NationStates Jolt Archive

NOTE: This true story of the horrors currently being perpetrated in the civl war-torn Uganda is highly recommended reading, even though the full story is seven pages long. To gain insight into the daily realities of life many people in the world, please take the time to read it.


Charlotte, Grace, Janet and Caroline Come Home (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/magazine/08UGANDA.html?th&emc=th)

By MELANIE THERNSTROM
Published: May 8, 2005

The rebels have ruined northern Uganda. No one wanted to look out the car window on the three-hour journey northwest from Lira to Gulu near the Sudanese border. Charlotte Awino leaned her cheek on the glass and closed her eyes against the abandoned homesteads and fallow farmland that once provided most of the country's cassava, millet and beans. After 18 years of civil war, more than 1.5 million inhabitants have fled to plastic-sheeted internment camps, preferring to risk slow death by disease and malnutrition rather than to wake in their beds one night to discover the rebels have arrived. The rebels are the Lord's Resistance Army (L.R.A.), which massacres or mutilates villagers -- cutting off their noses, ears and genitals -- and kidnaps their children, turning them into killers who then become kidnappers themselves.

A soldier at a military checkpoint instructed us to drive quickly; just ahead, he said, is a sweep of land where the rebels sometimes cross. He crouched down, peering into the car, his AK-47 dangling against the door, his gaze resting with relish on Charlotte and the other young women clustered in the back seat, their arms entwined, their silky dresses crumpling against one another. The girls stiffened and looked at their laps as he talked.

''What does the U.P.D.F. know?'' Charlotte spat as we drove away, referring to the Ugandan Army.

''The rebels don't cross before dark,'' Grace Acan agreed.

The four girls know this land far better than any government soldier, because for eight years they were rebels themselves. Abducted from their convent school when they were 14, 15 and 16, they were brutalized, brainwashed and forced to be ''wives'' to rebel commanders. They crossed this road on foot many times, hiding from the Ugandan Army while their commanders scouted for villages to raid.

In July, Charlotte was the first of the friends to escape. Janet Akello followed in August, Grace in September and finally Caroline Anyango in November. The girls eventually returned to their hometown of Lira to live with their parents and to try to pick up the lives they lost. They are in their mid-20's now and burdened by children they were raped to bear; yet as they showed me around Lira or journeyed to Caroline's ancestral village, where Caroline's grandmother danced welcome around her, they often seemed like the schoolgirls they once were. They are pretty, polite, docile and devout, their personalities blending like their dresses, and it was hard to imagine that they were recently guerrilla girls, as some terrified villagers used to call them.

At unexpected junctures, however, their moods change and darkness surfaces: Charlotte's prim composure gives way to bitterness and contempt; Janet's impassiveness becomes depression; Grace's good spirits crumple; Caroline cries; and then -- the rift exposed -- they all fall into a pained silence.

In Lira, the girls had heard that some of their other friends were living in a rehabilitation center called World Vision, in Gulu, where the Ugandan government houses former rebels for a month. When I told the girls that I was planning to visit the center, they asked to come with me. Their parents were reluctant to permit the trip, worried less about the road's dangers than about the moral risks of letting their daughters reconnect with their past. Janet's parents were especially concerned about her ''husband,'' Charles Otim, who had been recently captured and was living at World Vision, too. (Charlotte's husband is still with the rebels, Caroline's is dead and Grace's is now a government informant.)

When I asked Janet whether she would like to see Otim, she twisted her body, touched her mouth and looked away. ''If I see him, I will greet him,'' she declared finally, leaving the matter to happenstance -- the force that dictated her life for so many years.

The light was waning by the time we reached World Vision. As a result of government military victories in the past two years, more than 10,000 rebels have been captured or have managed to escape the L.R.A. The former child soldiers, as they are called, have all been given amnesty, but reintegrating them into society remains a daunting problem.

Ah, interesting.

Last year for my Undergrad Journalism class, I wrote an article upon this very issue. I interviewed a member of the International Rescue Committee based in what is likely that same World Vision camp (World Vision is actually an organisation, not just that camp) who was involved in rehabilitating former child soldiers.

I got offered to have it published by a newspaper, but I declined on the grounds that they would have the legal rights to my work and wouldn't pay me a cent for it.

I could post it if you like?

Ah, interesting.

Last year for my Undergrad Journalism class, I wrote an article upon this very issue. I interviewed a member of the International Rescue Committee based in what is likely that same World Vision camp (World Vision is actually an organisation, not just that camp) who was involved in rehabilitating former child soldiers.

I got offered to have it published by a newspaper, but I declined on the grounds that they would have the legal rights to my work and wouldn't pay me a cent for it.

I could post it if you like?
SURE! I'd LOVE to read it! :)

SURE! I'd LOVE to read it! :)

:) This is only a draft though, unfortunately. The actual article itself was a bit longer and had no minor grammar/syntax errors like this one does (and i'm too lazy to fix them :p) I don't even remember what the title I decided on was...I have a hardcopy around here somewhere....anyway.

Children Kidnapped, Forced to Fight For Rebel Army

Kidnapped from their families at night, or perhaps fighting to avenge the death of a murdered parent, forced to witness and partake in atrocities. Used as human minefield detectors and subject to extreme brutality.

This is the daily existence of an estimated 300,000 child soldiers worldwide.

Katica Dias, now a volunteer with the Red Cross, was involved with rehabilitation efforts towards former child soldiers in Uganda while working with the Washington based International Rescue Committee.

“The stories (of the children) are just horrendous. Mass killings and beatings.” Dias says.

The conflict in Uganda is centred on the rebel Lords Resistance Army, A Christian fundamentalist group which aims to overthrow the government and establish their own based around the Ten Commandments.

Their tactics are extremely brutal.

“They went into one village, about eighty people died that day I think, mothers of babies and toddlers were forced to kill their children by bashing their heads against trees…the men on the village were rounded up and forced to fight each-other to the death in a series of one on one fights...and schoolchildren were forced to kill and eat their schoolteachers.” says Dias. “As a worker, you become quite immune to it. It’s unfortunate, but it’s how you survive in that industry.”

After occupying villages, the LRA then take the children, both males and females, with them to serve as front-line soldiers. Some of the young girls may be fortunate enough to become married to an LRA commander, therefore receiving preferential treatment, but also placing them under risk of contracting STD’s, particularly AIDS.

A female Ugandan child soldier was reported by Human Rights Watch as saying "One boy tried to escape (from the rebels), but he was caught... 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... They said we had to do this so we would not fear death and so we would not try to escape... 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."

Many of the kidnapped children die in this way after attempting to escape. Still others will die as they are killed for falling sick, collapsing from exhaustion or are killed in fighting. Some, however, make it back to their villages and are faced with potential alienation.

The International Rescue Committee, as well as World Vision, was involved in efforts in the late 1990’s to rehabilitate the escaped children with their families. However, Dias says that their efforts appeared to make little difference psychologically despite their good intentions. “It’s the reacceptance by their communities that is the most important.”

However, the children recognised that the aid workers were trying to help them. “We had a good reputation with the children. They set up ambushes along roads, but they wouldn’t touch our vehicles.”

Often, when the children escape, they are approached by the army, who offer them a clean uniform as well as a monthly wage to fight for them. Many children find the offer irresistible after the torture suffered at the hands of the LRA. Ex-LRA soldiers are highly sought after for their knowledge of rebel bases and positions. Occasionally, the army will seize children from the rehabilitation centres controlled by international organisations. Usually, they are never seen again.

The situation in Uganda is not particularly unusual. Child soldiers are very common in war-torn nations, from Sri Lanka to Peru. In many cases, they are preferred to adults as more nimble combatants. The Red Cross reported an Afghan guerrilla commander named Najib as saying “The youngest boy who has ever fought with me was seven years old. I prefer children to grown men because they have empty brains and will always obey orders.”

"I was in the front lines the whole time I was with the [opposition force]. I used to be assigned to plant mines in areas the enemy passed through. They used us for reconnaissance and other things like that because if you're a child the enemy doesn't notice you much; nor do the villagers." A former child soldier from Burma said, according to Human Rights Watch.

The nation of Burma has more child soldiers than any other country in the world, accounting for an estimated one quarter of all child soldiers worldwide. These children are forced to sweep roads for landmines with brooms or long sticks, often with catastrophic results.

Governmental action on the issue has been limited, however, there have been recent moves in the UN to change the worldwide legal minimum age for voluntary military service to 18. The minimum age in Australia was recently moved from 16 to 17.

However, Bev Patterson of the Red Cross is less than optimistic about this proposed change. “Most nations don’t abide by the current international laws anyway.” She says. “It’s mainly 7, 8 and 9 year olds that are the main concern.”

The international law forbidding the use of Child Soldiers is in fact the Geneva convention, which in the second additional protocol states clearly that “Children who have not attained the age of 15 years shall neither be recruited into the armed forces or groups nor allowed to take part in hostilities.”

Most nations have signed the second additional protocol, and nearly all agree to the standard convention.

It’s preferable to have 18 as the minimum age, Patterson says, but unfortunately there are other priorities. A key problem faced by agencies concerned with the issue is that often child soldiers are employed in a situation where food shortages and disease outbreaks are a more urgent concern and thus receive priority.

Such is the case in Sudan right now, but many groups continue to bring the plight of these young soldiers to the attention of the world.