- In the villages of northern Uganda, Joseph Kony is the
stuff of nightmares. A self-proclaimed mystic with a garbled pseudo-Christian
ideology, this is a man who spirits children away from their parents at
the dead of night and steals their innocence forever. Kony is the leader
of the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group that has fought the Ugandan
government for 18 years in a war that has killed more than 23,000 people
and forced 1.5 million people to flee their homes.
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- His methods of warfare are notorious. Children are kidnapped,
forced to kill their own parents, then march with the LRA, beaten and brutalised
until they finally become fighters themselves. Teenage girls are hidden
in elaborate fox-holes with just enough room for LRA commanders to climb
into and claim them as their "wife".
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- Most of the LRA army is "manned" by abducted
children, some of whom have grown to adulthood in its ranks. The Ugandan
army has learnt to use double-speak: when it attacks LRA fighters, it has
"killed some rebels"; when it captures them, it has "rescued
child hostages". On Wednesday night, it did both. The army raided
Kony's base near Juba, south Sudan, and killed more than 100 of his followers.
They also managed to get hold of some of Kony's wives and children, his
walkie-talkie and military epaulettes he had awarded himself. For a few
hours, they believed that they had killed Kony. But as the bodies were
identified, they realised that he had escaped again.
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- Lieutenant-Colonel Otema Awany, the army's chief intelligence
officer for northern Uganda, could barely hide his frustration. "The
problem is that our troops were trying to capture him alive. They fired
at him, and he was running, but it is not clear whether any bullets struck
him." Yesterday, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague
said it would investigate alleged atrocities in Northern Uganda, and focus
on killings and assaults committed under Kony's orders.
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- Akwero Betty Omuk, of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace
Initiative, a multi-faith organisation that is trying desperately to bring
peace to Northern Uganda, said: "Sometimes, we wonder if Kony is the
devil himself. But then I remember that this kind of thought merely strengthens
the LRA. He is just a man, and we can deal with him as if he is just a
man."
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- Mrs Omuk can be forgiven for believing Kony is, somehow,
not human. He has unleashed such force on his own people, the Acholi tribe
of northern Uganda, that even seasoned war watchers are taken aback. The
Ugandan army's continued failure to capture Kony or defeat his movement
have added to beliefs that he is immortal. One Western diplomat said: "He
is, by all accounts, able to convince people he has spiritual powers. I
also assume that he has this force of personality that could make people
believe that. He has a certain amount of military prowess, and he is obviously
quite cunning." Several Ugandans also believe the ICC may merely serves
to infuriate Kony and make him continue fighting. "We think maybe
Kony is using the impending ICC case as a reason to commit all these new
atrocities," Mrs Omuk said. "All the senior commanders are doing
anything they can to survive. They know that if they surrender or come
to the negotiating table, they will be prosecuted."
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- Kony has already proved how ruthless he can be if he
believes people want to attack or betray him. In the mid-1990s, the government
began arming some of the Acholi communities so they could protect themselves
from LRA attacks. Kony's retribution was swift, and vicious. He accused
the Acholi of betraying him, and the LRA swooped on villages, cutting off
the ears and noses of anyone they considered traitors. At this time, he
began his campaign of child abductions, believing the only way to create
a "pure" army was to use children who had been brainwashed into
following him.
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- "Kony trusts no one," said Florence Lakor,
a counsellor at the World Vision camp for children who have escaped the
LRA. "If a man comes to him and says he wants to join the LRA, he
is suspicious that he is a traitor, and will usually have him killed. He
prefers to get children, who he can control more." As a result, more
than 20,000 children have been kidnapped since the mid-1990s. Most of them
are 11 to 16, though some can be as young as four. If they are rescued
or somehow escape, they struggle to get over the trauma of the years in
the bush.
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- Oyella, a shy, 20-year-old girl in the Children of War
camp in Gulu, designed for those who have escaped the LRA, described in
measured words how she was abducted when she was 12. "I was taken
from my school, when we were doing our prep. They took 23 of us all together,
but some have died now and I don't know where the others are. We were made
to cook for everyone, and I was given a husband, although I didn't want
him. I escaped in the end at night because I wanted to die instead of staying
there any more." Her three-year-old son at her side tells the unspoken
story, of the man who raped her, and of the stigma she will now have to
face from her community for having borne the son of a fighter.
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- Joseph Kony formed his army in late 1987, after Alice
Lakwena, his mentor and cousin, failed to overthrow the government. The
Acholi rebel movement has its roots in dissatisfaction among the Acholi
people, who were favoured by the colonial British and pre-Museveni regimes,
but lost a great deal of influence after the present President Yoweri Museveni
came to power in 1986. A hotchpotch of defeated government forces regrouped
under Lakwena in 1987 through the Holy Spirit Movement. She was the first
to practise the sort of religious warfare that has become the LRA's trademark,
and persuaded her 10,000 followers that smearing themselves with nut-oil
would make them invulnerable to bullets.
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- The movement got within 100km of the Ugandan capital
Kampala before the nut oil finally let them down. Lakwena fled to Kenya,
and Kony took on the mantle. He linked up with the old Acholi-dominated
army and gained new contacts among Acholi exile communities. Lakwena has
now been persuaded to return to Uganda to try to bring Kony to the negotiating
table, but few believe she can succeed.
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- "Her return will have a minimal impact," Mrs
Omuk said. "She is not relevant anymore. The LRA has turned into a
cult movement that is not answerable to anyone, except its own members."
Lakwena's rules had been strict: looting, rape and adultery were banned,
and smoking and drinking forbidden. Kony did initially order similar restraints
on his troops, but as the years passed, his discipline slackened, and they
have been allowed to loot, burn and murder in any villages they attack.
But Kony, a former Catholic altar boy, still uses a strange brand of myticism
to instill fear and loyalty in the minds of his followers. He claims he
is a medium for holy spirits who talk to him in their dreams.
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- He directs his rebel forces from their messages, which
are recorded by his scribes. The rebel leader also prays within concentric
circles drawn in ash or pebbles and has a choir of young girls, some dressed
as nuns, to sing his praises. Soldiers are sometimes required to pray waist-deep
in water, and observe arbitary fast days. Anyone breaking the rules can
be killed for bringing curses on the entire group.
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- The Sudanese government has made its own contribution
to Kony's powers and beliefs. In 1989, the fundamentalist National Islamic
Front took power in Khartoum and accused the the Ugandan government of
supporting the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in the south.
In 1994, peace talks between the LRA and the Ugandan government foundered,
and Sudan immediately gave the LRA space to build camps, and provided them
with weapons and uniforms. In return, Kony was told to fight the SPLA and
intercept supplies to the south. As Kony got the support from Khartoum,
he came up with another set of rules, that pork was not to be eaten and
Friday should be a second Sabbath.
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- The Sudanese government has come under intense international
pressure to stop backing the LRA, and has signed an agreement that allowed
the Ugandan government to pursue the LRA into sections of south Sudan.
It also promises it has stopped backing the rebels, but aid workers say
the fighters are still being supplied by Khartoum.
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- "The LRA is still a source of insecurity in south
Sudan and we don't see how they could continue fighting unless they are
getting their supplies from somewhere," a Unicef spokesman, Ben Parker,
said. "It makes the aid distribution in the area problematic."
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- On Monday, the Anglican church in south Sudan said the
LRA had murdered several civilians, and the SPLA claimed several of its
fighters had also been killed. The tensions between the LRA and the SPLA
threatens to destabilise the hard-won peace deal between the government
of Sudan and the southern rebels signed this summer.
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- But the Ugandan army is optimistic of victory. Two senior
LRA commanders, Charles Tabuley and Tolbert Yardin Nyeko, have been killed
in the past year, and several junior commanders have surrendered with their
wives and children. Uganda also believes that Kony is losing his grip on
his troops. An army spokesman said: "Those commanders who are not
under his [Kony's] direct control have been surrendering." But until
Kony surrenders, or is captured or killed, many Ugandans will still believe
that he is invincible.
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- And even if the power of Kony does wane, the Acholis
of northern Uganda will still have to face up to the fact that their children
have been turned into killers, who have now begotten children of their
own.
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- Various aid agencies have already begun counselling and
retraining the former LRA fighters who have returned from the bush, but
they are finding that many discover it is hard to go back to their families
and communities.
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- "The LRA have a deeply involved spiritual system,
but we know the Acholi culture is equally deep and it does not condone
murder," Mrs Omuk said. "If murder is committed there has to
be reconciliation between the victim's family and the murderers. In our
talks, we are always emphasising forgiveness and compassion as values that
can be taken by all sides. But now, with the crimes that have been committed
here, this reconciliation will take many years."
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/
- africa/story.jsp?story=546076
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