The Lord's Resistance Army

One boy tried to escape, but he was caught. They made him eat a mouthful of red pepper, and five people were beating him. His hands were tied, and then they made us, the other new captives, kill him with a stick. I felt sick. I knew this boy from before. We were from the same village. I refused to kill him and they told me they would shoot me. They pointed a gun at me, so I had to do it. The boy was asking me, "Why are you doing this?" I said I had no choice. After we killed him, they made us smear his blood on our arms. I felt dizzy. There was another dead body nearby, and I could smell the body. I felt so sick. They said we had to do this so we would not fear death and so we would not try to escape.

I feel so bad about the things that I did . . . . It disturbs me so much--that I inflicted death on other people . . . . When I go home I must do some traditional rites because I have killed. I must perform these rites and cleanse myself. I still dream about the boy from my village who I killed. I see him in my dreams, and he is talking to me and saying I killed him for nothing, and I am crying.

- Susan, sixteen

Susan is not speaking of a well known atrocity. She is not talking about the holocaust, apartheid, or slavery. She is speaking about a situation going on right now in this day and age. She is telling the story of her time with the Lord's Resistance Army, a terrorist group operating in Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan.

Timothy tells of his time as well: I was good at shooting. I went for several battles in Sudan. The soldiers on the other side would be squatting, but we would stand in a straight line. The commanders were behind us. They would tell us to run straight into gunfire. The commanders would stay behind and would beat those of us who would not run forward. You would just run forward shooting your gun. I don't know if I actually killed any people, because you really can't tell if you're shooting people or not. I might have killed people in the course of the fighting . . . . I remember the first time I was in the front line. The other side started firing, and the commander ordered us to run towards the bullets. I panicked. I saw others falling down dead around me. The commanders were beating us for not running, for trying to crouch down. They said if we fall down, we would be shot and killed by the soldiers.

In Sudan we were fighting the Dinkas, and other Sudanese civilians. I don't know why we were fighting them. We were just ordered to fight.

In northern Uganda children are trapped in a brutal fight, they find themselves caught between a rebel group called the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government's army. The LRA's main goal is the overthrow of the Ugandan government, but they seem to only attack civilians. They raid villages, loot stores and homes, and rape, mutilate and slaughter civilians unlucky enough to be in their way. The LRA is a terrorist organization that operates with the help of the Sudanese government. The lack of action and resounding silence from the international community is unacceptable. The United States' stance on terrorism remains clear. Yet, the U.S. has done little to deter this group or the countries that support the LRA.

The LRA abducts children and forces them to serve in the Army. The children are made to fight, steal, rape, and kill. The LRA prefers children aged fourteen to sixteen. The boys are used as soldiers; the girls are usually made to be "wives" of higher LRA members. All children are trained to use guns and to march.

Their recruiting techniques are simple, they kidnap whoever they want. They tie the children together, and force them to carry looted goods as they march off. Children who resist are killed. Children who cannot keep up are killed. Children who try to escape are killed. The children are no simply shot, the rebels force the other abducted children to kill, usually with clubs or machetes. Any child who refuses to kill usually is also killed.

According to Rosa Ehrenriech, author of The Scars of Death, "The children are forced to fight both in Uganda and in Sudan. In Sudan, the children are forced to help raid villages for food, and fight against the Sudan's People's Liberation Army. In Uganda, the children are also made to loot villages, fight against the Ugandan government soldiers, and help abduct other children. When the rebels fight against the Ugandan government army, they force the captive children to the front, children who hang back or refuse to fire are beaten or killed by the rebels, while those who run forward may be mown down by government bullets."

While the children are the most affected, they are not the only ones to suffer. The rebel attacks have ruined Northern Uganda, destroying farming, and leaving education and healthcare in shambles. "Hundreds of village schools have been burned, and scores of health clinics have been raided by rebels desperate to get their hands on medicine. As a result, Northern Uganda today faces an acute humanitarian crisis. The two northern districts of Gulu and Kitgum, the homeland of the Acholi people, have been the hardest hit; the violence and instability have displaced more than 200,000 northern Ugandans from their rural homes." [Ehrenreich]

As a result of the displacement, the Ugandan government created "protected camps" near Ugandan Army bases. Tens of thousands have set up in these camps, but lack of food and sanitation has made the people vulnerable to disease and starvation. The Ugandan government does not have the resources to deal with the growing threat of illness. In recent times the camps have become targets for LRA raids as well.

The begging of this conflict starts with the religious traditions of the Acholi people who inhabit northern Uganda. During the period of British Colonization, the British employed mostly southerners in civil service, people form the north, mainly Acholi, were mostly recruited into the Armed forces. This created a separation that remained through the 1962 independence. The south was rich and industrial; the north was poor and rural.

"The socio-economic division between north and south has been exacerbated by frequent bouts of ethnic violence. According to most historians of post-independence Uganda, Acholi soldiers have been both victims and perpetrators of this violence. Under Milton Obote's first presidency, Acholi soldiers were implicated in many of the government's questionable activities. In the 1970s, during the administration of the notorious Idi Amin, many Acholi soldiers were slaughtered by Amin's henchmen. After Amin's 1979 overthrow, Milton Obote returned to power, and the Acholi soldiers