Being a child in northern Uganda is like being a living target. Every night children leave their villages or internal displacement camps for the nearest town. They camp out and sleep in any place that has a roof and doors in which to keep them safe. They cannot forget the LRA rebels who are looking to kidnap them and do terrible things to them; they live in fear of the rebels.
The LRA
The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is a Ugandan rebel militia and movement started in 1988 by Joseph Kony. The LRA is confusing and inconsistent in its ideology, but systematic in its strategy. In its absence of popular (and thus voluntary) support, the LRA abducts and forces children and young adults into servitude. Abductions occur mainly in villages and displacement camps at night. The rebels are ordered to abduct all youths and force them to kill their parents.
According to Peter Eichstaedt, author of First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army, this induction of trauma and fear causes Kony’s new soldiers to become malleable and easily indoctrinated—it is the step of turning them into ruthless killers. The children are told that Kony is a prophet and that they must fulfill every order given to them, which include violent and murderous acts.
These little killers are never told the reason they are fighting. All they know is the discipline that is enforced brutally upon them by Kony and his commanders; infraction usually results in blows from the flat side of a machete. An estimated 38,000 children have been kidnapped, tortured, and forced to fight in LRA since 1986. About 25 per cent of the young girls who become porters, cooks, and sex slaves.
“Night Commuters”
Children who are not in the LRA live in fear of being captured by them; parents are likewise terrified of seeing their children abducted or killed. If one child is abducted in an area, everyone in that area become afraid. Hundreds and occasionally thousands of children flee the Internally Displaced Persons camps for the towns every evening to sleep in fortified enclosures or verandas, to avoid being abducted by LRA rebels lurking about in the more rural areas where abductions occur. Hence their label, “night commuters.”
Bus parks are a popular destination, but the most popular may be a centre in Gulu town called the Arc, hosting hundreds at a time. According to a BBC report, as many as 6,000 children have been found sleeping in the Arc at one time.
It is difficult to get a good night’s sleep. The children sleep on the hard floor; some have mats but most carry just one blanket with them. Crowding makes it all the more difficult to sleep. Many try to do their homework under candlelight while there. The BBC found that, though safer in the towns, children still must be on the alert for police, who can be violent. Girls must be vigilant because of sexual abuse and rape.
The children wake themselves up before dawn every morning to head back to their families. Groups of children become like surrogate families themselves, teaming up when they make the journey to town twice a day, sleeping together in the same area, and generally finding safety in numbers.
Conclusion
Children in northern Uganda are forced to grow up sooner than children who live in places not plagued by war and the usage of child soldiers. Yet war has been waging in Uganda for two decades with little sign of letting up. Years of abductions and the failure to reach peace or capture the LRA have created a widespread feeling of hopelessness and despair among northern Ugandans.
According to Uganda’s The Monitor, the Ugandan government has suggested that the LRA are no longer a problem. International intervention is required to capture Joseph Kony and his child soldiers so that all children in Uganda no longer have to live in fear.
Works Cited
Leggett, Ian. Uganda. Oxford: Oxfam, 2001.
Lindsay Haskell - Lindsay Haskell is an author and humanitarian advocate. She has written a novel about Darfur, Sudan, called Grace.
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