Homecoming offers first-hand glimpse into spiralling paranoia of war criminal and worlds shattered by the Lord's Resistance Army
When he was 13 Edward was kidnapped by Ugandan rebels and forced to
become a soldier in the Lord's Resistance Army. He survived the
longest–running guerrilla war in modern history by being a trusted
confidante of Joseph Kony, the chief architect of the brutal insurgency.
Fourteen years later, with Kony on the run, Edward is returning to his childhood village, nervous about the reception he will receive after his role in terrorising his own people.
For more than two decades about 30,000 children abducted from northern Uganda provided the fuel for Kony's cult-like LRA. A self-styled mystic who claimed to channel a host of spirits, his hazy aims of seizing power and ruling Uganda according to the biblical 10 commandments collapsed after his forces were chased across the Nile and out of the country in 2006. Since then he has roamed east central Africa's forests with a band of a few hundred children kidnapped from neighbouring countries.
While all but a handful of abducted Ugandans have now escaped, a generation of children is traumatised by war.
Edward, now a wiry 27-year-old, was one who got away. By the time he fled Kony in April he had spent so long in the bush that he had forgotten what a bank was. Because he became so close to the LRA chief, his story provides a rare first-hand glimpse into the spiral of paranoia one of the world's most wanted war criminals.
Children sleep in Gulu in 2005 when thousands from surrounding
villages would stay overnight to avoid being abducted by LRA soldiers.
Photograph: John Stanmeyer
"In the middle of the night the rebels came, and surrounded our
homes," Edward said, recalling how the LRA rampaged down the same
pot-holed red dust road now leading him back to his village. "Until then
I had never heard the sound of a gunshot."
Jeering rebels rounded up dozens of boys whose mud huts were within shouting distance; the youngest was eight. Most died during the forced five-day march to neighbouring Sudan. There the LRA trained the remaining boys to kill, using trees for target practice.
Speaking softly, fingers knotted on his lap, Edward said fear made his first kill easier. "If we had done a bad job, [our commander] might have killed us instead." Then, his voice barely a whisper, Edward explained how the abducted were repeatedly forced to kill other children who attempted to escape, and warned they would face the same fate if they tried it. "So many times it happened," he said.
For a quarter of a million child soldiers globally, the disorientating experience of returning home is exacerbated by deep stigmas and missed education opportunities. Girls kidnapped as "wives" often return with children born in captivity, or remain with the men they were forcibly given to even after liberation. In Liberia, unable to find jobs, some former child soldiers from Charles Taylor's notorious "small boys unit" have resorted to raiding graveyards to survive. After the genocide in Rwanda one study found more than 60% of children, many of whom were child soldiers, said they did not care if they ever grew up.
"I know [going home] won't be easy. Some people may think …" Edward left the sentence unfinished and looked at the passing scenery. Coming home means coming to terms with a decade spent in a child army fighting against his own people. A neighbour kidnapped alongside him was forced to kill his parents.
A balmy breeze ushered in the morning on which Edward was returning to live in his village after 14 years. In Gulu, the district capital, a group of former LRA child soldiers gathered in the courtyard of the World Vision centre, a charity that helps resettle the children, and clasped hands. They prayed for Edward.
Outside traffic was already flowing around an oversize monument of a boy and girl with a waist-high pile of books. Barely a decade ago daybreak in Gulu would have seen thousands of children streaming into the surrounding countryside after spending the night sleeping on the city's streets in order to escape roving LRA soldiers who descended into villages mainly at night-time.
For his homecoming World Vision provided Edward with new clothes (he shyly showed off a pair of shiny new shoes) and a mattress to take home. "In an ideal world returnees really need five to seven years of follow-up support," said Susan Alal, who heads the last remaining rehabilitation centre in Gulu. They are operating in a far from ideal world, and with funding shortages. About 15,000 former child soldiers have passed through its six-month programme since 1995.
In Edward's language, Acholi, people call post-traumatic stress disorder ajiji. It means something that enters your spirit and makes you behave strangely. A former choirboy, Kony's horrific genius was the ability to manipulate people's spirituality. "We have to tell the community, if a [returnee] wakes up shouting in the middle of the night, they have not been bewitched by Kony, they are just remembering battle," said Charles Onekalit, one of World Vision's counsellors.
Joseph Kony, the leader of the cult-like Lord's Resistance Army, is
said to have the ability to manipulate people's spirituality.
Photograph: AP
Mudfish, also known as lungfish, Kony decreed, could not be eaten
because they had lazy spirits that would make the soldiers lazy too.
Entire units were assigned to fetch Kony's "holy water" from a special
location. LRA taboos included whispering – a potential sign of plotting
escape – and anything that bound the children to the communities they
had been wrenched from. The calabash, played as a musical accompaniment
to every important ceremony in Acholiland, was banned.
"If you didn't want to kill, the commanders would say, are you not one of us? Please, come forward and kill. Then they would force you to lick the blood, and tell you if run away, your victim's spirit will kill you," one rescued soldier told Onekalit, explaining why most are captured in battle rather than willingly escape. "They treated killing as something very, very normal. You could only be promoted when you killed continuously."
Edward, who earned the rank of sergeant by 16, said in order to stay alive he "learned to keep my head down and do as I was told". While he despised most of the commanders, he believed Kony was "a godly person", he said. "They made us believe that."
The more child soldiers are forced to perpetrate atrocities, the more they identify with their captors, said Verena Ertl, a clinical psychologist who has researched conflict trauma among children in Uganda. Many develop so-called appetitive aggression – an active thrill from being aggressive – as a survival mechanism. "When the children are absorbed into the rebels' moral value system, being rewarded for cruelty becomes one way to make sense of what they are doing," Ertl said.
Fighters with the Lord's Resistance Amry are pictured in 2006 almost
100 miles south of Juba, South Sudan. Photograph: James Akena/Reuters
Signs of trauma are evident. One ex-child soldier rolled into a
whimpering ball whenever a helicopter passed over the centre. Three in
four children nonetheless make full recoveries, with the help of
therapy. Edward said he knew when it was time to leave.
So sure was Kony of the web he had woven around his inner circle that he encouraged his top representatives to meet their families during a round of doomed peace talks in 2006 in South Sudan. When his distressed mother and sister pleaded with him to return home, Edward refused, saying it would violate army codes.
"It was when we were leaving he whispered to me, very quickly, 'I will come home one day,'" said his sister Esther, whose husband was killed by the LRA. "I told our mother she had not lost her son forever."
The final straw came when an increasingly paranoid Kony accused his closest adviser, Edward's direct commander, of sleeping with women reserved for him. He ordered Edward and others to hack their own commander to death with machetes, and hang the body up as a warning.
"I knew then that if Kony could kill someone even closer to him than me, it would be me one day," Edward said. He and a friend escaped that night. Edward took one of the guns from Kony's collection for additional protection as they fled the rainforests of Congo, where they had been plundering goldmines and poaching elephants.
Now, as the bus pulled into Edward's village, ululations of joy rang out. Women stepped through the long elephant grass waving leafy branches. Edward turned his face away and pressed his thumbs to wet eyes. "I never knew so many people loved me," he said, struggling to compose himself. "I want to tell all those still fighting in the bush it's OK to come back home."
After prayers and songs beneath the shade of a neem tree, each villager lined up before Edward, dipped a branch into a calabash, and sprinkled him with water – symbolising the community cleansing his past.
The group's bloody trail stretched to Congo, Central Africa Republic (CAR) and South Sudan, where it acted as a proxy army for the northern Sudan government. Militarily weakened after losing backing from Khartoum, the LRA has roamed CAR and Congo since 2006.
The controversial Kony2012 campaign by Invisible Children renewed attention on Kony as over 100 million internet users clicked in. Kony and three generals are wanted by the international criminal court, though an amnesty has been declared for all child soldiers. In Gulu, the former centre of the insurgency, few are fans of Kony2012. "It scared a lot of people, we thought maybe Kony had come back to Uganda," said Donald Muwanga, pushing his bicycle through heavy evening traffic in the town centre. "All we want to do is forget him."
Fourteen years later, with Kony on the run, Edward is returning to his childhood village, nervous about the reception he will receive after his role in terrorising his own people.
For more than two decades about 30,000 children abducted from northern Uganda provided the fuel for Kony's cult-like LRA. A self-styled mystic who claimed to channel a host of spirits, his hazy aims of seizing power and ruling Uganda according to the biblical 10 commandments collapsed after his forces were chased across the Nile and out of the country in 2006. Since then he has roamed east central Africa's forests with a band of a few hundred children kidnapped from neighbouring countries.
While all but a handful of abducted Ugandans have now escaped, a generation of children is traumatised by war.
Edward, now a wiry 27-year-old, was one who got away. By the time he fled Kony in April he had spent so long in the bush that he had forgotten what a bank was. Because he became so close to the LRA chief, his story provides a rare first-hand glimpse into the spiral of paranoia one of the world's most wanted war criminals.
Children sleep in Gulu in 2005 when thousands from surrounding
villages would stay overnight to avoid being abducted by LRA soldiers.
Photograph: John Stanmeyer
"In the middle of the night the rebels came, and surrounded our
homes," Edward said, recalling how the LRA rampaged down the same
pot-holed red dust road now leading him back to his village. "Until then
I had never heard the sound of a gunshot."Jeering rebels rounded up dozens of boys whose mud huts were within shouting distance; the youngest was eight. Most died during the forced five-day march to neighbouring Sudan. There the LRA trained the remaining boys to kill, using trees for target practice.
Speaking softly, fingers knotted on his lap, Edward said fear made his first kill easier. "If we had done a bad job, [our commander] might have killed us instead." Then, his voice barely a whisper, Edward explained how the abducted were repeatedly forced to kill other children who attempted to escape, and warned they would face the same fate if they tried it. "So many times it happened," he said.
For a quarter of a million child soldiers globally, the disorientating experience of returning home is exacerbated by deep stigmas and missed education opportunities. Girls kidnapped as "wives" often return with children born in captivity, or remain with the men they were forcibly given to even after liberation. In Liberia, unable to find jobs, some former child soldiers from Charles Taylor's notorious "small boys unit" have resorted to raiding graveyards to survive. After the genocide in Rwanda one study found more than 60% of children, many of whom were child soldiers, said they did not care if they ever grew up.
"I know [going home] won't be easy. Some people may think …" Edward left the sentence unfinished and looked at the passing scenery. Coming home means coming to terms with a decade spent in a child army fighting against his own people. A neighbour kidnapped alongside him was forced to kill his parents.
A balmy breeze ushered in the morning on which Edward was returning to live in his village after 14 years. In Gulu, the district capital, a group of former LRA child soldiers gathered in the courtyard of the World Vision centre, a charity that helps resettle the children, and clasped hands. They prayed for Edward.
Outside traffic was already flowing around an oversize monument of a boy and girl with a waist-high pile of books. Barely a decade ago daybreak in Gulu would have seen thousands of children streaming into the surrounding countryside after spending the night sleeping on the city's streets in order to escape roving LRA soldiers who descended into villages mainly at night-time.
For his homecoming World Vision provided Edward with new clothes (he shyly showed off a pair of shiny new shoes) and a mattress to take home. "In an ideal world returnees really need five to seven years of follow-up support," said Susan Alal, who heads the last remaining rehabilitation centre in Gulu. They are operating in a far from ideal world, and with funding shortages. About 15,000 former child soldiers have passed through its six-month programme since 1995.
In Edward's language, Acholi, people call post-traumatic stress disorder ajiji. It means something that enters your spirit and makes you behave strangely. A former choirboy, Kony's horrific genius was the ability to manipulate people's spirituality. "We have to tell the community, if a [returnee] wakes up shouting in the middle of the night, they have not been bewitched by Kony, they are just remembering battle," said Charles Onekalit, one of World Vision's counsellors.
Joseph Kony, the leader of the cult-like Lord's Resistance Army, is
said to have the ability to manipulate people's spirituality.
Photograph: AP
Mudfish, also known as lungfish, Kony decreed, could not be eaten
because they had lazy spirits that would make the soldiers lazy too.
Entire units were assigned to fetch Kony's "holy water" from a special
location. LRA taboos included whispering – a potential sign of plotting
escape – and anything that bound the children to the communities they
had been wrenched from. The calabash, played as a musical accompaniment
to every important ceremony in Acholiland, was banned."If you didn't want to kill, the commanders would say, are you not one of us? Please, come forward and kill. Then they would force you to lick the blood, and tell you if run away, your victim's spirit will kill you," one rescued soldier told Onekalit, explaining why most are captured in battle rather than willingly escape. "They treated killing as something very, very normal. You could only be promoted when you killed continuously."
Edward, who earned the rank of sergeant by 16, said in order to stay alive he "learned to keep my head down and do as I was told". While he despised most of the commanders, he believed Kony was "a godly person", he said. "They made us believe that."
The more child soldiers are forced to perpetrate atrocities, the more they identify with their captors, said Verena Ertl, a clinical psychologist who has researched conflict trauma among children in Uganda. Many develop so-called appetitive aggression – an active thrill from being aggressive – as a survival mechanism. "When the children are absorbed into the rebels' moral value system, being rewarded for cruelty becomes one way to make sense of what they are doing," Ertl said.
Fighters with the Lord's Resistance Amry are pictured in 2006 almost
100 miles south of Juba, South Sudan. Photograph: James Akena/Reuters
Signs of trauma are evident. One ex-child soldier rolled into a
whimpering ball whenever a helicopter passed over the centre. Three in
four children nonetheless make full recoveries, with the help of
therapy. Edward said he knew when it was time to leave.So sure was Kony of the web he had woven around his inner circle that he encouraged his top representatives to meet their families during a round of doomed peace talks in 2006 in South Sudan. When his distressed mother and sister pleaded with him to return home, Edward refused, saying it would violate army codes.
"It was when we were leaving he whispered to me, very quickly, 'I will come home one day,'" said his sister Esther, whose husband was killed by the LRA. "I told our mother she had not lost her son forever."
The final straw came when an increasingly paranoid Kony accused his closest adviser, Edward's direct commander, of sleeping with women reserved for him. He ordered Edward and others to hack their own commander to death with machetes, and hang the body up as a warning.
"I knew then that if Kony could kill someone even closer to him than me, it would be me one day," Edward said. He and a friend escaped that night. Edward took one of the guns from Kony's collection for additional protection as they fled the rainforests of Congo, where they had been plundering goldmines and poaching elephants.
Now, as the bus pulled into Edward's village, ululations of joy rang out. Women stepped through the long elephant grass waving leafy branches. Edward turned his face away and pressed his thumbs to wet eyes. "I never knew so many people loved me," he said, struggling to compose himself. "I want to tell all those still fighting in the bush it's OK to come back home."
After prayers and songs beneath the shade of a neem tree, each villager lined up before Edward, dipped a branch into a calabash, and sprinkled him with water – symbolising the community cleansing his past.
Lord's Resistance Army rise and fall
In the 1980s Alice Lakwena founded the Holy Spirit Movement, claiming the Holy Spirit had ordered her to overthrow Uganda's government, which frequently marginalised the northern Acholi people. Her nephew, Joseph Kony, formed the splinter group Lord's Resistance Army in 1986. Originally welcomed by the Acholi people, the LRA rapidly lost local support as it swelled its ranks through abducting children. Around 20,000 were kidnapped from northern Uganda as soldiers or sex slaves, and 1.8 million displaced at the conflict's peak.The group's bloody trail stretched to Congo, Central Africa Republic (CAR) and South Sudan, where it acted as a proxy army for the northern Sudan government. Militarily weakened after losing backing from Khartoum, the LRA has roamed CAR and Congo since 2006.
The controversial Kony2012 campaign by Invisible Children renewed attention on Kony as over 100 million internet users clicked in. Kony and three generals are wanted by the international criminal court, though an amnesty has been declared for all child soldiers. In Gulu, the former centre of the insurgency, few are fans of Kony2012. "It scared a lot of people, we thought maybe Kony had come back to Uganda," said Donald Muwanga, pushing his bicycle through heavy evening traffic in the town centre. "All we want to do is forget him."
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