities to escape from captivity are extremely rare for many of the abductees. Many do not dare attempt escape, fearing reprisals against themselves or their families should they be re-abducted. A few have managed to do so when under intense attacks by the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), but many are killed in the crossfire.

It is even more difficult for child mothers to return because as ‘wives’ of commanders they are much more closely watched. Their movement is also restricted by the need to care for their children, who cannot survive weeks of walking in the bush with little food or water.

Patrick Komakech, now at Kitgum Concerned Women Association (Kicwa) — another rehabilitation centre — was lucky to escape two weeks after his abduction from school in Kitgum early in 2003. But many children who tried to do so were recaptured and killed as the rest watched, as a “lesson on what would happen to us if we tried to run away”.

“Two boys tried to escape. They were beaten to death with sticks. A child whose feet were too swollen to walk any further was tied up and left behind to die. He was left there and told to eat soil,” Komakech said.

Rehabilitation

Those who run the rehabilitation centres for returning abductees such as Gusco and Kicwa say most of the children who escape are often emaciated, weak from diseases, and severely traumatised.

In the bush, good food like chicken and goats is reserved for commanders, while children only eat sorghum or wild fruits.

“In Sudan, we had to kill people, steal their animals and take stored grains in order to survive,” Komakech said.

Returning abductees are required to first report to the Child Protection Units set up within the UPDF, before being taken to rehabilitation centres such as Gusco and Kicwa. While under the control of the UPDF, many said they had been under pressure to join the army.

Fifteen-year-old Denis Nyero, who was rescued by the army, said he had refused to give in to the pressure, but many boys who were with him at the child protection centre had agreed to remain behind and join the army.

The rehabilitation centres are, however, just a temporary respite for returning abductees. Once return to their families has been facilitated, the children continue to remain under constant risk of re-abduction, which would mean almost certain execution at the hands of the LRA.

There are also children in the centres who were born in LRA captivity, and have no parents or relatives to care for them because they were either orphaned or separated from their parents in the bush.

One positive aspect of the human tragedy in the Acholi subregion is that the community usually welcomes child returnees, despite the atrocities they may have committed against their own people. Even where children’s parents are dead, the extended families will always accept them back without attaching much stigma to them, according to the Kicwa centre manager.

“I do not remember of any children who have been rejected by their families,” said Christopher Arwai, who heads the Kicwa centre.

The problem of acceptance has occurred mostly with child mothers, because relatives are often not willing to support their children, according to Julius, a programme manager at Gusco.

“Our major problem is with the child mothers who often find it difficult to get support from their families. When they are with two or three children, they become an extra burden for the families,” he said.

Night commuters

In an attempt to find some improved security, thousands of people from surrounding villages walk long distances at night to shelter in the safety of Kitgum and Gulu towns, where they occupy public spaces such as churches and schools. It is estimated that some 8 500 children commute every night from their villages to stay overnight in Gulu town.

The phenomenon of night commuting is a direct consequence of the fear which the LRA has brought to the community. On some nights, the available shelters are overstretched, forcing most commuters to sleep on pavements and verandas.

“We come here out of fear. Our parents do not want us to be abducted. But we are suffering. We only eat one meal at home. We don’t get any supper,” one child commuter said.

In Pader, parents have been sending their children to neighbouring Kotido District in the hope they would be looked after.

“This illustrates the kind of desperation here. Parents sending their children off to another district where they have no relatives. We have never seen this before,” said Mads Oyen, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) child protection officer in Uganda.

Operation Iron Fist

News of the launch of a major military operation to eliminate the LRA, following an agreement signed between the Sudanese and the Ugandan government in March last year, initially raised hopes that the insurgency would be brought to an end and normal life would return for the 1,4-million residents of Acholiland.

The operation, code-named “Operation Iron Fist”, prompted humanitarian agencies to make contingency plans to receive an estimated 3 000 children who were to be rescued by the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) from LRA rear bases in southern Sudan.

It was not until June, when Kony’s group sneaked back into northern Uganda and intensified attacks on civilians, that it became clear Operation Iron Fist had not succeeded in its mission. The group intensified its attacks on villages and camps for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), killing and abducting even more children.

A child abductee who was in the bush under LRA control when Operation Iron Fist www.updfironfist.co.ug got under way reported how Kony had ordered the rebels to step up attacks and kill as many civilians as they could.