Child to Soldier: Stories from Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army Read online

  CHILD TO SOLDIER

  Stories from Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army

  How and why are children forced to become soldiers, and what are the long-term implications for individual children and a society? Should former child-inducted soldiers be prosecuted for their past criminal activities and conduct? In Child to Soldier, Opiyo Oloya addresses these questions by exploring how Acholi children in northern Uganda, abducted by infamous warlord Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), became soldiers.

  Oloya – himself an Acholi, a refugee from Idi Amin’s rule of Uganda – challenges conventional thinking by demonstrating how child-inducted soldiers in Uganda developed a form of familial loyalty to their captors and comrades within their new surroundings in the bush. Based on interviews with former child combatants, this book provides a cultural context for understanding the process of socializing children into violence. Oloya details how Kony and the LRA exploited and perverted Acholi heritage and pride to control and direct the children in war.

  Child to Soldier highlights the tragic political and personal circumstances surrounding the use of child soldiers. It also emphasizes the reality that child-inducted soldiers do not remain children forever but become adults who remain deeply scarred by their experiences. In this eye-opening book, Oloya offers a rare glimpse into the everyday world of the child soldier and at the same time provides a broader understanding of the roots of modern-day ethnic tension and conflict.

  OPIYO OLOYA is the superintendent of education for school leadership with the York Catholic District School Board. He writes a weekly column on social issues for the Ugandan newspaper New Vision, which is read throughout Africa, and has spent the last three summers working in Somalia with the African Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).

  Child to Soldier

  Stories from Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army

  OPIYO OLOYA

  © University of Toronto Press 2013

  Toronto Buffalo London

  www.utppublishing.com

  Printed in Canada

  ISBN 978-1-4426-4604-9 (cloth)

  ISBN 978-1-4426-1417-8 (paper)

  Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Oloya, Opiyo

  Child to soldier: stories from Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army /

  Opiyo Oloya.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-4426-4604-9 (bound). ISBN 978-1-4426-1417-8 (pbk.)

  1. Children and war – Uganda. 2. Child soldiers – Uganda – Social conditions. 3. Child soldiers – Uganda – Interviews. 4. Lord’s Resistance Army. 5. Acholi (African people) – Uganda – Social conditions. I. Title.

  HQ784.W3046 2012 303.6'4083096761 C2012-907226-5

  The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge the estate of Okot P’Bitek for permission to reprint excerpts from Song of Lowino (Nairobi: East African Publishing House 1966).

  This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

  University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

  University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction: Lanyut (Pointer): War, Culture, and Children in Northern Uganda

  1 Conceptual and Practical Challenges

  2 Gwooko Dog Paco (Defending the Homestead), Cultural Devastation, and the LRM/A

  3 Culture, Identity, and Control in the LRM/A

  4 The Jola Amayo Stories

  5 The Ringo Otigo Stories

  Conclusion: Dwoogo Paco (Returning Home)

  Notes

  References

  Index

  Photos

  Acknowledgments

  The Acholi have a saying that a child cannot thank his or her mother for the milk she provided when the child was a baby. That is not because the child is ungrateful, but because the mother’s sacrifice is immensely priceless. Such is the case with the love and support I received from my wife, Emily, and our sons, Oceng and Ogaba, while writing this book. They gave me enormous space to work, never complaining about the long hours spent away from them.

  Still on the family front, I must thank my parents, who inculcated in me a love of learning, a desire to dig beneath the dirt to see what lay down there. My father died two years ago, but he knew about my book and asked often how close it was to being completed.

  In a similar vein, I can never be thankful enough for the tremendous support that I received from so many generous people who gave life to this book. I recall the cold morning in March 2000 when I walked into the office of the former director of education for York Catholic District School Board, Susan LaRosa, to ask for time to travel to Uganda to look into the story of children fighting a devastating war. After listening to my pitch, she said, without blinking, ‘You go ahead,’ Opiyo, this is important.’ I am deeply grateful Ms LaRosa, without whom this project would not have started, for recognizing and responding to a problem half a world away with compassion and humanity. I also wish to thank my colleagues and friends at the York Catholic District School Board, including current director Patricia Preston, Mary (Maria) Battista, Andy Disebastiano, Robert Lostracco, Sandra Tuzi-DeCaro, Sue Kralik, Dan Ryan, the staff at All Saints, Divine Mercy, and St Vincent de Paul Catholic elementary schools for their encouragement, warmth, and support.

  Furthermore, while researching this book at York University, Toronto, professors Warren Crichlow, Deborah Britzman, and Pablo Idahosa did not hesitate to support the project, nurturing it always and helping to give it the form that it eventually acquired. All through it, there were moments when I faltered but they revived my determination to push on. I am grateful also to Erin Baines (University of British Columbia), who challenged me to find a different way to describe children who fight in wars because the term ‘child soldier’ was inadequate; Onek Adyanga (Millersville University, Pennsylvania), who worked with me on some difficult Acholi concepts during the writing; Aparna Mishra Tarc (York University), who helped with proofreading; and Curtis Fahey, who edited the book thoroughly until it finally shone.

  I sincerely thank the family of the late Okot p’Bitek, especially Jane p’Bitek Langoya and Julie Okot p’Bitek, for allowing me the freedom to quote liberally from the various works of their father, a prolific Acholi poet.

  Finally and most importantly, this project would not have been possible without the former child inducted soldiers opening up to me about what they experienced in war, the pain that they endured and the struggles they faced on returning home. Their stories stayed with me during cold and lonely nights when all I wanted was to crawl under blankets and forget in sleep the difficulties I was experiencing with the writing. Their serenity in the face of hardship and, above all, their bravery in staring down the worst that fellow human beings threw at them is the everlasting lesson of what it means to be dano adana, a human person.

  Opiyo Oloya

  Toronto, January 2013

  CHILD TO SOLDIER

  Stories from Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army

  Introduction

  Lanyut (Pointer): W
ar, Culture, and Children in Northern Uganda

  Everybody in Gulu town in war-ravaged northern Uganda has a story to tell about the war. In the Acholi oral storytelling tradition, every labok lok (storyteller) needs a lawiny lok (story-listener).

  It is a hot July day in Gulu town. Inside the small room with one large dusty window, located on the second floor of the headquarters of the Gulu Support the Children Organisation (GUSCO), a non-profit reception and counselling centre for demobilized young soldiers, the humidity is suffocating. I am sitting on a rough wooden chair facing Miya Aparo, who occasionally uses a white handkerchief to wipe the sweat off her brow. She is the first in a group of seven former combatants, referred to here as child-inducted (CI) soldiers, who served with the rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Movement/Army (LRM/A)1 and are scheduled to sit down to tell me their stories. Miya Aparo is the teller and I am the listener. We both understand the informal rule of Acholi oral storytelling tradition which abhors balo boko lok (spoiling the story telling or interrupting the flow of the story), but I am here to do an interview about her life and that of other former child combatants. As an Acholi, I understand that her role as labok lok requires that she draw me into the story with details in such a way that the story will bind me as a listener to her experiences as the storyteller. It is also understood that this is storytelling where I have to probe, ask questions, clarify, and get more details of experiences that Miya Aparo may prefer not to relive. However, while fulfilling my role as a researcher, I cannot forget the role of being a good listener, the near silent witness to what Miya Aparo has gone through in the war that has ravaged this region for two decades. Hers is a story in progress with a definite beginning and middle but no clear end yet in sight. She is the central character in the story she is about to tell me, which, although a personal one, makes up an important part of the stories of child combatants in northern Uganda.

  Sitting there in that hot room in Gulu on that first day of the interview, listening to Miya Aparo, I realized that much had changed in the years since I left Uganda on 6 March 1981, first becoming a refugee in neighbouring Kenya and then, three months later, moving to Canada. From that point, I busied myself with my studies, completing my undergraduate degree at Queen’s University in Kingston before going on to graduate work in education at the University of Ottawa in 1986. News of the bush war back home reached me mostly through brief newscasts that did not explain what was happening in northern Uganda. The occasional letters that my parents and siblings sent were equally barren of any deeper insight about the war, who was fighting and why they were fighting. Perhaps in an effort to keep me from worrying about their safety, most of the letters barely mentioned the war. I would learn much later, when I returned to Uganda for the first time in 1988 and could not travel to my home in Pamin-Yai, that the war had moved from central Uganda to the northern part of the country. My parents, meanwhile, had left Pamin-Yai to seek internal refuge in another district, settling in Kiryandongo, a town 120 kilometres away. My mother remains there today. Of Pamin-Yai, all that’s left are the river, the rock, and the bushes. And the memories and stories of what it used to be. Things have changed. I have changed.

  One thing that had changed and that I could not quite grasp was how Acholi children were being abducted by fellow Acholi from their homes and violently forced to become child warriors. Acholi-on-Acholi violence of that magnitude and scale was new to me. Post-colonial conflicts in Uganda, though not strictly ethnic in character, often echoed ethnic tensions, pitting northerners against southerners, Luo-speaking groups including the Acholi against other groups in south and western Uganda, including the largest ethnicity, the Baganda. In 1966 Milton Obote, who hailed from the north, used the army to oust the constitutional head of state and king of Buganda, Sir Edward Mutesa II. When Obote was in turn toppled by the military coup led by Idi Amin on 25 January 1971, there was celebration among the Baganda because Amin had given Obote a taste of his own medicine. Idi Amin, although from northern Uganda, was an ethnic Kakwa, and he was particularly violent towards the Acholi and Lango throughout his eight years in power (Kasozi, 2001; Kasozi, Musisi, & Sejjengo, 1994; Ruganda, 1980). The killing on 26 February 1977 of two prominent Acholi, Anglican Archbishop Janani Luwum and Minister for Land and Natural Resources Wilson Erenayo Oryema, had a profound impact on the Acholi, who saw it as the ultimate slap in the face (Avirgan & Honey, 1982; Kasozi, 2001).

  By the end of Amin’s reign in 1979, the cyclical demonizing of political rivals along ethnic and linguistic lines was firmly entrenched. When Gulu town was finally liberated from the forces of Idi Amin on 20 May 1979, for instance, I witnessed the unleashing of violence against anyone remotely associated or accused of being associated with Amin’s ethnicity. As the targets of Amin’s repressive policies, some Acholi felt justified in perpetrating violence against other ethnicities, especially those from Amin’s home area in West Nile. As the liberation troops, consisting of Tanzanian army soldiers and Uganda exiles, pushed northward against the dismal remnants of Amin’s forces, it was common to hear on the streets of Gulu and in the villages the Acholi expression Tong oromo obibi (the spears have finally overwhelmed the ogre). The euphoric jubilation that spilled out on the streets as Gulu residents waved oboke olwedo (the leaves of the olwedo tree are used by Acholi as a symbol of victory) and sang and danced quickly turned into a bloodletting targeting the Madi, Lugbara, and Kakwa, as well as some Nubians in Gulu and in Amin’s home region of West Nile (Crisp, 1986; Ginyera-Pinycwa, 1989; Ingham, 1990; Zolberg, Suhrke, & Aguayo, 1989).

  One of the most searing examples of these ethnic killings took place in a field where UNIFAT Primary School now stands, about a kilometre from Gulu town centre. As I watched, a former officer in Amin’s army found hiding in the ceiling of a local hotel was dragged out by a rowdy crowd eager for his blood. The dishevelled officer was brought before a lackadaisical Tanzanian army officer who was using a small pocket knife to eat a mango picked from a nearby tree. Barely looking up at the wretched man brought before him, the Tanzanian officer, still eating his mango, gave the order for the officer’s immediate execution by firing squad. As the man was lined up, and two soldiers trained their AK-47 machine guns at his head, the Tanzanian officer changed his mind with a simple wave of the hand, saying in Kiswahili usiribu shila (do not waste your bullets). Instead, he told the onlookers to administer mob justice. The boisterous crowd obliged, converging on the victim. Sensing his impending demise, he attempted to run away, but he barely took a few steps before someone with a machete cut off his legs. Then, as he fell to the ground, a second person delivered the coup de grâce, cutting his head clean off his shoulders. When someone lifted the severed head, the crowd cheered and moved on to look for more victims to kill. There were reports of many similar retaliatory killings on that day and the days following the collapse of Idi Amin’s forces in Gulu.

  Terribly unjustified and inhumane though the killing of the doomed soldier was, ethnicity seemed to offer an explanation, if simple and unsatisfying – he died because he was from a different ethnicity. But this explanation failed completely in the face of the LRM/A killings of fellow Acholi. In essence, this book is the culmination of my own attempt to come to grips with what transpired in Uganda from the mid-1980s to the present, to attempt to gain insights into this war’s devastating impact on children by exploring the testimony of former LRM/A CI soldiers, both those I interviewed and those who are quoted in the literature. First, I endeavour to understand how the LRM/A as an organization mobilized, used, and, in a sense, repurposed Acholi culture to turn abducted Acholi children into soldiers. Second, as part of the culturally mediated analysis of these stories, I look at how abducted Acholi children employed culture to fashion survival skills in war. Throughout, I examine the role that culture plays in how returnees who survived the war are received in their communities and how their reintegration occurs. The underlying thread that connects the various aspects of the book is the understanding that, although th
e war was and remains between the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), commanded by Uganda President Yoweri Museveni, and the LRM/A leader Joseph Kony, the bulk of LRM/A combatants until recently were Acholi, the war was mostly fought in Acholiland, and most of the victims, although not all, have been Acholi. The war, in other words, was executed within the confines and context of the Acholi’s cultural experiences as an ethnic group.

  Finally, I attempt through this book to offer a critique of the oversimplified view of children in war, namely that children are recruited, given guns to fight, turned into killers, and subsequently victimized. Usually left out is the perspective of the child, the core evolution of the child’s soul, so to speak, that occurs as the child is transformed from a child into a soldier. There is a gap between what these approaches imagine is happening to the child and what the child presumably feels.

  Meeting the Storytellers

  As the story-listener, I chose to hear the voices of seven CI soldiers – Can-Kwo Obato, Jola Amayo, Ringo Otigo, Miya Aparo, Payaa Mamit, Amal Ataro, and Camconi Oneka – whose names are changed here to provide anonymity and ensure their security. The selection of these individuals was based primarily on their availability and their willingness to tell their stories to a researcher. GUSCO carried out the outreach to contact the participants, make the appointments, and ensure that they came to the venue at the scheduled time. That they were abducted at different periods allowed me to compare and contrast the experiences that they went through.

  The informants were interviewed between 15 July and 24 July 2008 in Gulu, northern Uganda. The stories of two of them, Jola Amayo, thirty, and Ringo Otigo, twenty-seven, are explored in depth in chapters 4 and 5 respectively, where I focus on their experiences prior to abduction, after abduction, and when they returned home. Jola Amayo was abducted at night on 10 October 1990 as she slept with her sisters, one of whom, older than Jola, attempted to intervene by offering herself in Jola’s place. The LRM/A did not release her until twelve years later, on 12 June 2002. She had left home as a child and returned home as a mother of two children. Ringo Otigo, the ninth in a family of eleven children, was abducted on the evening of 10 December 1996 as he returned from the stream with water for family use. He spent six years as a bush doctor for the LRM/A before escaping with six others on 7 December 2002.