When Help Is Not On The Way
While the world rallies for Darfur, there are other places of horror and neglect
Kony's fighters, acting with a calculated cruelty worse than the limb-hacking rebel armies of 1990s Sierra Leone, have cut off the lips, breasts, and hands of their victims. Fearful of abduction, tens of thousands of children leave their villages and camps each afternoon, walking miles to sleep in the safety of larger towns, and then hiking back to their homes after sunrise. Ugandan authorities say the insurgency is on its last legs. They said the same thing last year, and the year before.
On the streets of Gulu, a dusty northern town that's been ground zero for much of the conflict, former child soldiers lift their shirts to show their battle stripes: bullet and shrapnel wounds, latticework scars from whippings at the hands of LRA thugs. Many believe Kony has magical powers--that he can predict the future, can still see them from afar. "They are dominated by spirit control," says Johnny Lecambel, a local radio host who uses his program to coax fighters out of the bush and back to their villages, where they are guaranteed amnesty by Ugandan law.
A wanted man. Last October, the International Criminal Court indicted Kony and four commanders for crimes against humanity, a move that in practical terms may have made matters worse. The indictments effectively ended peace negotiations with the LRA and created obstacles to quiet efforts for the surrender of midlevel officers and the children they command. It's not clear who can bring Kony to justice, since Uganda's Army has failed for two decades. Neighboring Sudan, which publicly broke ties with Kony after a decade of support, hasn't gone after LRA fighters operating from its territory--despite continued attacks on aid workers and villagers in southern Sudan. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Kony is said to be hiding now, barely functions as a state.
At the Labuje displaced person camp in Uganda's Kitgum district, some 17,655 people live as de facto prisoners on 8 acres of thatched-roof huts and hard-packed mud. "Of course I fear going back home," says Margaret Okello, who's raising two children and the orphaned child of a friend. "The rebels are still there in small groups. They are still doing atrocities." Others, though, are taking advantage of the LRA's current low ebb, leaving the unhygienic safety of the camps for risky freedom in the fields. The Ugandan government says that over time, most will feel secure enough to do the same. Former LRA fighters say this is exactly what Kony wants--a new crop of potential abductees to feed a new decade of fear.
For more on the children in northern Uganda: www.usnews.com/uganda
advertisement
