Preface

Summary

We are trying to build a life for ourselves.

– Evelyn Amony

Amongst the war affected in northern Uganda, it is sometimes difficult to disentangle victims and perpetrators. For more than a decade, starting in the early 1990s, young Acholi boys and girls followed their parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts into one of the hundreds of displaced persons camps created by the Government of Uganda. The rebels abducted tens of thousands of children and youth, and if they did not escape or were not released shortly thereafter, they were trained, given a weapon and made to fight. As abducted girls matured, they were forced to marry rebel commanders and give birth, fulfilling the spiritual vision of its leader, Joseph Kony, to create a “New Acholi.” Most were brought to LRA bases in Sudan and, with little hope of escape, they settled to raise their children, run the home and orient newly abducted children. Others – their numbers unknown – were recruited into a camp militia and some later joined or were forced into the Ugandan military as soldiers, or wives to soldiers. Each party to the conflict – the rebels and the Ugandan military – terrorized the civilian population, displacing more young boys and girls, and the cycle continued. Those who avoided recruitment or abduction had to continue to dodge both parties. If either the rebels or soldiers came across civilians, they forced them to pledge allegiance to the cause. If they mixed up a rebel and a soldier – something that was easy to do in the dark, and because both parties to the conflict wore similar uniforms – they were accused of being traitors and punished. It was perhaps no surprise then that so many young men and women who did escape the rebels found it difficult to integrate within communities that had been afflicted and divided by more than two decades of violence. This extends to the children born in the rebel group.