Death Does Not Rot: Women of the Lord’s Resistance Army

Letha E. Victor

Department of Anthropology McGill University, Montreal

June 2011

A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of

Master of Arts

In Anthropology with Development Studies

© Letha Victor 2011 ABSTRACT

From 1986 to 2006, northern Uganda was the site of a violent conflict between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Government of Uganda. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Acholi sub-region in 2009, this thesis examines the narratives of young women who were abducted by the LRA, forced to serve multiple roles in “the bush,” and have since returned to civilian life. I explore the supernatural dimensions of the conflict and contend that women were agents of their own survival because they learned to manipulate their physical and cosmological circumstances, both during and after their captivity. At the margins of transitional justice debates, women negotiate their own memories within an intricate web of religiosity. Though forced into marriage, motherhood, and soldiering, only to come home to lives marked by stigma, patriarchy, and poverty, ex-LRA women are complex persons who defy the tropes of “sex slave” and “child soldier.”

RÉSUMÉ

De 1986 à 2006, le nord de l'Ouganda a été le site d'un conflit violent entre la «Lord's Resistance Army» (LRA) et le Gouvernement de l'Ouganda. Basée sur une recherche ethnographique menée dans la sous-région d'Acholi en 2009, cette mémoire de thèse examine les récits de jeunes femmes qui ont été enlevés par la LRA, forcés de servir de multiples rôles dans «la brousse», et ont depuis réintégré la vie civile. J'explore les dimensions surnaturelles du conflit et je soutiens que les femmes étaient des agents de leur propre survie, car elles ont appris à manipuler leurs conditions physiques et cosmologiques, à la fois pendant et après leur captivité. En marge des débats de la justice transitionnelle, les femmes négocient leurs propres souvenirs au sein d'un réseau complexe de la religiosité. Bien forcées de se marier, de devenir mères, et d’être des soldats; rentrées à des vies marquées par la stigmatisation, le patriarcat, et la pauvreté, elles sont quand même des personnes complexes qui défient les tropes «d’esclave sexuelle» et «d’enfant soldat».

2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To say that this work is the product of many contributors would be a tremendous understatement. A thesis about stories is nothing without people to tell them, and as such I am first and foremost deeply grateful to the many Ugandan women who were generous with their time and trust. I sincerely hope that you are satisfied with my interpretations of your experiences. I owe thanks to several friends and colleagues in Uganda who opened up their homes, offices, minds and hearts in order to help my research run as smoothly as possible. Jessica Huber of the American Refugee Committee graciously provided me with housing and friendship in Gulu Town, Amony Emely managed to save me in the kitchen when I mistakenly invited an entire neighbourhood to supper, and Hayden Aaronson (ACDI/VOCA) was always around to provide much needed comic relief. I was also dependent on the friendship of and sage advice from my former colleagues at the Justice and Reconciliation Project, particularly Anyeko Ketty, Owor Ogora Lino, Ojok Boniface, Julian Hopwood, and Komakech Emon. Thank you for your patience, help and encouragement! The staff members at Gulu District NGO Forum were always willing to lend me a helping hand, while Otim Michael of the International Center for Transitional Justice provided encouragement in my explorations. Aber Janet and Acan Grace of MOSWACO aided me in making contact with peer support groups. Your compassion and courage are inspiring. His Highness Rwot David Onen Acana II was supportive and welcoming, while Agwoka Sophie of Ker Kwaro Acholi kindly guided my efforts to meet with Acholi elders. The Rev. Fr. Okumu Joseph (BOSCO Uganda) and Achan Alice (Christian Counselling Fellowship) both made time for me in their hectic schedules, patiently answering my questions and engaging me in fruitful discussion. I thank you. I am additionally thankful to Theresa McElroy (University of British Columbia) and Atim Stella who introduced me to my skilful and diligent interpreters, Akumu Florence and Achoka Millie Grace. You are all wonderful teachers, excellent researchers, and delightful friends. Akello Susan and Okee Christine helped me when I needed last-minute interpretation; it was always much appreciated. Thank you to Jessie Anderson (George Washington University) and Lara Rosenoff (University of British Columbia) for good company and great conversation. Back home in Canada, I relied heavily on friends, family, and colleagues to remind me that my work was not yet over and that I was in fact capable of completing the task at hand. My parents, Ian and Cathy Victor of Victoria, BC, have acted as nothing less than my own personal cheerleading team; though I wish you would take off that skirt, Dad. I am truly thankful that you have never questioned my (sometimes ridiculous) decisions in this process, stoically accepting that, by going to Uganda, I was merely fulfilling the Victor family motto (Big Balls, No Manners). In Vancouver, my sister Rachel Victor, brother Dan Victor and sister-in-law Jennifer Menard Victor held my hand across the continents each time they phoned me, not

3 minding that there was often not much more on the other end than a whimper. Thanks for being everything that a big brother and sisters are supposed to be, and more. To Danièle Carrara, Leigh Patterson, and Vivian Wong, thank you for tolerating my constant absence. I am especially indebted to Dr. Erin Baines (Justice and Reconciliation Project and Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia) who introduced me to Uganda, both intellectually and literally. It never ceases to amaze me that I ended up traveling through rural IDP camps in northern Uganda, when all you had asked me to do was order some catering for a meeting in Vancouver. You are a fantastic scholar and a cherished mentor. In Montréal and Morin-Heights, Qc, I am tremendously thankful for Emily Victor and Gino Capozzi, Anna Victor and Nicolas Korfage, who shared their love, laughter, food, and wine. To Alice, Eva, Lukas, and Andrew (who aren’t quite sure yet where or what Africa is), thank you for keeping your auntie grounded by demanding nothing more than bedtime stories. At McGill, I am grateful to my supervisor, Professor Ronald Niezen, who trusted my judgement and patiently waited for the results. I am additionally thankful to John Galaty and the members of STANDD for feedback on early drafts. To my friends and fellow students housed at the Project on Indigenous Rights and Identity and in Peterson Hall, I will miss your camaraderie and support. I am especially grateful to Jessika Tremblay, who cleverly designed a panopticon that ensured I was actually working across the table from her. Truly, you would make Foucault proud. In the Department of Geography, I owe thanks to Alexandre Corriveau-Bourque, Natalie Kaiser, and Matthew Pritchard, who graciously shared their workspace when I could no longer stomach the sight of my own, while Gillian Gregory was always available for a pep talk and a cup of tea. Your hugs and confidence in me helped immensely. Dr. Gretchen Bakke and the students in the dissertation-writing seminar provided invaluable comments, criticisms, and support when I most needed it. Gretchen, you are an amazing teacher. Lastly, my research would not have been possible without the generous financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Project on Indigenous Rights and Identity Thesis Completion Award.

Thank you very much, merci beaucoup, and apwoyo matek.

4 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... 2 RÉSUMÉ ...... 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... 5 CHAPTER 1: Introduction ...... 7 I. UNDERSTANDING AGENCY ...... 9 a.) Violence and Representation ...... 10 b.) Storytelling ...... 12 II. METHODOLOGY ...... 13 a.) Research Subjects ...... 14 b.) Language and Interpretation ...... 15 c.) Participant Observation ...... 16 d.) Qualitative Interviews and Stories ...... 17 e.) The Trouble with Manners ...... 18 f.) Understanding Silence ...... 20 CHAPTER 2: Context and History ...... 22 I. THE WAR IN CONTEXT...... 23 a.) The Militarization of Politics ...... 23 b.) Social Crisis and the Lakwena ...... 25 II. THE LORD’S RESISTANCE ARMY ...... 28 a.) Goals and Tactics ...... 29 b.) Captives in the Wilderness ...... 32 III. COMING HOME: The Normalization of Violence ...... 36 CHAPTER 3: “A Terrible But Decipherable World”...... 39 I. ACHOLI COSMOLOGY: Understanding Death and Misfortune ...... 40 a.) Spirits and Belief ...... 41 b.) Understanding Death and Counteracting Misfortune ...... 46 c.) Supernatural Warfare ...... 51 II. TALES OF WAR ...... 53

5 a.) Anticipating Abduction ...... 54 b.) Severing Social Ties with Violence ...... 57 c.) Journeys into the Bush...... 60 d.) Who Are You?: Purified Soldiers Meet Kony’s Spirits ...... 62 e.) “Taken Like a Soldier”: Forced Marriage and Labour ...... 69 f.) Female Bodies: Pollution and Purity ...... 77 g.) Belief as Agency: Prayer and Emotive Survival ...... 79 h.) Multiple Paths to Freedom ...... 84 CHAPTER 4: Competing Evangelisms and the Luxury of Justice ...... 90 I. HOMECOMING...... 91 a.) The Blunt Arm of the Law: Women and DDR ...... 93 b.) Mony Pe Wat: Navigating Social Life ...... 102 II. JUSTICE ...... 111 a.) A Plurality of Enchantments ...... 112 b.) Polite Suffering: the Memories of Spirits ...... 125 CONCLUSION ...... 129 WORKS CITED...... 131 APPENDICES ...... 142 Appendix A: Glossary of Acronyms ...... 142 Appendix B: Maps ...... 143 Appendix C: Two Women Tell Their Stories ...... 146 BETTY ...... 146 NIGHTY ...... 154

6 CHAPTER 1: Introduction

“In telling a story we renew our faith that the world is within our grasp.”

- Michael Jackson, The Politics of Storytelling, 2006: 17.

The same year that Nighty escaped her abductors, they kidnapped Betty at gunpoint. 1 During the period in which they grew from girls into young women, both were captives of – and participants in – the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel movement from the Acholi sub-region of northern Uganda. Before the LRA (along with its military and spiritual leader, Joseph Kony) was permanently expelled from Uganda’s borders in 2006, Nighty and Betty orchestrated their own escapes, as well as those of their children born of forced marriage and rape. I met both women in August of 2009 in Gulu Town, where the population was still swollen with people internally displaced by the war. Living in rented accommodations on cramped land far away from their home villages, Nighty and Betty spent exhausting days dealing with the demands of everyday life: fetching water, caring for children sick with malaria and typhoid, cooking meagre meals of mingled maize flour, selling fruits or vegetables on the side of the dusty road, or washing laundry and braiding hair for a few shillings. Nevertheless, they allowed me to come visit them in the late afternoons. Over the course of one week in September, I interviewed them each separately while we sat on the packed-dirt floor of Nighty’s mud and wattle hut, decorated with linoleum and bolts of colourful cloth. Some days, they would insist that I sit on the single chair, uncomfortably high above my interpreter and whoever was speaking at the time. I would lean in to hear a story; the speaker averted her eyes and spoke in a voice no louder than a whisper. She was often so quiet that her words were drowned out by the noises outside: military exercises, girls walking to the borehole, and men drinking local brew, crowded around loud radios.

1 With the exception of public figures and those in the High Command of the Lord’s Resistance Army, all names in this thesis have been changed to protect the identity of informants.

7 This thesis is about the narrative accounts of Betty, Nighty, and their peers.2 It unpacks the lived experiences of an often misunderstood group of actors in the northern Ugandan war: the so-called “girl soldiers.” By making use of their own words, I show that – though we cannot measure the circumstances of luck, fate, or providence – those girls and young women who quickly learned and understood the rules of the rebels were able to successfully manipulate their situations, ultimately leading to their survival. They relied on skilful interpretations of everyday challenges and their beliefs in the spirit world (Christian and indigenous) for the little sense of control they had over their own existences. Often, their agency was constrained to the point where deep-seated and hidden beliefs were the only aspects of themselves that could be maintained during their ordeals; their hidden resistance. Those women who have returned home have endured lives of direct and structural violence, endemic poverty, social stigma, and severe physical, mental, and spiritual distress. However, they now work to redefine themselves and their children outside the simple trope of the “child soldier,” through peer support, spiritual activity, and storytelling. Their stories also tell us that they are not passive victims, that their expressions of agency are grounded in active “work” within a complex moral and spiritual economy. I argue that conflicting notions of modernity, particularly inasmuch as the supernatural realm is concerned, can and do impair popular understandings of the war and the lived experiences of LRA combatants and Acholi people in general. The rejection of religion by the practitioners of modern, Western-based interventions has resulted in a failure to recognize the role of evangelical Christianity as a valid means of memory work and inter-communal reconciliation, while at the same time the interveners purport their contributions to be culturally-sensitive and committed to local ownership of peace and development projects. Concurrently and ironically, social conflicts in Acholi centre on what it means to be modern, with individuals often rejecting romanticized “culturally- based” practices and beliefs for the Enlightenment values embodied by the non-secular,

2 Though the narratives of many women are interspersed throughout the text of the thesis, Betty and Nighty’s stories can be read in their entirety in Appendix C.

8 white Europeans who colonized Uganda in the early twentieth century. Spirits and sometimes-unfashionable ontologies are thus central to the ongoing LRA rebellion. The spirit world is ever-present in Acholi, and it begs attention from those made of flesh and blood. The Rt. Rev. Mark Mcleod Baker Ochola II, a retired Anglican Bishop of Kitgum Diocese, thus remarked that the realms of the living and the dead, so disrupted by war, must be reconciled. He said:

If reconciliation is not done, we shall be sitting on a time bomb. Because death does not rot, it does not rot. Even for a hundred, even for a thousand years, it will still be there, fresh. Because people will pass it on and on and on to another generation if nothing is done. So the reason why we are saying we really need national reconciliation is really to bring healing. To bring healing, restoration, transformation, and life. So that people can live again.

In a place where thousands of youths have committed unspeakable acts, where the population at large has lived for over a decade in internally displaced persons’ camps, questions of justice and empowerment cross seamlessly into the realm of the spirits, because death does not rot.

I. UNDERSTANDING AGENCY

While popular representations of the LRA have erroneously interpreted the roles of boys to be soldiering and girls to sex slavery (for example: “Sex slavery awaits Ugandan schoolgirls” (Westcott 2003: n.p.)), the idea that sexual victimization is the single experience of females in the LRA has permeated in-depth research reports as well: “As is common practice for the LRA, abducted children are forced to fight or used as sex slaves,” states one recent publication (Cakaj 2010: 1). Forced marriage, rape, and sexual violence were experienced by nearly all of my informants, but their time in the bush cannot be reduced to “only” sexual slavery, a term that further objectifies ex-LRA women. Women and girls were also soldiers, cooks, nurses, farmers, babysitters, porters, midwives, and in some instances, commanders. Significantly, while my respondents referred to themselves in various ways (as ex-LRA, FAPs (formerly abducted persons), child mothers, returnees, abductees, and the list goes on), not once did a woman call herself a sex slave.

9 I do not wish to overstate the power of women in the LRA. They were, by and large, powerless against the all-male senior command and the whims of their husbands or lapwony.3 Still, not all agency is enacted by the pounding of fists, the shooting of guns, or the fleeing of feet. Again and again, the women who told me their stories described the creative and savvy ways in which they learned to suppress or hide emotions, to speak or keep silent, to challenge or acquiesce, all in order to survive. Many, like Nighty and Betty above, emphasized that they coped with their circumstances through prayer and attributed their survival to the actions of God.

This agency was not always positive. Women and girls, like all members of the LRA, are burdened by the reality of being simultaneously victims and perpetrators. Women and girls were sometimes faced with the choice to kill or be killed, to protect their own seniority by abusing younger girls and women or new “recruits” or in some cases (though rarer) were even the enthusiastic commanders of battles, ambushes, and abduction raids.

In speaking of agency, then, what I mean is not so much the physical actions of emancipation so much as the processes by which women of the LRA “make” existential meaning out of their own circumstances. While we can define agency simply in contrast to constraint – thus as the ability of an individual to freely act and make choices, I approach the concept in a two-fold way. First, I consider how girls and women have successfully navigated the cultural and spiritual rules of the bush and steeled themselves against the dangers of the supernatural. Second, I consider agency as a project of meaning making in the face of physical, social, political, and economic constraints. For example, how have women returned from the LRA negotiated their individual and collective identities in the context of poverty, stigma, and ongoing displacement? a.) Violence and Representation

The most significant challenge I have faced in this thesis project is how to avoid reproducing violence in my discussions with and writings about formerly abducted girls

3 Each LRA brigade has a boss, the “big man” called lapwony. This word means teacher, and in the context of the LRA is used with reference to commanders. A commander is thus at once a teacher, commander, and priest.

10 and women. In asking women to tell me their stories, did I unnecessarily ask them to re- live violent events? Because they are arguably the least understood and most misrepresented group (however diverse) of former LRA combatants, my desire to bridge an ethnographic gap has been coupled with the sobering realization that drawing attention to their alterity may have undesired and harmful consequences. However, to turn away from those words freely spoken, to silence them through omission, is also a form of violence. Consequently, this project is tasked with maintaining a delicate balance.

In E. Valentine Daniel’s Charred Lullabies, an influential anthropography4 of nationalist violence in Sri Lanka, he recounts a difficult undertaking: “Many have died. How to give an account of these shocking events without giving in to a desire to shock? And more important, what does it mean to give such an account?” (1996: 3). How is one to write an anthropography of violence without engaging in voyeurism? How does one justify asking informants, those persons who have both perpetrated and been the victims of violence, to speak of those lived experiences? That “modalities of intersubjectivity imply modalities of power” (Jackson 2006: 43) cannot be ignored; when a privileged Canadian has the power to extract the oral histories of a group of marginalized war survivors, ethical contestations are indeed justified. How does one interpret violent events in cultural context without presupposing that all suffering has meaning? These questions have no easy answers, but in entering this project I was bound to consider them repeatedly.

Daniel, concerned with authoring an account that was neither too sensational nor too detached, remarked, “I was entangled in a project that had me rather than I it” (1996: 3). In my initial meetings with ex-LRA women, one year prior to my fieldwork period, it became clear that they had placed expectations on me to transmit their stories to a wider audience: I too was entangled, reminded that it is not only the ethnographer who has goals. The question I repeatedly asked myself, whether I had the right or the authority to collect and share their stories, did not disappear, but it was joined by a new urgency. I could not choose to ignore the answers to the questions I had posed, and many women

4 Daniel refers to his study not as an ethnography, but as an anthropography; his word choice is designed to separate violence from the “ethnos” so as not to reduce collective violence to a limited geography of people or place (1996: 7).

11 made it clear to me that they expected me to truthfully share their thoughts with “those people” in Canada and elsewhere. I was entrusted then, not to give “voice to the voiceless,” but to give “ears to the earless,” as Harri Englund has so aptly commented (2006: 171). b.) Storytelling

Following the phenomenological anthropology of Michael Jackson (after Hannah Arendt), I contend that storytelling is a form of agency because it transforms private experiences into public meanings (which in turn may be appropriated into private meanings) (2006: 15). In the case of formerly abducted LRA women, to tell stories about their own abductions and enslavement enables them to take some measure of control over their circumstances of disempowerment. Stories of constraint are thus inherently political.

As indicated in the section above, the choice of whom to tell one’s story (and why) is as significant as the story itself. When I initiated my research with groups of ex- LRA women, I was prepared for at least some of them to refuse my questions and interview requests. To my surprise, rejection never came, and so at the end of my time in Acholi I asked the women to tell me why they had agreed to share their stories with me, given that many concluded their narratives by stating that they would rather forget the past. One woman’s response was blunt and telling:

You must be very lucky to obtain these stories from us. Many people have been coming to get the same information you wanted from us. But we never gave it to anyone. We only managed to give you this information simply because your colour is different. And secondly, you don’t know really what happened here. You hear stories from people. But you did not know the actual things happening at the grassroots level. That is why we managed to give you the information. Had it been you were an Acholi or a tribe neighbouring to the Acholi sub-region, you would have not got the information.

While I would have preferred to flatter myself with the idea that my research success was the result of careful planning and sincerely earned trust, it is true that it had much to do with the reality that my “colour is different.” By cooperating with an outsider’s project rather than a locally led initiative, the women made a forceful political choice and a practical manoeuvre as well: not only did they deem that I was better positioned to

12 broadcast their narratives beyond Acholi, but it was assumed that I was well connected to the aid and NGO community, and thus likely to assist them in accessing resources.

Storytelling is thus a negotiated exchange of not only meaning, but also of purpose. It is a motivated act by which ex-LRA women become agents of their own lives, managing memories of violence and disempowerment while also navigating the roadblocks (mental and material) of everyday life. Narratives demonstrate the push and pull of public and private meanings (Jackson 2006: 36). It is for this reason of agency and meaning that the stories and narratives of ex-LRA women are given prominence in this thesis.

II. METHODOLOGY

I was hired in 2007 as a full-time research officer with the Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP), a research group that since 2005 has played a key role in researching transitional justice northern Uganda.5 While I began my employment in Vancouver, British Columbia, from April to August 2008 I participated, again with JRP, in a research internship in the Acholi sub-region. In addition to contributing my time to several research projects and massacre documentations, under the guidance of my supervisor and local colleagues I began to document the life histories of formerly abducted women during that visit.6 Having only scratched the surface during that initial visit, I decided to return to the region for three and a half months from July to October of 2009 in order to conduct my Master’s fieldwork. My explications throughout this thesis are based on observations made during both visits, while the independent research of my second trip exclusively forms the interview and group interview data.

The questions guiding my research were as follows: How do women who have lived in LRA captivity describe and understand their experiences? How do they negotiate their own places in multi-sited justice initiatives? How do they wish for justice to be

5 As of 2011, JRP’s mandate is “to empower conflict affected communities by preserving memory, acknowledging loss, and promoting healing through participatory research, capacity building, advocacy and documentation” (2010: n.p.). At the time of my involvement with JRP, it was a join research initiative between the Liu Institute for Global Issues (University of British Columbia) and Gulu District NGO Forum in Uganda. As of July 2010, JRP is now an independent NGO registered in Uganda. 6 Some of the results of these efforts are detailed at Peace Girl (www.peacegirl.moonfruit.com).

13 served in their cases? These questions are admittedly “woolly,” and because I wished to understand the perceptions, concerns, and lived experiences of ex-LRA women in a general (“to “to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange,” as the adage goes) I approached my subject matter using a grounded theory framework. Grounded theory is premised a method in which research results are used to build theories and hypotheses, rather than one in which narrowly-defined data is collected in order to prove or disprove a pre-conceived hypothesis (Glaser and Strauss, 1977: 1, 21). This required me to balance my ideological framework and guiding questions with what emerged as significant from the fieldwork data, which also helped to eliminate data mining.

And so I returned to Acholi in search of answers and new questions. I based myself in Gulu Town, approximately 275 kilometres north of the state capital, Kampala, and 100 kilometres south of the border with southern Sudan. Gulu is the largest town in Acholi, and according to government authorities, in 2008 the population was estimated at around 141,500 people, nine and a half times larger than the 1980 population (Acholi Times 2010: n.p.). The dramatic surge in population has been attributed to the influx of internally displaced persons making refuge in the relative safety of the town during the war (Uganda Bureau of Statistics 2006: 38). Gulu is an expanded version of the trading posts that dot the countryside – simple concrete shop fronts coloured with mobile phone adverts, grass and cow dung huts, pork joints, churches, mosques, dance clubs and bars, medical clinics, roadside kiosks and markets teeming with people from all over the four districts of Acholi and beyond. Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps hug the town, flooded with people either too afraid to go back to their villages, or too unwilling to abandon the economic opportunities and infrastructure of the town, while hundreds of humanitarian, development, and aid organizations have based their operations in the town. a.) Research Subjects

Thought I was based in Gulu Town, I visited all four districts of Acholi in order to identify possible study participants.7 For the sake of time and budget, I relied primarily on

7 As of 2010, the Acholi sub-region (also referred to as simply “Acholi”) has been comprised of the districts of Agogo, Amuru, Gulu, Kitgum, Lamwo, Nwoya, and Pader. For the purposes of clarity I only

14 snowball referrals from those ex-LRA women I had met during my visit in 2008. These contacts opened up a social network of informal peer support revolving loan groups to me. I focused most of my attentions on two all female ex-LRA peer support groups from Gulu and Amuru Districts, while I supplemented this research with visits to elders and religious leaders.

In total, I conducted thirty-two formal interviews, six formal group interviews with between ten and fifty participants each (of both sexes), collected captivity and return narratives from twenty-five women, and had countless informal conversations with ex- LRA men and women, local leaders, elders, activists and religious figures. In total, I formally spoke with ninety-seven Acholi persons, of whom ninety self-identified as returned LRA abductees. The respondents originated from all four Acholi districts in existence during the research phase (Gulu, Kitgum, Pader and Amuru). b.) Language and Interpretation

The primary language spoken by the research subjects was Acholi Luo, though several of the respondents were fluent in English. As the vast majority of the research consisted of in-depth interviews, group interviews, and participant observation, I used the services of two full-time interpreters in order to assist me in mobilizing respondents and conducting interviews and discussions in Acholi. Though the interviews were semi-structured, a basic interview questionnaire was cross-translated (from English to Acholi and back again) in order to ensure that terms and word meanings remained consistent.

I only employed female assistants in order to mitigate the potential for discomfort the respondents might feel when discussing sensitive gender-based issues. I ensured their competency by familiarizing them with the questions and guiding themes behind the research, and had full trust in their professional abilities and sensitivity to the research subjects. As is often the case in ethnographic research, each interpreter was a cultural reference point unto herself and provided a wealth of insight into the project.

refer to the four districts in existence during my fieldwork periods (2008-2009). See Appendix B for maps of the area.

15 c.) Participant Observation

Not uniquely to northern Uganda, many people who have experienced serious psychological stress and trauma at the hands of others are unlikely to trust a stranger enough to provide truthful, meaningful, or accurate narrative interpretations of their own lives. I considered that establishing rapport was a method in and of itself – establishing basic trust and mutual respect took time and was ongoing, but it is an indispensable part of fieldwork. The best advice I was given whenever I felt anxious about my ability to do fieldwork or ask the right questions or conduct enough interviews was to do some “deep hanging out” with the people I was studying. As a result, my daily field journal was by far my most important research tool.

Although I had originally intended to engage in heavy participant observation (by which I mean living with and participating in all aspects of my subjects’ lives), this soon proved to be unfeasible for Master’s-length fieldwork. First, I was not proficient in the language, could not afford the time needed to become fluent (much more than three months in any case), and could not afford to pay an interpreter to be at my side at all hours of the day and night. Second, although I was graciously welcomed into women’s homes and spent time with them beyond formal interviews, I could not justify “tagging along” to the itinerant jobs that the women sometimes held – I was a distraction that could possibly get someone dismissed, and as the women were generally poor and socially disempowered, this was not a risk that was worth taking without longer-term financial agreements in place. Third, I was conscious that my constant presence might cause resentment or jealousy or even embarrassment. During my first visit in 2008, I had spent one long weekend staying with one ex-LRA woman and her children. I insisted on helping with the household chores and cooking, and realized I was unwittingly denigrating my host’s hospitality when what felt like the entire neighbourhood came outside to watch me wash pots with a bar of soap and a bucket of water. Getting beyond the point where I was considered a guest was not possible in that short period of time. In consideration of these challenges, I engaged in what might be called “participant observation light” – I did not live with the women, but I took every opportunity to share in their lives.

16 My presence, as that of any outsider would, inherently changed social dynamics of the research site. There was the potential that my company might be resented or feel burdensome to my research informants or those around them (jealously because of outsider attention was always a possibility). It was important that I watch out for all of these reactions in assessing my interactions, and I reacted accordingly when necessary (such as by withdrawing temporarily from unsafe or unfriendly situations). I observed that my informants were highly concerned with being hospitable, and that hospitality included a sense of responsibility for my safety. Consequently, I took care to not cause any emotional or social harm to my hosts by putting myself in harm’s way (such as by frequenting notoriously unsafe areas at night or travelling to regions that I was advised to avoid).

Lastly, a significant issue that I had to constantly address was that of managing the expectations of the research respondents. As discussed in the last section, in northern Uganda, “white” people such as myself are synonymous with wealth, privilege, and global charity. It is easy for outsiders to get caught up in the afflictions of a war-torn region, and consequently many people make promises that they cannot keep – especially now that the region is now relatively peaceful and a popular site for “disaster tourism.” In light of this fact, I did my best to strike a fine balance between compassion and practicality, and referred requests for aid and advice when possible. d.) Qualitative Interviews and Stories

I contend that due to particular cultural realities of Acholi, in order to paint an accurate portrait of the state of former LRA women, in-depth qualitative research was necessary. Because large-scale quantitative surveys dictate brief interactions between researcher and research subject (so that the next subject can be surveyed), it is often possible that the data collected may be inaccurate due to a respondent’s mistrust of the researcher, eagerness to impart the “right answers,” or belief that certain answers will elicit material benefits from the wealthy foreign researcher. In comparison, the drawback of qualitative methods is that they tend to be incredibly labour intensive – taking up significant amounts of time (and money), whereas quantitative methods can be more time efficient (but may miss contextual detail).

17 For all of these reasons and more, I relied primarily on formal semi-structured interviews to hear and ask questions about women’s stories. My questionnaires were semi-structured in order to adapt each interview to the relevant circumstances of each respondent. Nevertheless, my questions were as clear and unambiguous as I could make them in order to avoid leading the respondents, as well as to eliminate the chance that the questions meant different things to different people. I revised and edited questions as issues arose.

I asked sensitive questions about experiences in captivity and the hard return home; questions that required sensitivity and care in the asking. This meant I had to respond to verbal, non-verbal, and social cues indicating when a respondent was distressed. “Responding,” could entail changing the topic being discussed to something innocuous, it could mean terminating the interview early, or it sometimes it meant re- scheduling the interview to a time and place where and when the discussant felt more comfortable. However, I avoided asking direct questions about individual experiences of murder, torture, or sexual violence and discussed these subjects only when the respondents themselves addressed them. I maintained this policy for two reasons: first, I am not a social worker, nor a service provider, and thus I considered that to delve into these subjects would constitute an unnecessary exploitation. Second, following the guiding principle of grounded theory, I did not wish to bias the interviews with an artificial focus on grisly details.

My use of group interviews followed the same basic methodological and ethical principles as the semi-structured interviews, but they additionally allowed me to observe social dynamics between ex-LRA. Group interviews also helped multiple opinions to be voiced, encouraged positive dialogue, and helped to facilitate the active participation of women who may have felt more comfortable speaking about their life experiences in a group composed of their peers. e.) The Trouble with Manners

When I first met Acholi people in Canada, they taught me some common Acholi Luo greetings. “Itye maber?” (literally, “Are you well there?”) is to be followed by the response, “Atye maber” (“I am fine here). “Kop ango?” (“Is everything fine?”) is to be

18 responded with the word, “kope” (fine). “Apwoyo” (“thank you” or “please”) is the appropriate way to say “hello.” These phrases and responses were drilled into me.

But what, I asked, if I am not “fine?” They thought this was a rather funny question. Although the word “marac” (“bad”) can be used, I was told it was unusual to use it. Someone told me, “Even if your best friend died today, you would still respond that you are “maber.”” This particular cultural feature went a long way in helping me understand day-to-day interaction in Acholi, but also how I should conduct my research and interpret responses – verbal and non – to my questions. Aside from the obvious barriers of language, there are nuances to the “Acholi method” of verbal and non-verbal interaction that can easily lead a foreign researcher onto the wrong path.

In Acholi, it is considered impolite or offensive, especially for girls and women, to express negative emotions. Children are admonished for crying. When ex-LRA soldiers explain that the first rule of the bush is that one must never, ever cry or show fear, they are describing the magnification of a pre-existing social more. It is because of this detail of inter-personal behaviour that attitudes are not always what they seem in public narratives. These cautions do not mean that one should never take an Acholi respondent at his or her word, but it does require a delicate consideration of the context in which he or she has answered what may be an uncomfortable question. A public narrative of harmony and forgiveness has insinuated itself into private speech, but this does not necessarily mean that it is accepted. It does mean that impolite opinions and affect are expressed quietly and indirectly.

As a result of this, I was very careful to use probing techniques, encouraging participants to elaborate or expand on their responses. This necessity of this was compounded by the fact that simple and complicated questions alike often elicit vague, passive, or circumventive responses. To illustrate this point in a simple way, I realized after spending nearly four months in Acholi in 2008 and having a basic understanding of key Acholi Luo phrases that I did not know the local words for “yes” and “no.” When I asked a well-read, literate, university-educated Acholi colleague to teach me these two words, he told me that he did not know how to spell them. In fact, he never had. I then understood why I had such a frustrating time getting straight answers to simple questions

19 I asked of my colleagues, such as “Will you meet me at nine o’clock?” or “Are you upset?” A more serious example lies in the comparison of two interviews a JRP colleague and I had independently conducted with the same former boy soldier, discussing the topic of a massacre he had witnessed: while one interview used no probing techniques and the other many, the difference in his responses was so stark that it amounted to the difference between understanding that the boy was not only a witness to the massacre, but a participant.

Respondents in Acholi also often display prestige bias by answering questions based on what they think the researcher wants to hear or what they believe to be proper. Because of this, it was necessary to spend large amounts of time with the same respondents, rephrasing questions and repeating myself in order to be confident in the answer. For example, when I asked a young woman the seemingly simple question, “Were you born in Gulu?” she answered “yes.” It was only after spending three days staying with her and her children that I discovered she was in fact not born in Gulu, but far away in a town called Atiak on the Sudanese border. Her original answer was indicative of the hierarchical nature of Acholi social relations and traditional deference to guests, but it also displayed the power dynamic between “Acholi girl soldier” and “white Canadian academic”: she had answered “yes” because she did not want to contradict me and cause embarrassment. f.) Understanding Silence

As I will discuss in more depth in Chapter 4, it was extremely important for me to observe the “zeros” in my interactions and discussions with ex-LRA women. Undoubtedly, the method of interviewing is much more than questions and answers, but is the art of listening and watching. This included being able to recognize body language previously unfamiliar to me, and understanding when it is or is not appropriate to continue an interview or take notes. It was essential, therefore, to learn Acholi verbal and body language. For example, if it was not for someone telling me I had been beckoned by what was a then-unfamiliar hand gesture during my first visit to Acholi, I would have greatly offended a high-ranking elder when he indicated, non-verbally, that he wished to speak with me privately. As Clifford Geertz once famously explained, in distinguishing

20 between the thin description of a contracting eyelid and the thick description of a wink “lies the object of ethnography: a stratified hierarchy of meaningful structures in terms of which twitches, winks, fake-winks, parodies, rehearsals of parodies are produced, perceived, and interpreted” (1973: 7).

I thus proceed with the knowledge and caveat that “cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete” (ibid: 29).

21 CHAPTER 2: Context and History

In the LRA, we used to just pray. Pray with Museveni’s name so that we come and overtake the Government. No one is having peace in Museveni’s time. Even my parents whom I left at home are not happy about Museveni’s government. The Commander [of our unit] used to tell us that for him, he’s not coming back home because there’s nothing that brings him home – both his parents had been killed.

- Emily, 6 September 2009

Emily, like many of her peers abducted by the LRA, has never known a time without war. Before the notoriously aggressive regime of Idi Amin came crashing down in 1979, launching the country into a series of ethnicized and regionalized tit-for-tat conflicts, Uganda had long since normalized violence as a legitimate strategy for the attainment of political power. By the time Emily was born in 1987, a series of northern-based rebellions against the then-one-year-old national government of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni had coagulated into one supreme group called the Lord’s Resistance Army. Twelve years later, Emily and eleven of her siblings were forcibly recruited into the LRA’s rebellion, continuing the cycle of violence.

In the face of overwhelming human suffering, the rationale behind the LRA’s tactics is easily disregarded. While the LRA’s political motivations are sometimes debated, these discussions are more often overshadowed by the popular presupposition that the LRA lacks legitimate or consistent political aspirations.8 Yet it is clear from the testimonies of Emily and her peers that the rebellion cannot be fully understood outside the reality of Uganda’s political and military past, especially as it relates to the prominent North-South divide. Part I of this chapter is dedicated to an examination of this history.

Concurrently, the LRA cannot be understood solely in terms of post-colonial political trajectories, by an interpolation of other “African-style” conflicts or through the trope of child soldiering. Part II of this chapter explains the unique features of the LRA rebellion – from its goals and military tactics to the characteristics of lives lived in “the bush.” Part III concludes with an examination of lives at home (loosely defined) in the

8 See, for example: International Crisis Group 2004: i, Gersony 1997: 59, Prendergrast 2007: 2.

22 Acholi sub-region’s camps for internally displaced persons and overcrowded town centres, where state neglect and structural violence are keenly familiar to residents and deeply implicated in the stories of ex-LRA women.

I. THE WAR IN CONTEXT

The British came to East Africa using the same colonial tactics they had perfected throughout their Empire: consolidating power through divide-and-rule policies that irrevocably changed identity, politics, and belonging in the territory now known as Uganda (Finnström 2003: 62). Like elsewhere in Africa, the British colonial regime’s practices engendered winner-takes-all politics and, with arguably more disastrous results, the normalization of militarized governments. These institutional legacies were deeply influential in the shaping of Acholi ethnicity and remain significant sources of long-term political grievances. This history offers some insight into the social and political precursors to the LRA rebellion. a.) The Militarization of Politics

The British Protectorate of Uganda (1894-1962) identified northerners, in particular the people now called “Acholi,”9 as a suitable reserve of military power. As such, Acholi men comprised the largest portion of Uganda’s contribution to the King’s African Rifles (Behrend 1999: 18, 19; Green 2008: 70). A “military ethnocracy” was formed and by 1914 (i.e. the onset of WWI) the Acholi began to see “the profession of arms as their natural vocation” (Doom and Vlassenroot 1999: 8). At the same time, southern Ugandans were treated as more intellectually sophisticated,10 and as such were more often drawn upon as the colonial administration formed its labour force (Behrend 1999: 19, Dolan 2009: 41-42, Doom and Vlassenroot 1999:7). These artificial distinctions would have long-lasting consequences on the entire country.

9 Although the concept of “Acholi-hood” existed prior to the arrival of European colonizers, it was of “limited but not insignificant practical application” (Atkinson 1994: 271). It was not a fully formed, self- identified ethnicity until the early twentieth century, at the height of colonial and missionary power. 10 The paternalistic and racist ideals that intellectually motivated colonialism - predicated upon spurious theories of teleological social evolutionism and the “white man’s burden” to tame the savage “dark heart” of Africa – played no small part in the advance of the British Protectorate.

23 When Uganda peacefully transitioned to an independent country in October 1962, the national army was made up of primarily Acholi troops. Upon taking office, democratically-elected Prime Minister Milton Obote (a Langi from the northern Ugandan Apac District bordering Acholi) almost immediately engaged in an armed power struggle with the Kabaka, the powerful ceremonial President and traditional king of the southern Baganda. Army commander Idi Amin began strategically promoting fellow West Nilers11 and advantageously murdering dissidents, in particular Acholi troops who threatened the ethnic balance of the military (Doom and Vlassentroot 1999: 9).

By 1971, army commander Idi Amin had overthrown the Government and declared himself President. In one of his first act of brutality, Amin ordered a battalion of Acholi and Langi soldiers to report at the prison barracks in Kampala, where they were promptly massacred (Green 2008: 73). Amin was famously violent, known for torturing and murdering indiscriminately. He became quickly ostracized by the international community, particularly when he ordered the expulsion of 35,000 ethnic Asians from the country in 1972. It is estimated that a minimum of 300,000 Ugandans were murdered during his eight-year reign (Keatley 2003, n.p.).

Amin’s regime was overthrown in 1979 by an invasion of Tanzanian troops, aided by Milton Obote, the nation’s original prime minister, and a coalition of exiles known as the Uganda National Liberation Front/Army (UNLF/A). Amin fled to exile in Libya (later retiring to Saudi Arabia) and the Obote II government was well in place by 1980, supported by soldiers led by Acholi General Tito Okello. Acholis were once again at the forefront of the state military apparatus (Dolan 2009: 37).12

Despite the fact that a peace accord had been signed by Obote, Okello, and the other members of the loose coalition of personal armies that formed the UNLF, that alliance had fractured irrevocably. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, a Banyankole from the south of Uganda, formed a National Resistance Movement/Army (NRM/A) and

11 West Nile is also a northern region, bordered by Acholi. 12 Concurrently, Amin’s soldiers had abandoned a particularly large cache of weapons in the northern Ugandan region of Karamoja. Karamojong warriors took the weapons to increase the scope and frequency of cattle raids into the neighbouring Acholi sub-region, which lead to a major economic crisis as stocks were decimated and political discontent rose to a fever pitch.

24 instigated what would later be called the “Ugandan Bush War.”13 Fighting between Okello’s UNLA and the NRA was centred in the Luwero Triangle (a region in central Uganda bordered by lakes Victoria, Albert, and Kyoga). In 1983, the government army slaughtered thousands in heavy-handed massacres in this Buganda region, and the “skulls of Luwero” continue to haunt central Uganda, where blame for the murders is still angrily accorded to Acholi people as a whole (Green 2008: 74).

By July 1985, two decades after independence, Uganda saw its third coup d’état; Okello had become dissatisfied with the leadership and with the help of Lieutenant- General Basilio Olara-Okello overthrew Obote’s government (Doom and Vlassenroot 1999: 9). For the first time, Acholis were at the helm of both the Government and the military. However, within six months of Tito Okello taking power, the NRA/M’s guerrilla war successfully routed him and Okello too fled into exile (ibid: 10). The mostly Acholi UNLA soldiers retreated north to Acholi and southern Sudan, where some regrouped and formed the Uganda People’s Democratic Army (UPDA) (Dolan 2009: 43). While Museveni was declared President of the new Republic of Uganda in 1986, his NRA continued to fight battles with the UPDA and several other rebel groups, which refused to accept defeat. The national army was no longer dominated by northerners, and to the rebel groups was thus regarded as alien (2009: 40). b.) Social Crisis and the Lakwena

The masses of soldiers returning to the North created a social crisis in Acholi. The troops engaged in power struggles with elders, who claimed that the soldiers had violated the spiritual and moral order due to their actions in the Luwero Triangle (Behrend 1999: 22). It was not so much the indiscriminate killing that upset the status quo, however, as the fact that the proper ritual cleansings had not been performed after the fact. The soldiers had returned to Acholi spiritually polluted, bringing back highly contagious cen (the avenging ghosts of those who died violently) (ibid 28-29).14 In pre-colonial and colonial times, a warrior who killed would bring back the head of his victim. He was placed in a liminal state of seclusion until the killed person’s spirit had been sent away through ritual

13 This war is also referred to as the “Luwero War,” the “Resistance War,” or the “Civil War.” 14 The concept of cen and spiritual vengeance is discussed in depth in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4.

25 cleansing and sacrifices. For example, during WWII Acholis in the King’s African Rifles improvised by bringing back personal items of their victims, such as pieces of cloth or buttons (Behrend 1999: 28).

During the early 1980s, however, such practices were regarded as inconvenient in the context of Uganda’s modern guerrilla wars. Consequently, many returning troops were blamed for new scourge of AIDS, for the reprisals in the North meted out by the NRA, for general misfortunes, and certainly for the Acholi sub-region’s loss of political power. Cen was harnessed by unscrupulous diviners, who were paid to inflict kiroga on unsuspecting rivals.15 Misfortune and death overwhelmed Acholi, and some elders admitted their helplessness against the sheer scale of spiritual contamination. While they attempted to rebalance the moral order by proscribing rules of behavior, they were unable to enforce the rules and people turned en masse to witchcraft for protection (ibid: 29). Meanwhile, the returned soldiers failed to reintegrate, becoming “internal strangers” in Acholi. Many recognized that a prophet was needed to end the cycle of violence and discord (30).

In August 1986, a young woman named Alice Auma announced that she had been possessed a year before by a dead Italian military general named Lakwena (meaning “messenger” in Acholi Luo). Lakwena, a Christian spirit, had ordered the purification of Acholi and all of Uganda, and commanded Alice to assemble an army called the Holy Spirit Mobile Forces (HSMF), or Holy Spirit Movement (HSM). The impact of the HSM, writes Behrend, was that it “created order within disorder” – it took control of witchcraft, created rules against looting food and medicine, murdering rivals, raping women, and committing other impure acts. It also created a new common Acholi identity through its rules (xi). Alice16 (or Alice Lakwena, as she became known popularly) was delegated by Lakwena to do no other than put an end to evil.

15 Kiroga is the intensification of the more common practice of kooru tipu in which a diviner catches the spirit (tipu) of a client’s enemy in a pot. This weakens the body and leads to sickness and death. Kiroga is even more dangerous as it involves “siccing” cen against another person (Behrend 1999: 26). 16 In Acholi, individuals do not possess family names, but instead a combination of Christian, clan, and indigenous names. The precedence one name takes over another in formal usage is primarily a matter of individual choice.

26 Alice recruited the unemployed soldiers in order to neutralize Acholi’s internal evils (from sorcery, witchcraft, and impure soldiers) and to conquer the external evil of the NRM Government and the impurity of the country’s citizens through battle and ritual purification. The HSM quickly became an apocalyptic movement in the guise of a unified cosmic uprising; Alice held court with nature in the Paraa region of Gulu District of Acholi and on Mount Kilak, later claiming to have 140,000 spirits, bees, snakes, rivers, rocks, and mountains in her service. “Lakwena and his adherents were fit to lead and control the entire world,” and Alice promised paradise on Earth and the return of Jesus Christ (xii).

The HSM was guided by stringent rules detailed in written distributions of Holy Spirit Tactics and Safety Precautions. Alice convinced the UPDA (the rebel Uganda People’s Democratic Army) to put troops under her command, which resulted in surprise victories in their battles with the central government’s National Resistance Army, encouraging voluntary conscripts from other regions in the North. The strict discipline and moral Christian fortitude of the HSMF contrasted with the relative anarchy of the other armed forces of the country, and civilians willingly collaborated with Alice’s forces. Recruits were anointed with holy oil, assured that it would cause bullets aimed at them to turn to water – as long as the bullet’s target was sufficiently pure at heart. Rocks blessed with holy water would explode as grenades, and soldiers were trained to enter into battle in the shape of a cross, singing hymns as they marched (59).

Although the HSM enjoyed some success, by the time its troops had reached the southern city of Jinja in late 1987, the alliance with the UPDA had collapsed. There was no popular support for the Movement outside of northern Uganda, and in November 1987, with troops a mere fifty kilometers from Kampala, it was decisively defeated by the NRA (Dolan 2009: 44). Acholi soldiers fled north once more, joining disparate rebel groups or turning to petty banditry. Alice fled to Kenya, where she died as a refugee. Lakwena had left her body and possessed that of a young UPDA foot soldier named Joseph Kony.

27 II. THE LORD’S RESISTANCE ARMY

The social chaos that succeeded Museveni’s bush war continued despite Alice’s defeat. At least fourteen violent uprisings gripped Uganda between 1986 and 2004 – the first eighteen years of Museveni’s presidency (Lomo and Hovil 2004: 4). In 1987 Joseph Kony, claiming to be possessed by Lakwena, gathered the remnants of the HSM and UPDA into what would (by 1992) finally be called the Lord’s Resistance Army – of which he was both leader and “chairman” Dolan 2009: 44)

Yet the NRM government hurried in its attempts to pacify the North and monopolize force. This involved tightly controlling the infrastructure and movements of Acholi citizens. Lily (one of the women I interviewed for this project), who was abducted by Alice’s HSMF in Gulu District and whose escape was assisted by NRA soldiers stationed in the area, recalled the uneasy situation that she and the other escaped children encountered:

They [the NRA soldiers] took us to their detach where they welcomed us. They gave us something to drink and we were fearful of even drinking their tea because we still didn’t know the aim of welcoming us to their detach. We saw them welcoming us, but in our hearts we could also feel that, “Maybe their uniforms are the same [as the HSM soldiers].” We felt that until they mentioned the name of the President and the name of one of the captains whom we knew from our area. Then we started feeling at home. They said, “Okay, now we are going to take you to town so that you people should be helped by the Government troops there.” But at the time, the LCs [locally elected government counsellors] were not there and no people were there in town. The community had already shifted from that place. That was because in 1986 and 1987 there was a command from the President that if you lived in a home beside the road you were to shift inland. It was because they were planning their fight against the rebels by then.

A new war was just beginning. Twenty-three years later, even though a ceasefire has persisted in northern Uganda since August 2006, it remains unclear whether that war is “finished” or not. It is worth noting that each phase of the war has been characterized by a pattern that begins with intense violence, followed by relative calm when a negotiated solution seems feasible, and regressing back into extreme bloodshed when the solution fails (Dolan 2009: 41). Consequently, the current peace in Acholi is tempered with a

28 certain level of pessimism and fear, especially given the dogged intractability of the Lord’s Resistance Army outside of Uganda’s borders.17 a.) Goals and Tactics

Operating from bases in southern Sudan18 and throughout the four districts of the Acholi sub-region, the LRA has been identified in both popular and academic discourses in four primary ways: as an irrational organization with no political motives; as a Christian fundamentalist group wanting to install a Christian government in Uganda; as a personality cult of Kony and his possessing spirits; and as a proxy army for the Government of Sudan (Dolan 2009: 72). What is certain is that although certain commanders in the upper echelons of the LRA have long-term political or spiritual goals, the vast majority of LRA “recruits” are abducted youth who are simultaneously victims and perpetrators of violence (Lomo and Hovil 2004: 20).

The LRA is most commonly known for aiming to install a government that rules Uganda by the rule of the Biblical Ten Commandments, though the irony of its tactics – to loot, rape, abduct, mutilate, and massacre – is not lost on Acholi people who may have at one time supported northern rebellion, but no longer do. Scovia, now a woman of twenty-nine, was abducted at the age of fifteen from her school. She had this to say of her experience in the LRA:

They believe Museveni was not leading the country according to the Ten Commandments. But then we [the abducted girls] did not go to the extent of saying to them: “Do Not Kill.” And who is killing? We just shut up left it.

The decision to “just shut up and [leave] it,” aside from Scovia’s obvious motivation to save her own life in captivity, is indicative of the level of fear that the LRA has successfully cultivated across Acholi. Although the number of war deaths in northern

17 As a result of this confusion, this thesis refers to the LRA both in the past and present tense. Generally, for the sake of clarity I refer to the war experiences of my informants and respondents (all of whom are in Uganda) in the past tense, while I refer to the LRA as a whole in the present tense. 18 The LRA received intelligence, logistical support, food and arms from the Sudanese government until at least 1999, when Uganda and Sudan signed the Nairobi Peace Agreement that agreed to end their mutual support of the other’s rebel forces (Schomerus 2007: 26). Khartoum’s support allowed the LRA a home base in Southern Sudan (fighting the SPLA/M on behalf of Khartoum) from where it could launch attacks across the border. In 2002, Sudan formally allowed the Ugandan army (UPDF) into its territory in order to strike at LRA bases.

29 Uganda was “low,” relatively speaking, the LRA operated in Acholi by humiliating, intimidating, and demoralizing government “collaborators” (civilians) into passivity and obedience. LRA ambushes were frequent along major roads not only because of the potential goods to be looted and persons to abduct, but because they offered to opportunity to discipline and intimidate survivors. I heard several stories of bus-loads of travelers forced to take off their clothes and walk to their destinations naked; not simply because the LRA needed clothes, but because they wished to shame those with the audacity to travel.

More notoriously, the LRA mutilated and maimed people working in their fields or using vehicles. While these incidents provided a steady source of sensationalism for national and international media, as well as government propaganda, the logic behind these atrocities was more obvious to the victims: Cut off the lips of the mouths that speak ill of the LRA. Cut off the hands that are not assisting the LRA’s fight. Cut off the ears of those who hear the wrong things, or the legs of those who run away. Kill those people who ride bicycles or drive cars, because they are the most able to alert government soldiers of any rebel presence.

It was the level of brutality that turned public opinion against the LRA, according to several informants. One man remarked to me: “People would have supported the LRA if they hadn’t become so harsh. They were supported in Acholi at first.” While the LRA now has few public supporters, the traditional leadership at first ceremonially blessed the rebellion, only to later retract the blessing with a curse that provoked the anger of the LRA’s senior leadership (Finnström 2003, Dolan 2009: 87). In the 1990s, the LRA shared its political manifestos by gathering people in villages to attend talks and by dropping letters on roads and paths in order to disseminate edicts, warnings, and prohibitions against such things as riding bicycles or in motor vehicles, farming on Fridays or Sundays, keeping pigs, living near the road, following the orders of government soldiers, or hunting (ibid: 83-84). Aside from the religious-based restrictions on food, drink, or work on the Muslim and Christian holy days, the warnings paralleled those given by the Government: do not live near a road lest you be suspected of collaborating for either belligerent, do not hunt in the wilderness lest you be suspected of spying. During Betty’s abduction, for example, she witnessed the practical consequences

30 people faced if they were caught ignoring prohibitions: two women were out on the road (forbidden), carrying jugs of locally brewed alcohol (also forbidden). When they encountered LRA rebels, they were effectively murdered for their transgressions.19

In 1994, landmark peace talks were held between the LRA and the Government of Uganda, providing an unprecedented opportunity for the former to articulate its political objectives. The transcripts of those failed negotiations show that the LRA “drew heavily on discourses of Christianity, tradition, ethnicity and race to argue their legitimacy” (ibid: 87). However, the delegation also delved into political subjects, arguing that Museveni should be removed from power, that a parliamentary land bill was hurting the interests of Acholi farmers, and that the Acholi diaspora in London was misappropriating the rebel’s struggle. Five years after the failed mediation, the LRA even acquired a radio station (“Radio Free Uganda”) by which it could disseminate political commentary, but the signal was blocked after two weeks. According to Dolan, the broadcasts disprove the common claim that the LRA lacks political motivations, showing that they had attempted to disseminate a message to the greater population, but were ultimately foiled (2009: 85).

The war thus continued unabated. When the UPDF (the official government army) gained permission to enter Southern Sudan in 2002, it launched Operation Iron Fist against the LRA’s stronghold positions. However, the insurgency only worsened the humanitarian situation in northern Uganda, and it was only during this period, following “a damning and unprecedented critique of the situation by the UN,” that external intervention and international interest in ending the war began. International agencies began providing aid to the displaced, and governments as well as advocacy organizations applied significant political pressure on the Government to restart peace negotiations (ibid: 41). In addition to the humanitarian response, in October of 2005 the newly minted International Criminal Court (ICC) unsealed its first ever arrest warrants – for five LRA commanders, charged with a litany of war crimes and crimes against humanity (Human Rights Watch 2005b: n.p.). The decision to indict suspected war criminals before the cessation of hostilities was controversial in Uganda, where the ICC was regarded as politically bound to Museveni and where LRA reprisal massacres were quick and brutal.

19 This account can be read in Appendix C, page 147.

31 Noted one ex-LRA: “Museveni all the time is saying, “Kony is like this, Kony is like that.” That is why Kony is saying, “Now, if this man undermines me, let me show him who I am.”

Between June 2006 and April 2008, peace appeared on the horizon: productive peace talks mediated by the Government of Southern Sudan, as well as the retreat of the LRA into bases in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, provided northern Ugandans a glimmer of hope. Yet Kony failed to sign the final peace agreement, citing the ICC indictments as the main obstacle, and in March 2008 the LRA again began looting the goods of civilians and abducting youth in Southern Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. On December 14, 2008, the Ugandan, Congolese, and Sudanese militaries jointly attacked and destroyed five of Kony’s Garamba bases (Ochan 2009: 5, Mukasa 2008: n.p.). The LRA was swift in its reprisals, and since the joint-military Operation Lightning Thunder was launched, the Lord’s Resistance Army has murdered at least 2,000 people in large and small-scale massacres, displaced over 400,000 persons in Sudan, DR Congo, and the Central African Republic (CAR), and abducted more than 2,600 people (Edwards 2010: n.p.). Intelligence reports indicate that Kony has now constructed bases in the CAR with the intent to return his troops to northern Uganda in time for the national elections in 2011 (Cakaj 2010: 4). b.) Captives in the Wilderness

The abduction of 2,600 people in less than two years is typical of the LRA’s modus operandi. Unlike several other recent conflicts that have featured volunteer20 child combatants (for example, during the Sierra Leonean and Liberian Civil wars of the 1990s), children and youth in northern Uganda have not voluntarily joined the LRA.

20 I use the term “volunteer” here in a very cautious sense. In Liberia, for example, some children or youth joined rebel factions in order to escape the marginal political position being both a civilian and a child or youth; to avenge murdered family members; to improve their limited access to food, sex, and security; or “simply” because war left them orphaned or homeless, with no other means of protection other than arms (Utas 2003:15-16). Thus, although free will was a factor, the nature of the conflict was such that children and youth were indirectly coerced into service by having no other viable choice but to join a rebel groups in order to survive. In contrast, only the High Command (and even then, not all commanders) of the LRA consists of volunteers, notwithstanding a minority of returned abductees who have been unable to reintegrate back into civilian life and have voluntarily returned to the bush.

32 Consequently, since 1987 the LRA has abducted a conservative estimate of 66,00021 children and youth to fill its ranks of soldiers, porters, domestic servants, spies and “wives”22 (Annan et al. 2008: 31). From the late 1990s until the 2006 Cessation of Hostilities Agreement, over 44,000 children across northern Uganda walked nightly into town centres to sleep in overflowing hospitals, on shop verandas, and in the streets in order avoid abduction during nightly raids made in the displacement camps (Liu Institute for Global Issues et al. 2005: 1). Those children and youth unable to walk to a town centre habitually slept hidden in bushy or wooded areas close to the camps, rather than in mud and wattle huts with their families.

A 2005 survey of over five hundred returned abductees found that 55% were abducted between the ages of 10 and 15, 16% were 8 years old or younger, and 25% were abducted between the ages of 16 and 30. These averages ages differed when broken down by sex, with 64% of girls abducted between the ages of 10 and 15 compared to 40% of boys (ibid: 119). It is estimated that 25% of LRA abductees are female (16,500 to 20,000) (Pham et al. 2007a: 11). Not all abductees spend years in captivity, as many people (children and adults) are abducted for several hours or days only, released after they have helped to carry looted goods or aid in navigating the local area. While more boys are abducted than girls, girls tend to stay longer once they are captured (Annan et al. 2008: 33).

The number of persons who have died in captivity is unknown.

The numbers fit a pattern similar to other armed conflicts involving child and youth soldiers; adults are considerably more difficult to emotionally and politically manipulate, whereas adolescents are in period of active engagement with their own understandings of selfhood, morality, and belonging (Honwana 2006). Abductees are thus quickly and violently indoctrinated into “the bush,” as life in the LRA is known

21 While the UN estimates that between 20,000 and 25,000 youth have been abducted by the LRA, the Survey for War Affected Youth has noted that less than half of returning abductees pass through reception centres (the records from which serve as the basis for abduction number estimates), with some never returning home at all (Annan et al. 2008: 36). Other statistical estimates indicate the figure may be as high as 75,000 youth (Pham et al. 2007a: 22). Women in particular may choose to hide their “status” as ex-LRA from neighbours or officials for fear of violence and discrimination against themselves and their children. 22 The distinction between forced marriage, sexual slavery, and traditional Acholi marriage will be elaborated in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4.

33 colloquially, at times being forced to murder a family member or parent, neighbour, or fellow abductee during the process of their own abduction. In addition to ensuring that “recruits” will be reluctant to escape if they have no parents to return to, these forced acts immediately complicate the victimhood of the child, who may fear the retribution or stigma of their home communities and thus surrender him or herself to the “rebel life.”

Depending on the period of the war, captives were either marched north to bases in Sudan or taken elsewhere to bases, battlefields, or temporary strongholds in Acholi. The children who were not taught by their parents or peers the basics of survival in the event of their abduction – never show fear, never cry, and keep up – often did not survive the journey. Some died from hunger or thirst, some drowned crossing a major river, some were killed during battles with the UPDF or during looting raids gone awry, and still others were murdered for weeping, expressing fear or homesickness, or for simply lagging behind or growing tired of their heavy loads (“luggages,” as they are known colloquially). Betty was offered her freedom on the march to Sudan, and recognized that she would be “made an example of” if she admitted her true feelings:

Because in the past I had heard that if you are abducted and they ask you if you would be able to go back home and you say yes, they will kill you immediately. The man said, “We’re not very far from your home. Do you want me to release you?” But I refused, and I said, “No, I cannot go back home because it is already far. I am just a visitor to this village, so if you release me I will not be able to find my way back home.” So the man said that I would be taken with them, but he said, “From this point, you should move very fast with the rest of us. If you start limping we will just kill you.”

Aside from the bush being a physical wilderness through which abductees were marched (depending on the period of war, North to bases in Sudan or battlefields elsewhere in Acholi), “the bush” is also a moral landscape feared across Acholi: a place of malevolent spirits that possess bodies of water, rocks and mountains, and the bodies of spiritually unclean humans. One elder explained of jogi: “Most of them are harmful. When they come, they want something from you and definitely you will have to give it to them. That is why we don’t stay with them in wells, forests, mountains and trees.

34 Because that is where jogi stay.” Consequently, returned LRA soldiers are often regarded as ritually unclean, and are taunted and given the moniker olum olum, which literally means “bush bush.” The difficulties faced at home by those who escape are detailed in Chapter 4.

Those captives that survived the journey to an LRA base were greeted not by a chaotic free-for-all of abuse, but rather by a tightly regimented, intricately planned, and even bureaucratic armed organization. Clerks of the “Control Alter” – Kony’s inner military and religious circle – documented the names, origins, and other particularities of the new recruits. Many abductees knew better than to give their real names and state their home areas, as these details were often used to locate and kill abductees, their relatives or neighbours, in the event that the abductees should escape from the bush. In more than one instance, the LRA massacred entire villages in reprisal for a resident who had escaped captivity with a gun, a particularly heinous misdeed in the LRA (Owor Ogora and Baines 2008). Many ex-LRA thus have two sets of names: their “bush” names and their home names. Similarly, as the LRA actively discouraged intimate friendships lest they lead to escape plans and conspiracies, friends, siblings, or relatives often denied knowing each other in the bush in order to protect themselves from forced separation into separate brigades or by being made to murder one another.

After having their particulars entered into the LRA’s files, abductees were next ceremonially beaten, anointed with holy oil, and distributed to commanding officers. As will be explored further in Chapter 3, captives were taken to a holy yard where they were beaten on the back with pangas (machetes) in the shape of a cross, spiritually cleansed with moo-ya (holy oil from a blessed shea nut tree), and sometimes given talismans for protection. Each person was given to a lapwony (literally “teacher”), an officer who would act as the recruit’s priest, commander, father figure, or husband. Pre-pubescent girls were given the roles of ting-ting, babysitters and house girls for commanders who were responsible for their welfare until Kony’s spirits ordered the girl to be taken as a wife in either the same or a different household.23 Members of the LRA, new and old, met

23 As will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter, this transition from ting ting to wife occurred at the onset of a girl’s menses.

35 regularly in the yard to pray, listen to the proclamations made by Kony’s spirits, or to otherwise be instructed in their behaviour.

Each recruit was disciplined into his or her role, whether it was as a farmer producing food for the bases, as a medic or nurse on the battlefield or in the sick-bay, as a cook, babysitter, or porter, or as a fully-fledged soldier. Although not every recruit was given a gun and it was preferred that most girls and women remain on the bases, all were given basic military training in the very likely event that they were forced to fight. These distinct roles became blurred during times of intense battle and especially during the Iron Fist insurgency of 2002 to 2005, when young mothers and strong men fought side by side.

In the struggle to survive the bush and its battles, abductees were made into abductors, and victims into perpetrators. To have a gun was to have prestige and power. My acquaintances in Gulu Town often remarked that what they most feared was being ambushed by younger LRA abductees rather than senior soldiers: the young wanted a chance to prove their bravery, to kill and rise in the ranks. However, those abductees who were successful soldiers became strategically valuable, and thus were also the least likely to have the opportunities to escape as they gained the notice of senior commanders. The same can be said for women and their children, who were regarded as non-negotiable captives: prisoners, but also spouses and children.

Nevertheless, it is estimated that 79% of male abductees and 92% of female abductees eventually returned to Acholi (Annan et al. 2006: 54). The rest died or still remain in captivity. Over 80% of survivors escaped when they were left unattended, or during the chaos of battle or an ambush; 15% of abductees were freely released and the remaining 5% were rescued by other armed forces (ibid: 62).

III. COMING HOME: The Normalization of Violence

Sociologist Johan Galtung once defined structural violence as the systematic ways in which a state prevents individuals from achieving their full potential, especially those ways that ultimately lead to early death by failing to provide for basic needs (1990: 292). Beyond the obvious criminality of the direct violence faced at the hands of the LRA, it is

36 certain that the people of northern Uganda are also victims of state-driven structural violence.

In 1996, the Government of Uganda began forcibly displacing Acholis into one hundred and twenty-one “protected villages” – squalid internally displaced persons (IDP) camps where residents were dependant on food aid and unable to access basic social services or their lands. Ultimately, 1.8 million people, or 90% of the entire population, were forcibly displaced by the Uganda Peoples Defence Force (UPDF)24 during the height of the war in 2005 (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre 2008: 68, Liu Institute for Global Issues 2005: 1). After visiting northern Uganda for only two days in November 2003, Jan Egeland (then the United Nations’ Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, otherwise known as the head of UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA)) famously described the conflict as the “biggest forgotten, neglected humanitarian emergency in the world” (Agence France-Press 2003: n.p.). A 2005 health and mortality survey commissioned by Uganda’s Ministry of Health claimed that in excess of one thousand people each week were dying in the camps from war-related causes (Republic of Uganda Ministry of Health 2005: ii). The rate of HIV/AIDS infection in northern Uganda is double the rate in the rest of the country, with three times more deaths in the region being reportedly due to AIDS as compared to direct war violence (BBC News 2004: n.p.).

While the Government rather innocuously-named them “protected villages,” in fact the IDP camps were created by circling people around UPDF detachments, giving the impression (more than once proven to be accurate) that the civilians were shielding the army from the LRA and not the other way around. Indeed, many observers have argued that the camps created “one-stop-shopping” for LRA raids (for youth, foodstuffs, and whatever supplies could be found) whereas the rebels had previously been hindered by the simple reality of geographical distance between towns and villages (Branch 2008: 162). Before the 2006 ceasefire, any person who was caught disobeying UPDF troops by remaining on or returning to his land would be shot on the spot, or he faced an equally grim fate if the LRA discovered him first and suspected him to be a government

24 The National Resistance Army (NRA) received the new name “UPDF” in 1995.

37 collaborator. “In other words, forced resettlement in camps can be seen as an effort to control the population,” notes anthropologist Sverker Finnström. He continues: “The Ugandan government, as understood by the displaced population, is imposing its rule by regulating everyday life; by controlling food resources and food distribution; and by evening and night curfews” (2003: 198). Residents became used to the humiliating exercise of panda gari (Swahili for “climb into the truck”) in which the army rounded up civilians and screened them on suspicion of rebellion or collaboration (Dolan 2009: 47).

In late 2006 the Government announced that the majority of camp residents would be allowed to leave, and by the end of 2009 only about 20% of the original displaced population remained, with another 17% in transit sites (AVSI and UNHCR 2010: 7). Those who have remained in the camps have often done so because they are unable to access health care or schooling in their home areas (the infrastructure destroyed or neglected during the war), they want to engage in petty trade that is unprofitable in remote villages, or their home areas are at the centre of land disputes. “Extremely vulnerable individuals” (EVIs) also remain in the camps – often the elderly, infirm, or very young who have no means to move or access food or land to grow it on. Returns outpace community development and infrastructure planning, leading to frustration and still more violence (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre 2009, Huber 2010: 13).

The situation thus remains akin to what Galtung (1964) once termed “negative peace”: absent of direct violence, but inherently vulnerable. Although the camps are closing, the LRA is outside of Uganda, and many returnees are finding their way home, any future peace is far from certain.

38 CHAPTER 3: “A Terrible But Decipherable World”

Probably the most disturbing example of an African un-war comes from the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), begun as a rebel movement in northern Uganda during the lawless 1980s. Like the gangs in the oil-polluted Niger Delta, the LRA at first had some legitimate grievances -- namely, the poverty and marginalization of the country's ethnic Acholi areas. The movement's leader, Joseph Kony, was a young, wig-wearing, gibberish-speaking, so-called prophet who espoused the Ten Commandments. Soon, he broke every one. He used his supposed magic powers (and drugs) to whip his followers into a frenzy and unleashed them on the very Acholi people he was supposed to be protecting.

- Jeffrey Gettleman, “Africa’s Forever Wars: Why the continent’s conflicts never end.” Foreign Policy. March/April 2010

Who Are You? was the worst spirit in the bush. Who Are You? is the commander of the LRA. He was really very bad. So when there is fighting, it’s like it becomes a draw: people of the army will be killed and the LRA side will also be killed.

- Millie, 27 August 2009

I asked Millie, along with all the other group interview participants I met with on a hot August afternoon, to tell me about Joseph Kony’s different spirits. Millie did not mince her words, nor did she hesitate in her proclamation: to LRA abductees, the spirit known as Who Are You? was by far the most feared of Kony’s supernatural guides. Abductees did not meet these spirits under the “frenzied” influence of drugs or alcohol, instead encountering the supernatural in a state of unforgiving lucidity.25 There was no debate amongst the women about the existence of the spirits, though some claimed to have only minimal knowledge of them. Instead, the women with whom I spoke were unanimously concerned with how one should approach, avoid, combat or interact with malevolent spirits (or those spirits whose moral characteristics were ambiguous or unpredictable). Through the courses of their lives in war and captivity, they have become experts in surviving diverse manifestations of affliction – physical, emotional, and preternatural.

25 Indeed, narcotics are strictly forbidden in the LRA, lest the spiritual cleanliness of any person (from the foot soldier to the Chairman) be compromised.

39 The narratives of returned women shed light on the dark shadows that fuel popular misconceptions about life in the bush and about the power of shared supernatural beliefs in Acholi. Far from being esoteric, the women’s stories show that beliefs in the spirit world (though imperfectly defined and at times inchoate) can be used as weapons of war, as tools for peace, and as means to comfort the suffering. While some observers (such as Gettleman, quoted above) perceive the war to be meaningless and brand Joseph Kony as a “gibberish-speaking” psychotic, by investigating the “otherworldly” agency of LRA women – actively negotiating their own beliefs in and acceptance of varied spiritual forces – it becomes impossible to divorce the magical from the rational.

Part I of this chapter presents a necessary glimpse into the basic cosmology of the Acholi spirit world and introduces the concept of human-mediated supernatural violence in Uganda and its environs. Part II delves into the experiences of LRA women, from the narratives of their own lives to stories they told about the origins of the LRA’s spirits. Their accounts substantiate my claim that they performed diverse roles in the bush. Within the system of oppression in which they found themselves they were agents of their own emotional and physical survival, and this agency is additionally observable both in women’s individual acts of storytelling and in their deliberate articulations of spiritual beliefs.

As Primo Levi once described the concentration camp at Auschwitz, it was “a terrible but decipherable world” (1988:83). So too is the world of LRA women.

I. ACHOLI COSMOLOGY: Understanding Death and Misfortune

It is difficult to ascribe the Acholi spirit world any set parameters. By no means static or defined by official doctrine or institutional control, spirit beings have been understood in varied ways throughout generations of Acholi. My respondents – from elders to religious figures to ex-LRA men and women – each interpreted the cosmos in their own ways. However, some salient points and similarities can be pinned down and these are explicated below. The most common feature shared by my teachers of cosmology is deceptively simple: people believe that spirits exist. “Joseph Kony, Alice Lakwena, they are nothing; they are nobodies, at least from the Western educational standards,” one

40 priest told me. “But their beliefs are so powerful that even the university professors follow them into rebellion.” a.) Spirits and Belief

Jok (plural jogi) are spirits or sources of power that inhabit both the domestic and the wild spaces of Acholi. They are known to attach themselves to natural landscape features such as specific lakes or rivers (jok-nam), hills and mountains (jok-godi), wells and small bodies of water (jok-kulu). People described them as dangerous in their volatility, variously evil or ambivalent towards humans. Free jogi also exist, and may wander beyond the wild. In my discussions with ex-LRA combatants, many did not distinguish between malevolent jogi and the spirits of people who died violent deaths (cen) or otherwise failed to enter the Christian heaven; instead, “they spoil minds and cause trouble.” One young woman mused on the difference:

There are these ones [jogi] that people, maybe like when you’re moving around, you meet. That one, we call it cen. But in the general language we can say it is jok because that one comes when you don’t want [it to]. Sometimes it feels like it is feeding in you. That is why it attacks you. But there’s this one at home where sometimes you inherit the ones from your ancestors and then when it attacks you, definitely you will become an ajwaka [spirit medium].

Regardless of the supernatural source, persons may become possessed by jogi or other malicious forces for several reasons described below.

During the period of fieldwork, I quickly discerned that the word jok was consistently translated by one of my interpreters to mean “satanic being.” I struggled to understand jogi in relation to my own worldview, often asking people, “But was it a good or a bad spirit?” In further study, I saw this question echoed in the records of colonial Christian missionaries throughout Africa; then, as in now, it was not the “right” question. Take for example, the following passage from Jean and John Comaroff’s definitive historical South African ethnography, Of Revelation and Revolution:

Neither of the missionaries could quite put their finger on a yet more basic fact: that the Tswana worldview could not be distilled into a “belief system,” or into a rationalized metaphysics, without reifying and distorting it. The term that was to be used for a Christian (modumedi; “one who professes agreement”) captures the point well: it set apart those who identified with an explicit, systematic faith. In

41 the precolonial world, by contrast, “cosmology” diffused itself throughout the fabric of social existence (1991: 152).

“One who professes agreement” does indeed hit the nail on the head, so to speak, in Tswana as well as Acholi. My question of “good or bad” assumed a moral dichotomy was not always existent in indigenous Acholi cosmology, where a spirit often just is; even the words neutral or benign are not necessarily appropriate. However, the imposition and uptake in Acholi of a Christian dichotomy of good and evil – you are either for Jesus or against Him – was echoed in the word choice of my devoutly evangelical - yet still Acholi - interpreter, who routinely assigned what she called “cultural” spirits into the evil category. Both ways of considering and categorizing spirits now exist side by side.

In addition to jogi, the spirits of clan ancestors regularly visit shrines (kac or abila) maintained by the living on the family homestead. While they do not dwell in the abila, regular offerings of food and drink are made at the shrines so that the ancestor spirits are sated. Ancestors may intercede with jogi on behalf of living family members in case of misfortune such as drought or famine and are thus intimately connected to the propagation, protection, and health of the clan. The abila must be well tended and offerings of food and drink must be regularly made in order to satisfy the demands of the ancestors. The idea of spirit inheritance, as demonstrated in one woman’s claim quoted above (on how one may become an ajwaka), is tied not only to clan ancestry, but to the destiny of ajwaki or so-called spirit mediums.26 Some Acholi distinguish between ajwaki who are strictly healers of the body (using local plants and materials for homemade medicines), and those who actively engage in divination, though this distinction may be recent. Okot p’Bitek, the Acholi poet and anthropologist, wrote in 1963 that the ajwaka “was a consultant psychiatrist, chemist and priest combined. He administered medicines which effected cure and gave psychological treatment to patients who needed it” (17).

26 The term ajwaka (plural: ajwaki) can be interpreted in several ways; some Acholi use the term to distinguish diviners and traditional healers from malevolent witches or persons fraudulently claiming powers of healing and divination. The word “witchdoctor” is used in common conversation, and may or may not indicate the moral stance the speaker has taken towards the practices of the divination and indigenous healing. It should be noted that people often used the word “witchdoctor” when speaking to me in English; when they realized I was familiar with indigenous Acholi terms, that term came up rarely in comparison to “ajwaka.” However, as with all of these concepts, the preference depends on the speaker.

42 Writing only a year after Uganda gained independence from Britain, it is noteworthy that Okot p’Bitek (who later became a public apostate of anthropology and all its colonial trappings) referred to ajwaki in the past tense, perhaps indicating that the role fell out of use during the time of direct colonialism.

Regardless of the historical trajectory of the ajwaka role, it is a vocation that is relevant in present-day Acholi. Ajwaki are able to connect the living world to the supernatural realm through skilled divination and management of spirit possession. My informants consistently asserted that one cannot choose to become an ajwaka; rather, a spirit or spirits choose an individual to act as a vessel. These spirits are often tied to clan lineages, and are in this way inherited. “If you refuse, you can become mad,” noted one woman. “And you can never refuse.” A newly possessed person, chosen by the spirits, is now engaged in a life-long apprenticeship of divination and healing. It is unclear whether to be chosen by spirits is regarded as an honour, a pleasure, or a burden, but the people with whom I spoke of “chosen-ness” appeared to approach the phenomenon with resignation.

While both men and women can become ajwaki, it was explained to me many times over that the majority are women because females are possessed of “weaker hearts” susceptible to spirit possession. During one group interview with both young women and men returned from the LRA, a young man noted that jogi “attack women mostly because women tend to produce kids,” while a woman across the room added: “It attacks mostly women because women fear, that is why it attacks them.” Their opinions were demonstrative: one alluded to the primary value of women as child bearers and reproducers of the clan, while the other explicitly tied emotional vulnerability to femininity.

Interactions with indigenous spirits are thus part of the everyday make-up of Acholi lives. However, the pre-colonial cosmos (itself rather fluid) is irrevocably intertwined with local interpretations of Christianities – Catholic, Anglican, and Pentecostal – and to a lesser extent, Islam.27 The southern Bantu areas of Uganda, in particular the kingdom of Buganda from which the country takes its name, were the sites

27 While Muslim Arabs from Sudan have interacted with the residents of Acholi for several hundred years, 99% of the Acholi population self-identifies as Christian (Annan et al. 2006: 18).

43 of Christian missions in the late nineteenth century. New converts’ allegiance to Christ, instead of the Bugandan Kabaka (paramount chief or king), led to the murder – now celebrated annually as martyrdom – of forty-three Christian boys (Cook 2007: 28, McDonnell and Akallo 2007: 40). The impact of Christian missions was not immediately felt in the North, however, and it was not until 1911 that the Italian Catholic Comboni missionaries arrived in “Acholi-land,” followed by the Anglican Church Missionary Society and the Catholic White Fathers. Despite the relatively recent arrival of Christianity to the area, it is today almost universally embraced by Acholi persons, and thus must be considered as a layer of the cosmological palimpsest rather than a spiritual break.

The “arrival” of Rubanga, the name given by Acholi Catholics to the Christian God, added a further classificatory dimension to the spirit world and provided individuals an additional means by which to understand and interact with the world. It is significant that the ethnographic reports of early to mid-twentieth century indigenous Acholi anthropologists and the accounts of European ethnologists, missionaries and travelers vary widely in their interpretations of the concept of “God” in Acholi, often engaging in heated correspondence about the presence of monotheism or polytheism.28 One elder insisted that the word “Lubanga” is foreign due to its non-Nilotic etymology, yet he still referred to jok in a singular, monotheistic sense:

When the Christian missionaries came to Uganda, they came and stayed that side of Buganda. In Bunyoro, they used to call God “Lubanga.” That is a Bantu name. So when they came to Acholiland, they came with the name of Lubanga, which means God. So when they came, they found we called God “jok.” Then they said we cannot call God two names – it should only be one name. That is why now we came to call God Lubanga. In the actual language of the Luo, we call it jok; we call God jok.

Despite my lack of proficiency in Acholi Luo and the ravages of the war on early indigenous ethnographic texts (aside from the invaluable contributions of Okot p’Bitek),

28 See, for example: Renato Boccassino, 1939, “The Nature and Characteristics of the Supreme Being worshipped among the Acholi of Uganda,” Uganda Journal, Vol. VI, no. 4, trans. John Devine. Boccassino’s presentation of a singular supreme and all-powerful deity was quickly challenged by Father Joseph Pasquale Crazzolara and A.C.A. Wright, who argued that jogi (note the plural) were indigenous to Acholi, not Lubanga or Rubanga. A.C.A. Wright, 1940, “The Supreme Being among the Acholi of Uganda – Another Viewpoint,” Uganda Journal, Vol. VII, no. 3.

44 some observations can still be made here. Curiously, the Protestant vernacular name for God is Lubanga, which is also the word for “hunchback.” Given the mystery surrounding physical and mental deformities which were and are often accorded to the will of jogi,29 the moniker is less unusual than it first appears. Okot p’Bitek noted that Lubanga was in fact first known as the jok who was considered responsible for tuberculosis of the spine, while Rubanga was an unusually powerful spirit concerned with the birth of twins (1963: 24). Recognizing the special power of these two particular jogi, the Catholic mission subsequently dictated that their names should replace the non-specific term jok to refer to God. Further, Okot p’Bitek hypothesized that Rubanga or Lubanga became known as “God” (with a capital G) simply because “out of sheer exhaustion from tiresome [missionary] questions, someone hesitatingly, and knowing full well what he was about to say was far from the truth, said that Rubanga was their creator” (ibid: 27).

One Acholi man interpreted it slightly differently, identifying the oddity as follows: “Lubanga/ Rubanga, while frequently applied to the heavenly father [sic] has two connotations in Acholi but with one shared feature - mystery. The mystery surrounds both the feared unknown and the ugly unknown” (Peter-Rhaina Gwokto, Ugandanet listserv, 7 February 2008). The feared unknown refers to the Christian God, while the ugly unknown refers to the spirits (jogi) that are traditionally thought to cause physical deformities in humans as well as misfortune. Finally, the Holy Trinity is completed with the addition of Yesu Kristo (Jesus Christ) and tipu maleng (the Holy Spirit). It is debated in Acholi whether Joseph Kony’s tipu, translated as shadow or human spirit, is the good and holy tipu maleng.

Nighty proudly asserted that she did not believe in Kony’s tipu, while nearly simultaneously acknowledging its existence. “I did not believe in tipu,” she said, “But the ones [spirits] I know are for Kony. He has many spirits.” Her apparently contradictory statement exemplified another reoccurring problem I faced during my fieldwork: how could I decipher people’s belief systems from their intellectual knowledge of the spirit world? In short, what do people actually believe? It became important to distinguish these two types of belief in order to understand some of the motivations behind people’s

29 For example, a boy or girl born with a physical deformity is traditionally given the name Ojok or Ajok (respectively), which means “of the spirit.”

45 actions during and after the war. When I asked informants a question about jogi or about the work of an ajwaka, I might get a detailed response about the inner workings of such matters, followed by the moral caveat: “But I don’t believe in such things.” This conviction was not necessarily problematic in itself (and in fact indicated an interesting diversity of religious and cultural beliefs in Acholi), but it became difficult to understand when the same person would later tell me a point-of-fact story detailing some supernatural event she or he experienced, contradicting her or his earlier assertion that she or he did not believe in the supernatural being at hand.

I at first pondered the idea that people were simply contradicting themselves (a not-unusual-act in any cultural setting), but the explanation dissatisfied me when the “contradictions” were persistent and glaring, going far beyond what could be understood as unconscious or ideological inconsistencies. The answer came to me from an Acholi to English dictionary: the word “yee” was used by my two interpreters and respondents alike, and while I originally understood it to mean “belief,” it was translated in the book to also mean “consent,” “agreement,” “acceptance,” or “obedience” (Odonga 2005: 275). I realised that the question: “Do you believe in spirits?” could very well have been interpreted as: “Do you accept or obey spirits?” Subsequently, when one ex-LRA woman said to me in the same breath: I have accepted Jesus as my personal saviour now, but I do believe that the jok was there [in the bush]... It was there, but for me, now that I have accepted Jesus, I no longer believe in that,” she was telling me that she knew of the existence of spirits, but that she did not morally align herself with them. Belief in this context can therefore be understood as an active and conscious choice made independently of an understanding of tye, the existence of a being. b.) Understanding Death and Counteracting Misfortune

E.E. Evans-Pritchard’s classic analysis of “Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande” (1937) in colonial Southern Sudan offers a useful comparison to Acholi interpretations of their own afflictions. When Evans-Pritchard famously recounted the hypothetical collapse of a granary building and its connection to witchcraft, he wrote that although the Zande would be well-aware that termites had caused the rotting and eventual disintegration of the structure’s wood, their knowledge and acceptance of this rational

46 explanation did not preclude their belief that witchcraft was quite possibly at the root of the event. Whereas science explained how the collapse occurred, it could not explain why and how the collapse occurred in that particular granary, at that particular time, to that particular granary owner, or to those specific people resting underneath it when it came crashing down. However, human influence (either active or unintentional) on the supernatural world could explain the misfortune, thus insinuating witchcraft (1937: 23- 23). The same logic can be applied to Acholi understandings of suffering and misfortune, which may be variously attributed to active witchcraft, curses, the effects of abominations (kiir), supernatural beings, or the vengeful souls of the dead (cen or lacen).

The spirit world is divided into the underworld of the dead and the supernatural world of non-human beings. The souls of the dead, tipu, are distinguished from the souls of those who died violently and/or had their corpses mishandled after death. This mishandling includes intentional desecration, but also may entail a failure to perform proper funeral rites and bury human remains in a socially-sanctioned manner. Elaborate burial procedures, ceremonies (including calling the spirit home should the individual have died on a journey), and feasts must be attended to in order to put the soul at rest. A soul lost in the wilderness begs to be called home. The persons lost or mistreated, whose deaths have not been avenged or reconciled, are the ones who become cen, haunting the living and causing illness and death.30 Cen brings nightmares, visions, and madness, and acts as an infectious disease that socially isolates its victim.31 Cen tends to afflict those persons who have witnessed or committed a murder (willingly or unwillingly), who have walked over or witnessed the mishandling of the remains of a person who died violently or was improperly buried, or someone close to a person who has done these things. The idea that a soul dwells, sometimes painfully, amongst the living contrasts with the more recent introduction of the Christian after-life. In comparing these afterlives, Okot p’Bitek observed that the social rupture brought on by death is still present in Acholi:

30 It is notable that this concept of a “good death” is not unique to Acholi. Comaroff and Comaroff, writing of indigenous Tswana, remarked that ancestors at the homestead were “standing in contrast to those undomesticated beings...left unburied in the wild. Such persons- bush dwellers and those who died “unnaturally” through violence – never joined the ancestral collectivity. They were not tied by moral or ritual links to the social world, and they acted toward the living with capricious nastiness” (1991: 155, after Willoughby 1932: 110f). 31 This will be discussed in further detail in Chapter 4.

47 There is no heaven to which the departed retire to join some god in celestial splendor, nor a hell to await the sinful. Death is not a gateway to some sort of desirable eternal existence, but a cruel monster which strikes down a member of a family and the lineage (1963: 21-22).

Of note here is the concern granted not to individual death, but death’s impact on the social whole – the propagation of the clan. To prevent or delay a soul from dwelling with clan ancestors is to inhibit the security of one’s ancestral homestead.

A person who utters a curse or unintentionally commits kiir (a typology of abominations) is similarly dooming the reproduction of the family line. Acts of kiir include fighting at the well; throwing food, feces, or money in anger; exposing or shaking one’s penis, vulva, or breasts in anger; eating ash; domestic quarrelling; setting the homestead on fire; defecating in food; mishandling corpses; and committing incest.32 If these abominations are not reconciled by way of appropriate sacrifices or rituals, sickness and death will result. However, the consequences do not necessarily befall the individual(s) who committed the kiir; rather, it is their children who die, perhaps by malaria, perhaps when their bodies swell and diarrhea saps them of hydration and strength, perhaps in accidents. Alternatively, the person who committed kiir may find him or herself to be impotent or barren, or may suffer miscarriages. To commit an abomination against the moral order is thus to threaten the literal and figurative propagation of the clan, and thus entire communities are crucial to the governance of social roles and relationships (Victor 2007: 3).

Other less serious misfortunes may be accorded to the actions of non-human or semi-human beings that roam the night-time landscape. Abiba (which are not beings native to Acholi, but instead originate from the Alur people of the northwest Nebbi region and the northeast of the DR Congo) are trickster creatures that cause mischief and trouble. Appearing only at night, an abiba may disguise itself as an eagle with its tail on fire, a cat, or a sole blazing ball of fire. A human being may be given the power to transform him or herself into this creature as a literal gift from a friend, may buy the

32 As Acholi people favour exogamous marriage, “incest” refers not only to relations with close relatives, but to anyone in one’s clan. Consequently, incest is often unintentional. A great deal of social anxiety surrounded this problem in the IDP camps as traditional social structures broke down, elder-to-youth cultural transmission was hampered and genealogical knowledge was lost.

48 power from an ajwaka, or may inherit the ability to transform as a type of family “heirloom.” A person may wish to become an abiba as one might wish to acquire a guard dog for protection, but may also wish to fly or travel as an animal for pure fun. Related to abiba, night dancers were identified by my informants as showing similar trickster characteristics. Possessing supernatural power, those who are night dancers go naked into the night, inside their human bodies, playing tricks on neighbours (particularly the haughty) and doing as they please until dawn. One friend explained to me that if a person was to wake up in the morning with a headache, it could be explained that an abiba or night dancer may have made off with one’s head during the night and played soccer with it. Similarly, if one was to wake up feeling exhausted, a trickster may have forced one to work the fields throughout the night. Nevertheless, these characters are still viewed as dangerous and malevolent creatures that should be killed if encountered.

The problem of misfortune in the world is also accounted for by Acholi Christians in a particular form of theodicy that directly connects suffering to divine retribution for sins both individual and collective. In 2000, when a major Ebola outbreak in Gulu threw the District into panic, one pastor was heard to remark: "We have rebels in this area, we have AIDS, we have poverty and now we have this, are we the only sinful people in the world?" (Butcher 2000: n.p.). On one occasion, I was waiting to meet some group interview participants in an IDP camp in Amuru District when several people came up to the resting place that my interpreter and I had chosen, next to a well-trod foot path. As the camp had begun clearing out earlier that year, the most vulnerable people were left behind and each of those people who approached us (to beg and/or to point at my bizarre sunburnt skin and red hair) was either visibly disabled or perceptibly “mad.” Once we were alone, my interpreter reflected that she was fairly certain that the suffering we had witnessed was part and parcel of everything that the Acholi people (herself included) “deserve;” the war was God’s punishment for their sins and lack of faith.

Conversely, others have interpreted social and religious change as the real reason behind the plights of Africans in general. The Acholi author of an opinion piece published in Uganda’s Daily Monitor, titled “We are sending God mail using the wrong address,” argued that “colonised and dominated people, particularly Africans, who abandoned their own traditional spiritual practices and rites, have all the lion’s share of

49 all worldly afflictions” (Lucima 2009: n.p.). His argument speaks to a discourse surrounding purity and tradition that is prevalent throughout the Acholi sub-region (as it is in many other places), where the search for post-colonial identity has undoubtedly contributed to the reification of culture, tradition, and here, “Acholi-ness:”

When we go to churches, mosques, and other foreign places of worship, and use other people’s languages, and delve into rituals of other people’s spiritual practices, using their particular symbols, we actually miss out because the gods do not hear our prayers since we are not using our dedicated routes and spiritual signals...You want to know why we suffer and we seem like we have been abandoned by God? Because the shrines are gone (ibid).

The war itself is often discussed in reference to blessings and curses (lam) uttered by Acholi elders. In the 1980s a rwot [chief, plural rwodi] in Gulu reportedly gave Kony a leaf known as oboke olwedo in blessing of his rebellion, a claim made by Kony himself (Finnström 2003: 282) and repeated to me by an informant with a longstanding connection to both the LRA and the ladit [male elder] who made the blessing. Nonetheless, it is disputed in Acholi whether or not the blessing was legitimate and supported collectively by the traditional rwodi. However controversial the claim of blessing may be, a senior ladit in Gulu Town cursed and condemned the rebels by exposing his penis while his wife exposed her breasts – both acts of grave kiir. As Finnström observes, “the mere rumours of the curse may indeed have encouraged the rebels to increase their violence against elders, healers and other arbitrators of Acholi cosmology” (2003: 284).

An understanding of supernatural cause and effect is thus fundamental to the ontological security of many Acholi persons. The idioms of kiir, cen, the multitude of jogi and tipu, tricksters and trouble-makers, God and sin, all enable people to have a sense of at least some form of mastery over their life circumstances, particularly in the face of disempowering violence, suffering and displacement. This epistemology also enables individual acts of manipulation; through them people might purposefully and methodically disrupt the moral order in order to incite spirits to harm one’s enemies. For example, civilians left physically powerless in the face of LRA attacks and massacres have been known to intentionally throw the corpses of victims into the bush in order to “sic” cen on the perpetrators of the deaths (Victor 2007: 4). Indeed, some believe the war

50 itself was the result of a similar action when a prominent Acholi brigadier was murdered in 1970. Writes Green: “Legend had it that his coffin was buried vertically to ensure his cen would take revenge” (2008: 73). c.) Supernatural Warfare

Although it is well known that the LRA (and the Holy Spirit Movement before it) incorporates supernatural manoeuvring into its military strategy (presented further in the narratives below), what is less acknowledged in most journalistic and academic portrayals of the war is the use of these tactics by the state army (the UPDF). It is likely that this omission is due to the Government of Uganda’s skilful use of diplomacy and its ability to project the image of a trust-worthy, modern, Western-friendly, rational state that is legitimated in its use of violent force against internal rebellion. Indeed, after the United States placed the LRA on a terrorist watch list in the wake of September 11, 2001, the Government of Uganda was quick to adopt an anti-terror rhetoric in exchange for a $3 billion contribution to its defence budget (Human Rights & Peace Centre et al. 2003: 70).33

Nevertheless, the opponents of the LRA also engage in supernatural warfare. In my conversations with friends and informants in Acholi, I learned that UPDF soldiers from diverse tribal groups in Uganda are known to wear or keep amulets for the sake of physical and spiritual protection, especially when entering into battle with the LRA. President Museveni himself has been seen carrying a long cow’s tail in his hand when traveling, protecting himself from spirits, curses and the evil eye. It was not until 2009 that he admitted to using witchcraft during his own guerrilla war, appeasing ancestor spirits in return for their blessing in battle (Mwanguhya 2009: n.p.). One man insisted that Alice Lakwena’s powers were so feared by the Government that it paid her significant amounts of money to remain exiled in Kenya until her death in 2007.

33 I contend that the calculated self-representation of the UPDF as a reliable and modern ally of the United States includes avoiding the public acknowledgement of supernatural work, lest the war’s funders grow uneasy with this peculiar feature of “the African Other.” Rosalind Shaw noted such unease in the aftermath of the Sierra Leonean war, where analysts were quick to “primitivize” the conflict: “In the conjunction of ritual techniques and high-tech weapons in wars like Sierra Leone’s, there seems to be a dissolution of boundaries that threatens to unravel the world that the Enlightenment built,” she wrote (Shaw 2003: 92).

51 Several informants insisted that Operation Iron Fist was doomed from its inception because the UPDF foot soldiers going into battle were convinced that they did not have the requisite spiritual power to defeat the LRA.34 It is rumoured that high-level ex-LRA commanders on UPDF salary continue to advise the Government on Kony’s spirits. In 2003, the Minister of State for Defence met with the “Uganda Traditional Healers Association,” requesting help with divination to defeat the LRA. The Minister hastily denied making the request, instead insisting to the national papers that she was addressing the need to counteract pervasive “superstition rampant in the North” (Sebunya 2003: n.p.). The Minister’s statement fit well with the dynamic of Uganda’s internal colonialism, echoing a common southern sentiment that the North (and Acholi in particular) is a frontier land of ignorance and primitivism.

When I asked one LRA insider why the LRA destroys some abila and takes pains to respect others, or why at times ajwaki have been targeted for murder or while others are left alone, he said: “Kony is complaining some of them are affecting his spirit,” and so they need to be destroyed. “They kill the ones who are very strong; who affect his spirit,” he added. Although the mere rumour of active attempts to attack or counteract Kony’s spirit would justify (using the logic of the LRA) such targeted violence, as is the case of the rumoured curse described above, some evidence exists that the UPDF has actively sought to do just that. For example, according to one informant, in 2004 a senior army commander (accompanied by one high-level politician and one local leader) consulted an ajwaka in Pader District with the goal of defeating Kony by supernatural means. The ajwaka instructed the men to purchase a coffin, fill it with soil, place a ram’s head at the front of the coffin, and bury the pubic hair of one particularly beautiful lady infected with HIV/AIDS in the coffin soil. They did as instructed, placed the Ugandan coat of arms on top of the coffin, and buried it on the border with Sudan in such a way that the ram’s head was facing the LRA bases. According to the ajwaka, this act would cause Kony to fall in love with the AIDS-afflicted woman in question, contract the

34 This explanation was nearly identical to those made almost two decades earlier in West Africa, where “a reason commonly given by both soldiers and civilians for the army’s failure to defeat the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels was that the rebels’ expertise in medicines and rituals of defence was superior to that of the Sierra Leone Army” (Shaw 2003: 90).

52 disease, and die. For reasons unclear, the woman did not make it to the bush, but this did not stop the rumour that Kony had contracted HIV from circulating throughout Uganda.

Later that year, the same UPDF commander went to the ajwaka again and asked where Kony’s power came from. The ajwaka pinpointed a certain man from Kitgum District as the source of the spiritual power, and so the Commander had the accused man arrested and brought to the barracks in Gulu Town. In order for the detention to appear legitimate and to deflect attention away from the man with supposed powers, the Commander arrested another five innocent men from the same area, trumped-up on unknown charges. However, those five men were eventually released and the man of interest was murdered in the barracks. The commander had the man’s corpse placed in a coffin and buried within the barracks, his head facing towards Sudan. By 2006, the cen of that man had begun to haunt the Commander, and my informant insisted that it would continue disturbing him until he has had the body buried properly.

But none of these acts dampened the powers of Kony’s spirits. I turn to narratives of the bush in order to describe the spirits in action.

II. TALES OF WAR

The following data emerges from the extended captivity narratives of twenty-three women and in-depth interviews with fifteen more. All of the women were abducted from the Acholi sub-region.

Of those twenty-three respondents who shared prolonged narratives with me, the majority (seventeen) were abducted between the years 1994 and 1999, with the first thought to have been abducted in 1988 and the last having been abducted in 2002. The majority of these women left the LRA between 2002 and 2005, with the first return to civilian life in 1994 and the last in 2008. On average, the women were abducted at the age of thirteen and were part of the LRA for six-and-a-half years.35 The youngest was abducted at the age of eight and the oldest at the age of seventeen.

35 These numbers are uncertain for three primary reasons: First, it is common for Acholi persons to not know their birth date because dates, as well as a numerically defined concept of age, are largely socially insignificant. Instead, births, marriages, and deaths are tied in memory to social events or happenings. This can be said of abduction date as well, and the exact year or month may be unknown. Second, many of the

53 Their episodes in the LRA varied widely due in part to three critical factors: whether they were brought to permanent bases in Sudan or stayed within the borders of Uganda, under which commander (senior or junior) they were assigned upon abduction, and according to when they were abducted (during times of relative peace or war). Despite the diversity of experiences, we can glean several commonalities between the narratives. These are presented chronologically and thematically below. a.) Anticipating Abduction

One morning in May of 2008 I was having breakfast with an Acholi research colleague in Kitgum Town. We were chatting about our secondary school days (mine in Canada and hers in Uganda), when she nonchalantly remarked that she did not miss wearing her shoes to bed. Wondering if this was some local turn of phrase I had not yet mastered, I asked for clarification.

Agnes, like other girls and boys her age, had grown accustomed in her adolescence to being woken in the night by the sounds of gunfire outside of her school gates. The girls and boys would lie in their dorm rooms, listening to the school guards and the LRA rebels outside, hurling insults and volleys of bullets back and forth. In some schools, the LRA would make it past the guards to get what they had come for: young men and women to abduct. 36

This violence was normalized for Agnes and her peers. They knew to wear their shoes to bed, lest they be woken and forced to leave their dorm in a hurry. Fortunately for Agnes, her family eventually pulled her out of school and sent her to southern Uganda to complete her secondary education. For most Acholi families, however, that option was not financially feasible. The majority of the respondents were denied basic education due to not only to insecurity, but also to poor infrastructure, poverty, and the need to care for younger siblings and elderly or infirm relatives. “I was in school and I stopped in P5. Due

women either received no formal education or had their education interrupted by abduction; many respondents were unable to calculate their ages even if their birth year was known or varied their self- declared age from day to day. Third, with traumatic events part of life in the LRA and an absence of time markers in the bush, it is reasonable to assume that respondents’ timelines may be confused or indefinite. 36 In one famous instance, one hundred and thirty-nine girls were abducted in a single night from the same school in Aboke, Lira District. Two of the girls’ teachers followed the rebels’ tracks and negotiated the release of one hundred and nine of the pupils (de Temmerman 2001).

54 to the war, on and off, I didn’t continue with school,” said Mercy. She qualified the statement:

I was staying with my grandmother. My mum and dad were not there. My father was killed during battle and my mum died of meningitis. I was just looking after my brother and then my grandmother was old and could not do anything, so most of the time I was looking after her.

Mercy’s story is typical of the women with whom I spoke. The average highest level of education completed by the group was P3. Although one respondent had completed university, her story was atypical and the individual who had achieved the second highest level of education only completed P7 (the last year of primary school).

Certainly, being absent from school did not protect Acholi youth from abduction. They were also abducted from groups of travelers that dared to drive vehicles on northern Uganda’s roads, from IDP camps, from hiding places near camps and villages, and from family homesteads. And so a generation of youth learned to cope with the constant threat of abduction. One young orphan, Frances, had been staying with an aunt outside of Acholi as a girl. She explained what happened when she tried to come back to the North:

One day in 1989, when I was about nine years old, I was travelling with my cousin-brother37 on the way to come back to Gulu. When we reached the area of Gulu, there was an LRA ambush and they shot at the vehicle we were in. My brother died on the spot. Other people were killed, but then for me, I remained alive – and that is when they took me.

The “matter-of-fact” flatness of her account is common of abduction stories, which are regarded as so quotidian that at times they are told with apparent disinterest or boredom. Ambushes were frequent throughout Acholi, when the LRA would stop vehicles in order to loot goods, terrorize and humiliate the populace, and in some cases, abduct recruits. Still other children were abducted because they could not distinguish between “good” and “bad” soldiers. Not only was it socially unclear who was a friend or an enemy, but it was also difficult to physically identify rebel soldiers. LRA troops have no unique uniform and instead are equipped with gear stolen or salvaged from armies throughout central Africa. Kevin38 was abducted in this way:

37 There is no word for “cousin” in Acholi; paternal cousins are considered siblings. 38 Note: in Uganda, “Kevin” is a name given exclusively to girls.

55 In May of 1990, when I was about thirteen, I wanted to continue with my studies in Gulu because the situation at home in Pader was very rough due to the war. At that time, there weren’t any vehicles around, so my brother and I were moving on foot from Lacekocot to come to Gulu. I saw two people crossing the road, and when I saw them from behind, I was thinking, “Those are government soldiers” – because the LRA are the last people who put on uniforms for combat. So we continued normally with our movement. But when we reached where they were, they stopped us and asked, “Where are you people going?” I said, “We are going to school.” Then they asked us, “You are going to school? Didn’t you know that the situation is bad? For you, you’re going to school?” So I kept quiet. Then he told us, “You come and join us.” That is how they abducted me and my brother.

However, those boys and girls who purposefully avoided busy roads and trading centres were not immune to the threat of abduction. “Night commuters” (those large groups of children and youth described in Chapter 2 who walked into town centres on a nightly basis) still had homes that were scouted by LRA or LRA collaborators looking for children to abduct and parents to harass. Emily, for example, was abducted with her brothers and sisters when they lingered too late one day at the homestead:

We had been waiting for our father because we wanted to request for our school fees. But on that day, our father delayed. On that day, I don’t know what was wrong with us, because we used to go and sleep in town. But on that day we refused, all of us, because we were tired.

When LRA soldiers came upon the home, Emily and her siblings kept quiet in their beds while their mother tried to convince the soldiers of their absence:

My mother said, “For me, I don’t have any children left. They sleep in the town.” So that man said, “You tell the truth! Because they have already told us that for you, you have many children.”

The man forced his way inside, and so the LRA abducted Emily and eleven of her brothers and sisters that night. As was a common experience for many families, it is likely that other locals exposed them to the LRA under duress, or that LRA abductees from the same geographical area lead their superiors to the homes with large numbers of children. The vagueness of the rebel’s claim that “they” had told him that Emily’s mother

56 had many children points to the moral ambiguity that fuels “recruitment” and enables the survival of LRA soldiers and civilians alike.

Still other children and youth who were prevented from night commuting actively resisted abduction by sleeping in the bushes near their villages or IDP camps, hidden from plain site. This was the case for Grace and her siblings:

In 1995, I was living in the camp with my family. I was not in school because my mother died and I was the eldest, so I was the one taking care of the children. I was fifteen years old at the time. Those days, when war was terrible, they used to advise us not to sleep in the house. We would hide in the bush.

Again, however, the bush was the domain of rebels, who themselves would often hide in dense undergrowth. “But in the bush where my brother and sister and I were hiding, that is where they [the LRA] also came up to,” Grace continued. As a result, three more children became soldiers that night. b.) Severing Social Ties with Violence

Grace and her siblings were as socially prepared for their abduction as was possible. Advised by neighbours, parents, adults and older children not to sleep in the house (as indicated in the narrative above), many boys and girls were also equipped with essential social survival skills should they be abducted nonetheless. They were told to comply with demands, to give false names, to keep up, and to refrain from outbursts of emotion.

The majority of the girls were first ordered to navigate their abductors through the local terrain, to show them where to loot medicines and foodstuffs, and often where to find more children and youth. They would then be required to carry the looted “luggages” over long distances, during which time they would be tied with rope to their fellow captives. If they had shoes, the abductors would remove them to inhibit escape.39 Those parents or elder relatives who were present during the abductions were warned not to plead for the release of their children, and were told that they were needed

39 Although the narratives presented in this thesis are those of women who spent multiple years in the bush, it is worth noting the estimate that nearly 40% of abducted females were released or escaped after fourteen days or less (Annan et al. 2008: 33). Children and adults were habitually released once they had completed the labour of carrying goods or showing the soldiers around the area, while those who were kept captive were deemed to be “the right size” – of an appropriate age and build for soldiering.

57 to serve the LRA’s cause and would later return home. The words spoken by the abductors frequently alluded to a narrative of sacrifice, that “we too” did not wish to be in the bush. According to multiple informants, Kony himself bemoans the rebel life, claiming his role of leader is the ultimate sacrifice and that people should therefore “lend” their children to his noble cause. Grace’s account furthers the sacrifice narrative:

First of all, they asked us to guide them – show them the path. We helped them, showed them the path – the good part they would use so that they don’t get attacked by the Government soldiers. When we took them afar, we asked them, “Can we now stop here and go back?” They said, “No, you cannot go back because you will get [encounter] many, many girls also there [in the bush], like you.” They also told us that because we were proving to be stubborn – we kept on questioning them. We told them, “You know, we don’t have parents. We are the ones taking care of younger ones at home. And if you are to take us all, who will be responsible for those who are left behind?” What they answered us was, “Do you think that we are in the bush do not also have children to take care of at home? We have also children to be taken care of at home, but now you can see we are still moving in the bush. That is how our children also suffer.”

Despite this justification, some parents and relatives still resisted and were met with swift violence. Betty’s father, for example, was killed by the LRA in preparation for her abduction. She remembered her mother’s cries:

When my mother was pleading, one of them said to her, “If you keep pleading to release her we will kill you.” And they hit her on the back and beat her with the back of the gun so that she stopped pleading.

Lucy had a similar story: I’m not sure what year it was, but I was about thirteen years old. It was a weekend. I had gone to the garden with my mother and father. So when these people came to the garden, they immediately killed my father. Then they took me and my mum and they started moving with us. I was young; I could not even move very far. For me being young, one of the abductees was told to carry me and my mother was given luggages to carry. We went to someone’s home where they were keeping all of the abductees. Those people were very many, and some were even being killed. From there, they called my mother to come forward. They were calling people one-by-one and interviewing them. So when they called my mother, I think they asked her something and they didn’t like her answer. So they strangled her with a rope.

58 In the process of that abduction, everyone around that area where we come from was killed. All the big, big people were killed and so the young ones were taken.

In order to harden them to the “rebel life,” some children were forced to kill either a family member or another abductee. Aside from murder as an initiation rite, it also served as a warning to would-be escapees (those caught escaping were almost without exception killed by fellow abductees). In one instance, a group of girls was forced to pass around the head of a decapitated boy in a circle, repeating: “If I try to escape, this is what will happen to me.” Those children and youth made to kill a parent or neighbour at the moment of their abduction were additionally severed from the lives of their communities; in this way shame, fear of retribution, and orphanhood served to discourage abductees from attempting to go home.

Sandra experienced this shame and fear first-hand:

One night, we had gone to sleep in the bush, and that is when they abducted us. That day we had gone late to sleep, but these people had already come and were near. We heard footsteps in that area where we had gone to sleep. There were four of us: one boy who was eight years and the rest of us girls. We were all from the same family. The rest were brought home to my grandmother because we were staying with her. And then for me, they decided to move with me. So when we started moving, I realised that my uncle’s son, Anywar, was also in the group of people the LRA had abducted. One evening, after we had stayed in the bush for six months, they picked some boys, including my uncle’s son. They told them to go fetch water. So my uncle’s son said that for him, his leg was sick [injured] so he could not go. So they told him, “If you cannot go, you come back.” By then, it had reached nine in the night. They picked seven of us girls and they told us to go and beat that boy. We beat him until he died. He was my friend. I grew up in the hands of that same uncle, Anywar’s father.

Another method employed by LRA commanders to sever social ties and discourage escape-plan collaboration was to break-up siblings and relatives into separate units and forbid them from communicating with each other. Like Emily, quoted above, some children were abducted along with other siblings or, in some instances, entire families. However, after a short period of time (hours to days), the soldiers would often release those abductees deemed too young or too old, and in some cases commanders

59 would even select certain children for release if it was decided a family should not be unfairly robbed of all its children. In light of this, Grace tried to challenge her abduction:

When they captured us and started moving with us, we asked them, “Where are you taking us? And can’t you have kindness in your heart? We are three children from the same house and really, can’t you see that?” So, when they came to realize that the three of us were brother and sisters from the same family, what they did is to separate us. The two young ones were taken to a convoy and I, the eldest, I was asked to remain behind in the base.

In the not-uncommon instance where an individual discovered a previously abducted and missing sibling, relative, neighbour or friend upon arrival in the bush, he or she might deny prior affiliation (or in turn be denied by the more “seasoned” soldier) in order to prevent their separation – be it by death or re-assignment to another unit. c.) Journeys into the Bush

The day I escaped, we were supposed to depart for Sudan. And the good thing was, like, the lady who was guarding me leaked that information to me, that I would be transferred to the other group and I would be taken to Sudan. She did not do it in good faith, though, like, she was like, “Scovia, I am really excited that tomorrow they are getting rid of you, they’ll take you to Sudan and, like, you’ll be away from...from my hands.” So I just knew, like, if I don’t make it that day, I would end up in Sudan. And from the backgrounds, I lived in a conflict area, I knew how terrible it is in Sudan, besides dying of… maybe being killed, you risk dying of hunger, starvation, and so that gave me... added into my courage. ‘Why don’t I die in Uganda instead of walking for a long distance and dying in Sudan?’ Because I knew if I am caught, I would be – if I were caught, I would be killed. That’s what they do if they catch you escaping; you are killed there and then. So that made me make a decision: I either go to Sudan and live or die, or I die here, or I’m free.

- Scovia, 14 August 2009

Abductees were made to walk hundreds of kilometres on foot, either to strongholds within Acholi or to established LRA bases in Southern Sudan. While some walked immediately to the border, others lingered for weeks or months in the wild bush of northern Uganda, not informed of where they were being taken, but required to keep up and obey.

60 To be brought to Sudan was to have one’s opportunities to escape drastically diminished. Scovia, like many of her peers, was well aware of this fact and gathered the confidence to escape before reaching the border. Within ten kilometres of Sudan, her unit was attacked by a helicopter gunship of the UPDF. After, when the survivors were re- grouping, Scovia took advantage of the chaos and ran non-stop for ten kilometres in the opposite direction. “And it was a distance of life or death, so I never got tired,” she remembered. She was ultimately successful in her escape.

What of those girls who did not escape on the way to Sudan, or who were in units based in Uganda? Of the twenty-three women who shared their in-depth LRA histories for this project, one escaped in the same year as the establishment of the Sudan bases, and thus was captive entirely within the Acholi sub-region, while another was released before her battalion could enter Sudan. However, seventeen endured their time in the LRA both in Uganda and Sudan, while four more escaped during the border battles that occurred when their abductors attempted to march them out of Uganda.

The prospect of being an LRA captive in Sudan was daunting for several reasons. Immediately after failed peace talks in March of 1994, the LRA began receiving military support from Khartoum (Gersony 1997: 30). They first based themselves in Eastern Equatoria, with main headquarters near Aru Junction, though battles with the Kampala- allied SPLA (Sudan People’s Liberation Army) forced the LRA to establish bases throughout Central and Eastern Equatoria (Schomerus 2007: 21). The fact of Sudan’s own civil war (1983-2005) meant that LRA abductees who found themselves in the hotspot of Southern Sudan were doubly endangered.

Consequently, to be taken to Sudan meant the likelihood of serving the LRA from an established base, which meant that an abductee would be afforded little to no opportunity to escape (in contrast to the chances provided by the nearly constant movement of troops in Uganda). To cross the border was thus to have one’s fate sealed, and the girls abducted knew this. One young woman lamented on being “given” as a wife to a commander: “I was upset. I was upset in that I even thought that if I wasn’t in Sudan, I could have escaped. If they had given me when I was in Uganda I would have escaped.” The characteristics of her captivity were therefore inherently tied to her location.

61 Secondly, Southern Sudan was hostile territory for anyone affiliated with the LRA. Girls and women thus feared to find themselves at the mercy of the local population. Sylvia mused on this fact:

The girl who they abducted me with escaped and came back. She escaped when she was still in Uganda, but not in Sudan. In Sudan you cannot escape because the Dinkas will kill you if they get you. Dinkas used to kill us because the same way the LRA are doing in Uganda, it’s the same way they’re also doing in Sudan. They [the LRA] were killing the parents of the Dinkas. If they find you when you are home, they kill you. That is why the Dinkas when they find any LRA, they also kill.

A general fear of the Dinka ethnic group permeated the narratives of several of the women, which may be the result of not only the reality of fear and violence between belligerent groups in Sudan, but also propaganda disseminated to abductees by the LRA High Command, always working to discourage escape attempts. d.) Who Are You?: Purified Soldiers Meet Kony’s Spirits

It had names. More than one spirit: Jim Brickey, Who Are You?, Silindi, Snaska, Silver Coin, Juma Oris the Bow (that was the first spirit who attacked him – that man). And all these ones had their own work. According to him [Kony], all these spirits came from different places. Some were from Sudan, others from Uganda, others from Congo. Owora was also there. He came from Congo.

- Joska, 27 August 2009

Whether they made it to Sudan or remained in Uganda, boys and girls kidnapped into the LRA were ritually indoctrinated to prepare them spiritually for their new lives of servitude. Having been purified by violence and holy oil, children and youth were immediately distributed into the supervision of lapwony – a word that literally means teacher, but also came to mean “boss,” “commander,” “big man,” “priest,” and for many young women, “husband.” These methodical distributions of abductees were made at the behest of Kony’s spirits and enacted, with bureaucratic constancy, by the many humans compelled by and convinced of the power of the supernatural. Over time, some girls and women like Joska, quoted above, came to be familiar with the spirits that both justified and excused the use of female bodies as vessels for forced marriage and motherhood, sexual violence, labour and soldiering.

62 In addition to those instances when abductees were forced to murder attempted escapees, boys and girls were beaten with sticks, the butts of guns, pangas, and other objects in order to discourage escape but also to purify their bodies of evil humours. Before she escaped on the way to Sudan, Sylvia said, she was regularly beaten: “In the group where I was, if you were newly abducted, a welcome is they just beat you. A welcome.” Simultaneously, a record-keeper asked those being beaten for their names and particulars. Catherine, another woman, recalled that the beatings were given with more precision:

What they did was that the only way for you not to escape is that when you reach there [the base], they beat your back with a panga so that you don’t escape. They make the sign of a cross on your back. They beat on a straight line so that you don’t escape.

The symbol of the cross was thus violently inscribed onto their bodies, while the force of the blows forced out the bad thoughts or feelings that the girl or boy might have. A girl named Florence was beaten with two hundred strokes of a stick, and was told by Brigadier General Raska Lukwiya that it was to her benefit: “They had removed all the bad evils I had in me,” she remarked. “He said they beat me because they had removed all the bad luck I had in me so that my life would be saved in case I went for another battle in the bush.”

Kevin, abducted on the road to Gulu with her brother, recalled being separated from her brother and ritually cleansed in the “yard,” a ceremonial space in LRA bases where new recruits are anointed, prayers are uttered, and senior lapwony preach and lecture to the troops:

When you are first abducted, the first thing is they first cleanse you. They smear the moo-ya [shea tree] oil on you to cleanse you; to see if you have any sickness. You do this in the yard. The yard is just in a place where Kony stays, near his house. It is built in a white stone and is in the shape of a heart. The heart represents a good heart, a clean heart. And then it is fenced with very nice grasses. Only special people are allowed to go to the yard, and women are not allowed. No one was supposed to go there unless Kony himself has chosen people. Unless there is a cleansing ceremony, it is only the people they have chosen who go there and no one else. I don’t know why because other times we would even go and pray there.

63 The yard is, as Kevin indicated, a tightly regulated space in which the presence of women is generally restricted. The women emphasized that it is primarily only pre-pubescent girls who may enter the holy yard, and even then only for the purpose of ritual purification. When asked to describe what happens in the yard, Frances corroborated Kevin’s description:

The yard is shaped in a kind of heart, fenced, and then when we want to fight, the stone we use for fighting is placed in the middle. The main ceremony they perform there is when you’re a young girl; you’re taken there to be cleansed. That is before you go into your menstruation. They put the sign of the cross here in your chest and the camouflage thing is put in your chest. It was moo-ya they put on, but from there it is called camouflage. But after that you’re not supposed to enter. Women are not allowed because there’s a saying that women who are in their menstruation, who are of that age, should not enter there because they’re not clean. It’s only men who enter that place.

“That camouflage,” shea oil, was placed on their bodies in order to cleanse and protect their spirits from attack. At the same time, recruits had their bodies inspected for the use of traditional medicines - ajwaki are known to sew herbs and pebbles into the arms, wrists and hands of people in order to heal disease or give power. If the LRA discovered these incisions in an abductee, the foreign objects would immediately be removed so as to purify the new recruit and to ensure that no supernatural power remained to challenge Kony’s spirits. For the same reason, those who possess the powers of abiba or night dancers, if they were discovered, were often killed by the LRA if they revealed themselves.

At the same time, these prohibited talismans were exchanged for “pure” and “holy” amulets. Many women (though not all) reported being given protective vials of blessed water from the river at Awere and soil from the mountain of Odek, sometimes sewed under the skin of the hand. When Betty successfully escaped, one of her first acts was to remove these talismans: “I went to kneel to pray, but before I said a prayer I removed the vial of water and from my neck and the stone from Odek that had been sewn under the skin of my hand.” Still other women described stones or pebbles from Odek being sewn onto their clothing: “While you’re in the bush, there are some stones picked out of the mountain that are sewn on you. That is to protect you,” said one woman.

64 Regardless of how blessed soil and water becomes attached to a person, they are regarded by the LRA as intense sources of supernatural power because Kony’s first spirit encounters occurred in the environs of Odek, his home village in eastern Gulu District, and immediately across the district border in Awere, Pader District. “It [Kony’s tipu] comes from Odek and he has a shrine there where he prays. There’s a hill in Odek where that water is there. And when you reach in that hill, even though you have a phone, your phone will go off [because of the spirit],” claimed one respondent. Another group interview participant recounted what Kony himself had told her about the source of his supernatural power: According to Kony, he said that his mum and dad had a quarrel at home when his mum was pregnant with him. So his mum decided to leave home to go to her home. So on the way, she started feeling pain. She gave birth, but she had no razor blade or anything for the umbilical cord. So it was a spirit came in the form of a man. He got some grass, removed the cover, and used it to cut the umbilical cord. And then the man carried the mum to a nearby river. He kept them for three days. During that process, that man would get a stone, put it in the fire, and then when the stone got ready and hot, he would put it in a basin full of water to make the water hot for bathing the baby. For three days he would bathe the baby using that same way. So after three days, that is when the man got the mother from the riverside, took her to the road, and told the mother, “You can now go home, and this child should be named Kony.” That is how the spirit got Kony. Since he was a baby. At birth. So the mum told her mother, “This child should be called Kony because it’s the spirit of God that helped him. If it wasn’t that, he could have died.”40 So that is when the mother went home. But during that process for three days, the people of the mother came to the father’s place, asking, “Where is our daughter?” No one knew where the daughter was. So it also brought confusion between the two families. That is how the jok got Kony. He said that thing [spirit] started attacking him when he was in P6. He could hear voices coming, speaking to him in English. So, when that thing persisted, he moved from their [family] home. He went to Lacekocot [in Pader]. When he reached there, he picked seven men and went with them to the hill in Odek. So they stayed there for some time. Then, one day they saw a dove up high. So he told those seven men, “You look up.” So when they looked up, they saw a dove. Then he told them, “Don’t look at that thing for so long and don’t go and remove it. Stop believing in Satanic ways.” Then from there they moved down the hill. And then is when he started abducted people.

40 “Kony” means “help.”

65 When they left Awere Hill and went to Kilak Hill, they prayed for three days. So after praying for three days it was a stone that came and attacked the rail – the rail for the train. It knocked and then the rail got spoiled [a boulder tumbled down and damaged the train track]. It was the first one, his first attack. He said he started work when he was seventeen years old. When Kony started, he started his work by teaching the word of God. So when the word of God enters into you, definitely you’ll follow that person. He didn’t start by abducting. He could even give barren women to give birth. He could give them water that they would drink and give birth. So that is how he started: with a good spirit of preaching the word of God. But later, it turned to something else: abducting.

One feature of note in this account of the origins of Kony’s jok is its connection to water. A second version of this story was told to me by Nighty, who explained that Kony lived underwater for several days and emerged changed.41 The source of power in both iterations points to a jok-nam, or water spirit. Secondly, this story introduces Kony as a prophet and spiritual leader, distinguishing him from an ajwaka who acts strictly as a spirit medium or healer. One elder I interviewed in October of 2009 chuckled when I asked him if Kony is or ever was an ajwaka. “Oh…Kony is not an ajwaka,” he laughed. “He’s also not a prophet. For me, I think it is a spirit that attacked Kony. So he’s not an ajwaka.” Of distinction here is the elder’s opinion that to be a professional ajwaka one must have learned to manage and control one’s spirits, as opposed to remaining the passive victim of attack. His denial that Kony is a prophet can be interpreted more generally as political judgement.

Kony’s relationships with ajwaki and elderly Acholi men have been indeed fraught with mistrust, as was explained earlier in relation to the controversy over presumed blessings and curses given to the LRA leader. Nevertheless, several ex-LRA men and women told me that Kony worked with an ajwaka on Kilak Hill in Amuru District, where he may have acquired more spirits. Consider the following discussion that occurred during a group interview of mix-gender ex-LRA:

Rm:42 Kony used to be a worker to this man, an ajwaka who was on this [Kilak] hill. So that is when we believe he got spirits in him.

41 The story can be read in its entirely in Appendix C, page 145. 42 “Rm” and “Rf” mean “male respondent” and “female respondent,” respectively.

66 Rf: For me, I think he was given some medicine that he was using to protect himself in the bush [which caused his spirit possession].

Rm: Kony had the spirit from God and then one from within – traditional spirits.

Rf: In the bush, they used to cover Kony with a white cloth. Every 27th of April, that is when he tells people that the spirit comes to attack him. And on that day, they slaughter a cow. And then when the spirit is talking to him, he is able to speak very many languages, all the different languages. And when he’s doing that, he takes the elderly people. He goes with them, and when he’s talking, it’s the elderly people who would be writing down what he’s saying. So when the spirit goes away from him, that is when the elderly people would be able to tell him what he had been saying.

Rf: So that day, it’s a day of celebration (every 27th of April). That day they slaughter a cow and then it’s like how they arrange for funeral rites here at home: they cover the blood where the cow was slaughtered with a white cloth. And then that day it’s a day for celebration. Every kind of dances will be danced on that day.

Other ex-LRA explained that April 27th was significant because it is the supposed anniversary of the first time Kony became possessed by a spirit. Many respondents believed that this first and most powerful spirit was not tipu maleng – the Holy Spirit, nor Lakwena, but rather a jok called “Who Are You?” who first attacked Kony in the stream in Odek where he used to bathe as a youth. Still others claimed that the man who helped Kony’s mother give birth was the embodiment of Who Are You?. Still others, such as Joska quoted above, believed a spirit named Juma Oris to be the culprit.

Some of the returned women described their first meetings with Who Are You?, explaining how Kony himself would sit abductees down so that they could listen to the spirits speaking through him for hours on end. During these sermons he - or the spirits - might tell stories, reveal political manifestos, or deliver religious edicts such as food restrictions. It was unpredictable which of Kony’s spirits might be in control, and some were feared more than others. Who Are You?, the women said, is the commander of the army and is known to be especially violent and ruthless, as well as the spirit that can predict the future. He was the most prominent of the spirits discussed by the women, with some describing Who Are You? as the only jok of consequence in the LRA.

67 Some women, however, identified a spirit called Latim Juma Oris, another prominent army commander. Significantly, Juma Oris was believed by the women to be the spirit that ordered the murder of those children who were caught escaping. “This one wants to escape, you go and kill the person,” mimicked one woman describing how Juma Oris would betray the thoughts of disloyal boys and girls to Kony. There were other spirits as well, called Jim Brickey,43 Snaska, Silver Coin,44 Owora, Latime, Doctor Sola, King Bruce Lee, and a female spirit called Silly Silindi. Silindi was described by one young woman as a benevolent spirit who used to teach LRA abductees to love one another above all else. The edicts and demands of the spirits are not always violent; several women described avoiding death sentences simply because a spirit had placed a temporary moratorium on murder. Betty recounted her narrow escape from death when, as two boys prepared to kill her at the behest of their commander, a messenger came to intervene. “This was because Kony himself had sent a message that now was not a time of killing, but a time for prayers. They were not even to kill a chicken or a cow or a goat,” she said. Another young woman called Christine remarked: “In order to become a soldier there, Kony could send the spirits and say that you have to prepare moo-ya to cleanse these people in order that they should become soldiers. Sometimes it could even order us not to kill people. We should follow the Ten Commandments.” Whichever spirit spoke through Kony would announce its name to the listeners, and one woman described watching Kony’s eyes change colour according to which spirit was speaking through him.

Despite the variety of origin stories and the fluidity of beliefs surrounding Kony’s spirits and their characteristics, it is certain that nearly all the women believed that Kony does indeed channel powerful spirits. A shared belief in these jogi created a panoptic situation whereby abductees policed themselves against thoughts of escape or disobedience in order to avoid being singled-out by Juma Oris. Others believed Kony himself (regardless of the spirits) had the power to read minds and predict escape, while

43 Behrend writes that Jim Brickey and “Who Are You” are in fact the same spirit; “Who are you?” is the first question an ajwaki asks a possessing spirit (1999: 185). The fact that Who Are You’s name is said in English rather than in Luo may be because Jim Brickey is an African-American spirit (i.e. an anglophone). 44 It is possible this spirit’s name should be spelled “Silver Kony;” the pronunciation is the same.

68 some of the youngest abductees were mentally disciplined due to the belief that his spirits were in cahoots with special spies - the birds and trees in the wilderness.

Kony’s spirit powers are not unlimited, however. When I interviewed one informant with long-standing connections to the LRA (he had multiple immediate family members who joined the rebellion voluntarily), he claimed that the group’s expulsion from Uganda has severely impeded its supernatural power. In 2002, he said, he journeyed to visit his brother in the bush. When he arrived at the LRA camp, he witnessed soldiers take water from Awere into the yard, where two abducted babies – one boy and one girl – were killed and decapitated. “They cut the heads off those two kids. They put them in a pot together. Yeah. And they buried it; the heads,” he said. The water from Awere was used to bathe the bodies, and the sacrifice strengthened Kony’s spirit to the extent that it could alert him if a UPDF presence was near. Since the LRA was banished from Ugandan territory in 2006, however, Kony can no longer send porters to collect water from Awere and soil from Odek. My informant explained: “When I [last] talked to him [Kony], he wanted to do the sacrifice to the spirit again. But it is now difficult to come from Congo to Awere.” He went on to claim that this geographical difficulty has significantly impeded the renewal of Kony’s spiritual muscle:

He sent some people – that was last year [2008] – to come and get some water from Awere. But these people were arrested in Pader with those waters. So he’s stuck. I think the other children [for sacrifice], they are already there, but they have to travel with that water from here to Congo; there was big problems. That is why they say the spirit is not so strong.

The rumour that Kony’s powers are weakened has fuelled speculation that his tipu has abandoned him entirely, perhaps even for one of his sons. The possibility that his supernatural power can be inherited points to ongoing fears about the intractability of the LRA conflict.

e.) “Taken Like a Soldier”: Forced Marriage and Labour

Their base was in Kilak and that is where we did most of our work, which was digging [farming]. I was babysitting, too. That was my main work. Then later they gave me to a man. They just look at you and they say, “This person is fit to

69 be a woman.” And they just direct you. “You go to so-and-so.” In my heart I felt like refusing, but I had no strength to.

- Jennifer, 5 October 2009

Jennifer’s experience of forced labour in the LRA – both manual and sexual – was typical of her peer group. Despite the popular portrayal of girls and women of the LRA as “sex slaves,” their roles in the bush were far more varied than this label suggests. This assertion is by no means an attempt to discount the frequent and deeply harmful incidences of rape suffered by girls and women in captivity. However, it is imperative to contextualize the sexual violence that occurred between members of the LRA45 and to challenge the idea that females held a singular and universal occupation that was exclusively sexual. It is noteworthy that of the ninety ex-LRA men and women with whom I spoke, not a single person referred to herself (or, in the case of men, of their fellow returnees) as a “sex slave.” Forced recruits in the LRA are undeniably subject to slavery, and thus “labour” in the title of this sub-section refers to both the act of giving birth and the multiple tasks performed by girls and women in captivity. To be “taken like a soldier,” as Nighty referred to her role as a wife in the bush, is to emphasize that women and girls are wives of a different category than at home in Acholi. The LRA category of “wife” does not restrict females to the domestic sphere, and it does not preclude soldiering.

Following cleansing ceremonies and ritualized beatings, females arriving at LRA bases were quickly distributed to the guardianship and command of ranked men. A pre- menstrual girl would be assigned to a household where she would be required to perform domestic work for her lapwony, the commander who might later become her husband. Ting ting, as these girls are known, worked as babysitters, cooks, and cleaners, and general house-girls for the wives of the lapwony. “Then having reached Sudan, they gathered all the girls together and they asked us if we had started seeing our periods,” said Harriet. “Then I told them that I had never gotten to that point. Then immediately they started distributing us to men. You have to be with a man in a house.” Harriet was a

45 Due to the limitations of this project, I do not discuss the perpetration of rape and sexual assault by LRA troops against the civilian population (during raids, attacks, ambushes, etc.), which are different from the quotidian violence of ongoing forced marriages.

70 ting ting for two years until she began menstruating and was given away once more, this time to be a wife. Recall Kevin, who was abducted with her brother on the way to school. After being cleansed with moo-ya, she said: “Then later they take you, they say: “You go to so-and-so’s home, go to so-and-so’s home.” You don’t refuse because you want to keep your life. You don’t refuse. When you refuse they beat you until you accept.” This was a common refrain for young women; they were advised by other girls that resistance to forced marriage would result at least in beatings, if not immediate execution. Christine explained this:

I was only in the bush for one week when I was given to [a man named] Otim as a wife. I never had the heart to resist because I wanted my life. If you refuse, they kill you. So I never resisted. There were others who refused, and they were beaten. There was a girl who was given and she refused. They told her, “Today, this one is your husband.” Then she shook her shoulders, “No.” Then she told them, “That man is my father’s size [age]. I cannot stay with him.” So the women were put in line and then that girl was put in the middle. The women beat that girl until she died.

Mercy also lamented this feeling of powerlessness. She was fifteen when she was given to a man:

I felt bad because he was an old man and it wasn’t easy for me. The first time we met [had sexual intercourse] it wasn’t all that easy. I felt a lot of pain because I was very young. And that one being an old man. I thought of refusing, but my friends told me, “If you refuse, they will kill you.”

Of the group of women whose narratives inform this section, only two women were not forced into marriage and sexual abuse while captive; the median age at which girls were “given” to LRA men was fourteen years. These “wives” now have an average of three children.

It is noteworthy that, though the brunt of forced sexual relations was borne by girls and women, the sexual roles and behaviours of both men and women were closely monitored and restricted by the senior command. Girls and women were “distributed” to men at the behest of Kony, his spirits, or his inner circle of commanders, constraining the

71 choices of both parties to the “marriage.” One returnee, Lucy, recalled her “bush husband” being reluctant to take on another wife:

Later on, when we abducted others, they told the men to remove all their shirts. So when they removed all their shirts, those new abductees were to pick from the shirts the man they were going to stay with. So some old woman was the one who picked my husband’s shirt. So later he said, “No, I cannot go with this one, this one is an old woman. She cannot go with me, I’m still young.” So he refused. So by the time I left [the LRA], I was alone with him and he didn’t even have any other woman. But I don’t know if maybe when I left he got another woman.

Nevertheless, Lucy’s husband was not murdered due to his refusal, as would have been the likely result had he been a woman.

Chris Dolan has noted that impotence and infertility were treated seriously by the High Command, anxious to produce children for a new and pure Acholi society.46 “The ‘New Acholi’ could thus be described as a mythologized ‘Old’ Acholi, cleansed of the corruption of westernising influences, though building on Christian messages about creating a new society,” writes Dolan (2009: 86). Contrary to popular perceptions that the LRA abducted girls and women to serve as concubines or widely-available sex slaves, “...the image of a free-for-all does not hold up. As in the broader society, gender relations were used as a key instrument of control over both men and women...Relationships had to be ‘authorised by the military council’” notes Dolan (ibid 81). Several women recalled being fought over by men, at which point Kony was usually called to intervene. His solution was either to grant the girl to a “neutral” man, or to eliminate the source of the quarrel: murder the girl. “Each one wanted me to be the wife. So later, they said they should kill me so that they end that quarrel and fighting over me,” Mercy said, explaining that the cohesiveness of the group was considered more important than the sexual desires of individual men. As indicated above, Mercy escaped being killed and was given to an elderly man instead. In one testimony collected by Dolan, a male returnee confirmed the social importance of the unions beyond sexual pleasure: “You are not allowed to fall in love with any girl or woman unless it is authorised by the military council. This is to control the rate of unwanted pregnancies and prostitution within the camps” (ibid: 273).

46 This plan is further evidenced by the testimonies of returnees who recalled being told by the senior LRA leaders that Acholi as they knew it had ceased to exist; all Acholis remaining in Uganda had been killed in a Government campaign of genocide and a new society needed to be built.

72 The reproductive labour of women was thus highly monitored and valued, and despite the pain of non-consensual marriage and the non-choice between death and rape, many women explained that to be a wife was to have a certain modicum of protection (from other men, from participating in combat) or access to scarce resources (food and water, medicine). This protection or access was contingent on the rank of the husband, the wife’s position and status compared to her co-wives, her ability to produce children, and the need for battle-ready soldiers. “He kept me well,” said Kevin, speaking of her husband. “But in the bush you are kept as a soldier first. You’re a wife at the same time as a soldier.” Florence, on the other hand, claimed that life got worse when she was taken from her role as a ting ting for a senior commander and given as a wife to a more junior man. “Otti Lagony47 treated us so well. Everything was provided to us, but later when we were now divided to other men, that is when life became hard for us,” she said.

Although life in the bush was rife with abuse and fraught with the ever-present threat of murder or battle, violent behaviour enacted outside the purview of official orders was not often tolerated. This was particularly true in the case of pregnant women: “Before I got pregnant, he used to always beat me,” said Winnie of her bush husband, pointing to deep scars on her back and forehead:

Then when the big people came to realize that he was doing such a thing, one day he was asked to come along and he was even beaten seriously for that. Then there was a rule that if he happened to beat me anymore, steps would be taken. Steps would be taken on him. So there, he stopped beating me and the time I was pregnant he never tried to beat me.

Certainly, not all abuse was curbed by ranking officers, inasmuch as order in the LRA was premised on brutality and life was considered cheap.48 Rather, to go “overboard” was frowned upon, as was the case with Betty, who escaped certain death when officers ranked higher than her husband intervened to stop her from being killed on his orders.49

47 Otti Lagony was Kony’s second-in-command until Kony had him executed in late 1999 (BBC, 7 January 2000). 48 Social norms concerning conjugal violence in Acholi also largely justify the battering of wives and children, meaning that some abuse in the bush may be under-reported due to its similarity to non-bush behaviour. 49 See page 149, Appendix C: “So while they were beating me, another commander came and asked them why they were beating me. They said that Nyeko [her husband] had ordered them to do it. So that

73 Still, while their status as “wives” was paramount to the social mission of creating a “New Acholi,” it did not often disqualify abducted girls and women from soldiering or other types of labour. Florence continued her story:

There in the bush, during the day we were soldiers. But when it reaches the night, they take you to a man’s home. I was given to a man named Michael. I had one child with that man, and he had another wife as well. It’s like this: when you’ve done something good, he treats you well. But if you have done something wrong, he treats you like a soldier. You know how bosses treat their fellow soldiers. That is how he used to treat us. I used to follow all the rules and his wishes. But there were other times, like when I’d cooked food and put in too much salt, he became mean.

The job of soldiering – and the social implications of rank – was thus ever-present. Twenty of the women reported being trained as soldiers and of those, two were promoted to command positions. Soldiering was sporadic and varied, with some girls and women engaging in armed combat and others acting as porters or nurses (roles also relegated to children younger than eleven). “They trained us how to shoot, how to open the gun, how to aim at people. They used to make us shoot a tree like this. If you aim at the tree and hit it, then they know that you are now strong and you can fight,” Emily confirmed. Another woman, Esther, detailed the importance of universal basic training:

So while we were there, they took us to a training green. They were teaching us how to shoot guns and how to use other technical machines. But when they taught us, we even knew how to do the work, but they told us this time we shall not be fighting. Instead we were assigned to do a different job. We would carry tins full of bullets and gun powder. We would carry them up to the border of Gulu and Sudan, to Agoro side [Kitgum]. That is what we were doing. You bring it to this side, then you go back. And sometimes war became very terrible, but if it becomes very terrible, good enough they have taught you how to defend yourself. That is how we had been managing.

Esther went on to describe carrying guns up and down the border, terrified of being killed by government soldiers, then walking vast distances fetching and carrying water, and grinding sorghum until her hands were bloody and she could no longer feed herself.

Like all experiences in the bush, the importance that soldiering played in the individual lives of women and girls was dependent upon their geographical location (i.e.

commander called Nyeko and said that he must stop mistreating these girls or he would report him to Kony: “But this girl, she is still very young, you cannot treat her like this.””

74 proximity to battle fronts), their age, their rank, and the ranks of their husbands or the men with whom they lived. Aside from domestic labour, in Sudan, farming (“digging”) was the primary occupation of girls and women who might or might not be called into battle, while those who remained in Uganda recalled constantly moving in search of food. Florence, who was abducted at the age of nine and trained as a soldier at the age of eleven, recalled: “When you are in Sudan, the only work you do there is digging. Then you wait for the time when you are to work – the soldier work comes and you just begin the work. We would come to Uganda [to fight], and go back to Sudan.” Some women excelled at soldiering, with some even given command positions, Frances included: “I fought in battles, but I wasn’t frightened. I had that heart; I was never frightened,” she recalled with pride.

Later, Frances remarked how much she missed life in the LRA: “But I miss the bush because my husband kept me well. I used to be so fat from the bush because the man kept me well! I have very many friends in the bush that I miss.” Her reminiscence stands in stark contrast to the testimony of Harriet (as well as many of her peers), who said: “Life there was not very easy. I could have died of hunger. Hunger was really terrible. We were thirsty – there was no drinking water there and we had been taking urine. I starved to the point that I could not even urinate.” The testimonies of Frances and Harriet, read together, illustrate the heterogeneous experiences of life in the LRA for its female members. Some women, like Frances, were awarded rank and status over other women and girls, while others with powerful husbands were able to access resources unavailable to girls or co-wives with less status. Some women spoke of eating soil just to quench their thirst, or of their children dying of hunger, while others recounted being generally well cared for. Consequently, there is no uniform “bush” tale; women and girls were stratified within their ranks as well as in the greater army. This meant that different women experienced different hardships, but also that instances of horizontal violence between girls and women were not uncommon. Betty, for one, recounted her abuse at the hands of her new husband’s senior wives, who presumably viewed her as a usurper of scarce resources.50

50 See Appendix C, page 149.

75 Likewise, a girl or woman’s status in the chain of command, her geographical location, and the rank of her husband (if she had one) all influenced how she might care for herself and, in the case of many, her children. Kevin, who was part of the Control Alter (Kony’s brigade), recalled the general ease by which she gave birth to three children in the bush. “When you’re pregnant, you don’t do any work. There are hospitals there. There was a lady who was abducted and she was acting as a mid-wife when I gave birth,” she said. Some women reported being cared for in a hospital in Juba, under the watchful eyes of guards. Sandra, in contrast, the wife of a junior commander, gave birth during battle in Uganda:

We started moving when I was eight and a half months pregnant. The plan now was that we should enter Sudan. So after Agora Hill, we went to some hill that is on the border of Uganda and Sudan. I started feeling labour pain and in the process we heard a helicopter coming. So they told all of us to lie down and put our stomachs down. We were told that if the people in the airplane see your nails – your fingernails and your toenails – they will just know that you are there. The helicopter started firing a lot of bullets down. So we could not manage. So we ran away, but there were also soldiers on the ground, following us. So we ran until we came to some area down here in Gulu. I don’t know exactly where. We spent the night there and stayed for two days after. The boss told us first to rest and pray for the two days. But we entered an ambush again and we were defeated. We started to run again. Due to too much running, I started feeling labour pains again. I was in labour and the soldiers were still chasing us and we were running. It was the middle of the night. During the process, my husband saw that I was in too much pain. Other people ran and they left me with him. So after that, I just pushed and the baby came out. It was a boy. We didn’t even do anything with the baby, we just covered it with leaves and left the baby there and we ran for our lives.

Being the wife of a senior commander did not necessarily rescue a woman from giving birth in such hectic circumstances, however. Sylvia described the scene of chaos in Sudan in which she gave birth to her first of three children in the bush:

My first pregnancy was really a problem to me. It happened that at the time I was almost giving birth, my husband had come for an operation in Uganda. So I was alone. And that was the time when they [the UPDF] used to over-attack us. That was the time when I was almost giving birth. So, you know, running when you’re pregnant is not easy.

76 I moved that day. When it reached six in the morning, people decided to move and they left me behind. So I moved alone until I found the area where we were going. When I reached there, I didn’t even feel any labour pain. I had no fear. I gave birth in the evening. There and then I just gave birth to my child and they used dry grass for the broom. It’s the one they used for cutting the baby’s umbilical cord. The following morning at 6, we took off and were again running because we were being chased. I was just running and praying that, “Even though now I stay behind, let me run so that God helps me and keeps me alive.” f.) Female Bodies: Pollution and Purity

The major rules in the bush are: 1) if you’re for your period you’re not allowed to move anyhow; where there are men you are not allowed to enter the house. You have to live your own life [separate from men]. 2) Prostitutes are not allowed there. If you misbehave from there, they will kill you. There are rules of when you should meet a man or not. They will dictate. They say, “This time, this period, you’re not allowed to sleep with a man,” you’ll have to not do it. And then, 3) when times for battle comes, the women breastfeeding with young children are always the ones elected to pray for those who are going for battle.

- Winnie, 11 September 2009

Although girls and women were regularly made to fight in battles or serve otherwise on the frontlines, it must be emphasized that this reality was not considered ideal by the High Command of the LRA. While it is believed in Acholi society more generally that women are by nature more docile and better kept at home than men, in the LRA women and girls were dangerous and volatile sources of spiritual power. At the order of Kony’s spirits, strict rules governed the movements and actions of menstruating girls and women, and these rules can be understood in relation to more commonly known spiritual edicts on restricted food and drink, for example.

Unlike rebel movements with underage combatants elsewhere in Africa (such as in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, and Mozambique), the use of narcotics is notably absent in the LRA. Whereas child soldiers in other conflicts have been administered drugs in order to dull their senses and lower their inhibitions towards violence,51 the same

51 See, for example, the account of Ishmael Beah in Sierra Leone: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre (2007); and Alcinda Honwana’s accounts of the civil wars in Angola and Mozambique: Child Soldiers in Africa, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (2006).

77 cannot be said of LRA soldiers. Sobriety of spirit and body is a key tenet of LRA soldiering: all members are expressly forbidden from imbibing alcohol, smoking tobacco or marijuana, or otherwise consuming foodstuffs deemed unholy by Kony’s spirits. The social and religious restrictions so central to the LRA’s disciplinary structure seemingly follow no pattern, changing often to follow the orders of Kony’s spirits, yet they are applied with vicious zeal. One woman remembered: “Other times they would tell us not to eat chicken, even. If today there is no combing hair, there is no combing hair. Sometimes if they tell you to become a Rasta, those dreadlocks, all of you should to make your hair be like dreadlocks.” The spirits at times forbid the consumption of pig – contravention of which is punishable by execution – at other times green malakwang (a staple dish). According to Lakwena, these foods were unclean, and by eating them, combatants left themselves and those around them vulnerable in battle. One source of spiritual pollution was constant, however: women’s menstruating bodies open up the group to armed attack.

As indicated in the passages above that detail the ceremonies that occur upon arrival at the LRA bases, women were restricted from visiting Kony’s holy yard because of the fact of menstruation. “It’s only men who enter that place. Women are not allowed because there’s a saying that women who are in their menstruation, who are of that age, should not enter there because they’re not clean,” said Frances. In addition, sexual relations between a husband and a menstruating wife were absolutely forbidden. “If you happen to do such a thing, they will shoot you in a firing squad. Both of you will be killed,” claimed Esther. Menstruating women were required to isolate themselves from all other persons, at which point they were not allowed to even cook or fetch water for themselves, but had to be attended to by other girls or women. This sometimes led to violence between women or competing wives, resentful of the extra work load that they were accorded during the time of their co-wife’s menses. Margaret detailed the difficulty she had on that account:

So for me, it was a very hard time for me because I would see my period two times in a month. So people thought I was dodging to cook, that I didn’t want to cook. And there was a lot of accusation that I was dodging to sleep with a man or maybe I was loving another man. [So] I was taken to be beaten by the escorts. I was beaten to the point that I could not recognize anything. I was almost dead.

78 Most certainly, a menstruating girl or woman would never approach a battlefield. “You don’t even go to fight. If you go, more people will be hurt,” said one woman during a group interview. (Conversely, pre-menstrual girls were regarded as sources of spiritual purity, made to sprinkle holy water on parades of soldiers leaving for battle.) Grace and two other girls suffered tremendous consequences when she forgot the rules of menstruation:

They used to tell us that while you are in your period, you’re not allowed to share a bed with your husband; neither are you allowed to cook. They give you everything for your basic necessities, like they give you a mat; they will give you your plate and your cup. You don’t use any other cup. You must use that one which was given to you. Even food. They’ll just come and give you food. You don’t need to go where they are preparing food. Simply because for protection…the purpose for that…is because once you come near that cooking, if they happen to go to the battle, they get attacked and most of them will be killed in the bush. It is an abomination, when you are in the bush, to do such a thing. There was a day when I forgot their rules during menstruation. Then I went and touched a certain basin. When they came to know that I did it, they thought I did it purposefully. The punishment they gave me was to kill two Langi girls. If I failed to kill the two girls, that meant the two girls must kill me. So I managed to beat them to death, the two girls. So since that time when I killed those two girls, cen can really disturb me. Time and again, that thing keeps on coming to disturb me.

Her voice shook as she narrated this event, and she wept quietly during the telling. The gruesome punishment meted out to her and two others - for touching a basin at the wrong time - further exposes a key facet of the collective experience of girls and women in the LRA: that their bodies and minds were the sites of not “only” sexual and physical violence, but of symbolic and spiritual violence as well. g.) Belief as Agency: Prayer and Emotive Survival

Before I was in the bush I was already saved. When I reached there, I found three girls who also were saved. So there were four of us who really prayed to God to protect us and release us from the problems we were in.

- Paska, 2 September 2009

79 In the bush, I can joke with you, you know I can play and we laugh. But you shouldn’t tell anyone your secrets. So I had very many friends in the bush, but I didn’t tell them my secrets.

- Esther, 23 September 2009

We used to pray as a group, but me, I used to pray a lot in secret. I believed God would set me free. And I was praying, but they would not know that. I meditated; I sometimes said the rosary. At one point I was caught saying a rosary. And the guy removed my rosary. He just scolded me and removed my rosary. “Why do you think you’re more spiritual than the others, praying at this time? Why are you praying? Are you stressed?” he asked.

- Scovia, 14 August 2009

What has emerged from these diverse narratives of captivity is that girls and women in the LRA had limited control over their own physical and sexual circumstances, treated as they were as chattel for the sake of reproductive labour and second-tier soldiering. Less perceptibly, however, is the fact that they were also subject to patterns of emotional and spiritual invasiveness. It would be a further injustice, however, to conclude that girls and women lacked agency entirely. The vast majority acted boldly and decisively by planning and carrying out their own escapes. Many of these very same women are survivors not only due to random chance, but also because they learned to steel themselves emotionally against subtle but persistent violations of selfhood (described below) by channelling their taboo emotions – fear, grief, hope and despair – into silent and concealed prayer. In this way, resistance and hope were enacted by women who put their faith in Rubanga/Lubanga (the Christian God) and refused to acquiesce to the spirits of the bush.

It has already been established that abductees were deliberately separated from those with whom they might share some affinity. An abductee knew that to cry or show fear was to incriminate him or herself as a potential mutineer or escapee. I often asked women if they had particular moments of fear: at distribution, when pregnant or in labour, in battle, etc. Most of the women responded as Florence did: “I didn’t fear my first pregnancy because I knew that if I was to tell people that I feared being pregnant, they would kill me. They thought that if you had that fear that you were pregnant, it could even drive you to escape away from the bush.” Abductees were thus policed emotionally

80 as well as physically, violated to the extent that their own feelings were suspect. In order to cope and avoid suspicion or attention in general, survivors learned not only to appear emotionally passive and independent of their peers, but to become so. As indicated in the previous section on Acholi cosmology, cen and other malevolent spirits are known to attack the fearful and the female; consequently, many girls and women expertly suppressed their fears to avoid sickness.

Beyond expressions of terror or grief, this social fact also discouraged abductees from outward displays of friendship and love, anticipating betrayal (should one friend report another to a superior for having unfavourable thoughts or behaviour) and the potential for sentimental alliances to be violently ruptured for the sake of group discipline.52 This is evidenced by Esther, quoted above, one of several women who described friendship in the bush in terms of superficial necessity rather than genuine affection. “I had eight cos [co-wives],” explained Kevin. “We were really friends because we wanted to keep our lives.” The phrase “we used to stay like sisters” was a common exhortation of the returned women, though further probing often revealed that positive relationships in the bush were borne primarily out of obedience; they had avoided quarrels and unfriendliness specifically because they dreaded punishment for misbehaviour. Two female commanders recalled that men were also obligated to behave “properly,” describing that should a man beat his wife too severely or quarrel with her too frequently, he would be disciplined by his superiors. Female commanders were tasked with advising “married” couples on the best ways to maintain harmony with each other.

This is not to say that girls and women never developed “true” or profound bonds, and it would be an overstatement to claim that no friendships or love were fostered in the bush. Several of the respondents spoke of missing or worrying about friends left behind in the bush. However, to cut oneself off from deep social connections was also a strategy to protect others from the weighty consequences of showing love for anything other than service to Kony and the LRA. For example, “If they see you too close to each other, they order that your friend should kill you or you should kill the friend,” said Ketty, “So I had

52 Although in pushed to extreme disciplinary ends in the LRA, it is noteworthy that this form of oppression is consistent with general Acholi taboos against outbursts of emotion. It is considered poor manners to express strong feelings in Acholi, where to cry in grief or shout in anger will embarrass those who witness such eruptions.

81 no serious friends in the bush.” It is after the bush, in fact, when these relationships between women gained deeper significance, which will be discussed in Chapter 4.

Having little opportunity to find expression for the turmoil in which they found themselves in, girls and women overwhelmingly turned to personal prayer to the Christian God. Although Acholi have incorporated Christianity into the indigenous cosmology (as explored above in Part I), the everyday religious practices of the bush were generally regarded as confusing or illogical to the Christian woman and girls in the LRA. Abductees who spent more time in the established and sedentary Sudanese bases than those who never left Uganda53 reported more occurrences of formal and mandatory worship services, describing a meld of prayers said and hymns sung from Catholic, Anglican, and Pentecostal liturgies, while Muslim prayers also made their way into the mix. While it is likely that some of the variety was due to whichever lapwony was leading worship at any given moment, the orders of Kony’s spirits – perhaps influenced by whether or not the Islamist regime of Khartoum was providing logistical support at the time – reigned supreme.

Many of the women attributed their survival and return from captivity to the power of their own prayers and the grace of God, as opposed to meaningless chance. Scovia, quoted above, remarked that she prayed secretly, to the dismay of her captors: “I believed God would set me free.” Paska, also quoted above, had confidence that her own faith (which existed in some form prior to her abduction) had derailed the power of the LRA’s spiritual actions, enabling her to silently subvert that aspect of Kony’s control. Nancy noted the consistency of the Christian God throughout her experiences:

By the time I was abducted, though I was young, I do believe that God was there. So whatever kind of problem I was passing through, I would always pray to God. I have been in the hardest times, and I would always pray to God. I would say, “God, this force they took against me, it is you who is the overall judge. You know the wrongs I have done, God. I don’t refuse anything you give to me. I accept the way you give it to me. You will be my judge.” So I’ve always been praying to God. I knew God while I was in the bush and I still stand firm in God.

53 Those abductees who remained in Uganda (or who were able to compare Uganda to Sudan) described the constant movement in Acholi as detrimental to all but quick prayers, whereas formal church services were practiced in Sudan.

82 It is important to distinguish these prayers from the battle-strategic prayers forced upon all LRA recruits. One group interview participant noted the difference:

Other days [sometimes], they would really force you: you should pray three times a day. That is not according to your will. And then there are other times when they want to go and do something bad, all of you are forced to pray. So that is prayer that is not from your heart. You are forced to go and pray.

Her friend added to this: “And then there is the time when you are in problems. You pray to the true God.” Scovia, like many, further articulated the spiritual confusions that many abductees faced in the bush:

They said they were praying to God. They know there is God, they know there is Jesus, they know there is Allah. They believed God and Allah are the same. But they had the small god that was Joseph Kony’s. So anything that Kony said, they would say it’s a spirit. It’s a spirit that’s spoken. And they obey because they believe it was the spirit talking to Joseph Kony. To them the spirit comes from God, but not to me. And they used that a lot to, to convince…to win over the children to themselves. Like: “Kony’s with a spirit, and if you try to escape you’ll find yourself rotating within the same place and you’ll not be able not escape. You’ll not manage to make it to wherever you want to go.” Because the spirit of Kony would be helping to prevent you from escaping from the group. And if you believe that, you’ll get scared. That if I escape, the spirit of Kony will find out. If you have the will, the feelings of escape from inside, if you get close to Kony he can detect that you have such a spirit. And they don’t question whatever he says. So by that - if you’re not from a religious background, in one way or the other you are tempted to believe that such things are true. To me, having come from a spiritual background helped me a lot. Because I knew that God cannot say, “Kill this,” that God cannot say “Don’t eat this and only this.”

That women express a wholehearted faith in God after their return from the bush should be interpreted with some reservation; the power of these assertions must be examined in view of both hindsight and the aggressive brand of evangelical Christianity that awaits them at home.54 When in one group interview a particularly vocal evangelical woman continuously attempted to veer the discussion towards the “evilness” of non- Christian beliefs, I asked if her convictions were held by all of her peers: of the ten

54 See Chapter 4 for an in-depth discussion on this matter.

83 women present, only one meekly and shamefacedly admitted that she did “not go to prayers.” Her embarrassment was palpable, indicating a strong social pressure to conform to rhetoric of unwavering and uncompromising faith. It is possible that some ex-LRA soldiers toe the line of Christianity in order to foster a sense of belonging at home, but also to mask the shame or regrets of their past in the bush – which may have included bowing before the wrong god.

Despite this caution and the fact that some women may not be forthcoming about the spiritual beliefs they held in the bush, social pressure alone cannot account for the sincerity of enthusiasm towards Rubanga/Lubanga’s graces. Woman after woman independently and self-assuredly told me that God was responsible for their survival and, in their terms, deliverance. “He answered and that is why we are back,” one explained. Another, Mercy, noted:

I used to pray, and up to now I still pray that God should protect me. I used to pray, “God help me. Keep me so that I go back home alive. So that I go back and look after my brother who my mother has left behind.” That is the prayer I used to pray. God listened to me and that is why I came back and why I am living with that brother whom my mother left behind.

It was by the employment of these beliefs in prayer and God that women in the LRA gained some comfort and sense of control over their restricted and difficult circumstances. h.) Multiple Paths to Freedom

Then there is a time when I grew very annoyed with him [my husband]. Then I told him that, “If you cannot shoot me dead, then maybe you pick up an axe and you kill me straight away because I feel I am tired of this life.” Then he felt very sorry and he said he would never touch me again, beating on me.

- Winnie, 11 September 2009

There was a battle that day. There was serious fighting, so we started running. So when we ran, we just came in the hands of the UPDF. And then when they asked us, “Who are you?” we held our hands up. And then they asked us, “Where are you people from?” and then we told them. That is how I came back. I raised my hands because I didn’t want to be killed.

84 - Jennifer, 5 October 2009

The paths that enabled women to flee from the LRA took three primary forms. First, and most common, women used the skills and knowledge they had acquired from the bush to mastermind and carry out their own escapes, often with young children or infants in tow. For example, they made use of opportunities to “disappear” when separated from others during battle, or boldly and deliberately orchestrated escape when their situations became unbearable.55 Second, women were either captured or rescued by the UPDF during times of active warfare or troop movements. The distinction between being “captured” as a rebel perpetrator or “rescued” as a victim of the LRA was largely arbitrary and dependent upon the situation in which the girls or women were discovered. Third and least common, women were freely released due to the urgings their bush husbands made to the High Command, or on the direct orders of Kony or his spirits.56 Few have ever returned to their home villages, instead living in the crowded IDP camps or outskirts of Gulu or Kitgum towns, where they are better able to access social and economic resources (meagre as they are).

Although boys and men are more likely to be abducted than girls and women (see Chapter 2), women tend to stay longer in the bush once they have been captured by the LRA. Those women who became wives, as with those men who climbed the ranks due to their willingness to obey and kill, were more likely to be living under heavy surveillance than those acting solely as foot soldiers, and as such were afforded with fewer opportunities to escape.57 One base in Sudan (Nisitu) was heavily guarded and designed solely to house “wives” and their children, away from front-line fighting. Secondly, because they were also frequently pregnant or had small children to carry, women were less mobile and therefore hindered from escaping. In spite of these odds, sixteen women

55 For some, death was the only feasible form of escape. It is unknown how many LRA abductees have attempted or committed suicide in captivity, though anecdotal evidence suggests that some people were deliberately reckless in battle or purposefully disobeyed orders in order to provoke their own deaths. See, for example, McDonnell and Akallo 2007. 56 This pattern corresponds to a recent large-scale statistical survey that found 83% of abducted girls and women planned their own escapes, 10% were rescued, and 7% were released (Annan et al. 2008: 44). 57 With regards to the intractability of obedience in the LRA (and the moral paradoxes of survival within) see Baines 2008: “Complicating Victims and Perpetrators in Northern Uganda: On Dominic Ongwen,” Justice and Reconciliation Project, Field Note 7.

85 (of the twenty-three who shared their extended narratives) planned and successfully completed their own escapes. Three more women were captured or rescued by the UPDF during battle, and the remainder (four) were purposefully released by either their bush husbands or on Kony’s orders.

Winnie, quoted above, began challenging her husband out of sheer frustration and fatigue with life in the bush. However, having witnessed her best friend beaten to death after being caught trying to escape, her defiance did not ascend to the level of attempted escape. The fact that her husband felt remorse for beating her is significant because it shows that even in such dire circumstances, there were moments of compassion and care, if not love, between some bush spouses. Complicating the simple dichotomy of “victim” and “perpetrator,” several husbands – perpetrators of serial rape – worried about the safety of their pregnant wives, insisting they be able to leave the LRA to give birth in the relative safety of their family’s homes. Lucy recalled the intervention of her husband:

When I was pregnant, he kept asking me if I could remember where I was abducted from. Then I told him I knew…I told him I knew the area and he took me up to that place. Then he said, “Now, if I leave you here and you go home, is there anyone here to help you with your pregnancy?” I said, “There is no one because my mum and dad were killed by the rebels.” Later, he kept insisting that I go back, saying, “You should have this child from there.” So later he released me. He came and brought me back to home and the soldiers came to take me to the barracks.

Some women were released on the orders of the High Command or the demands of Kony’s spirits. Winnie described being discharged:

There was a time when there was serious fighting between the Government soldiers and the LRA…It was Kony who sent a report through his big rank people to release the women with children who are in the war. First of all the message was sent to Raska Lukwiya, then to Dominic Ongwen.58 So it was Dominic Ongwen who released us to some priest in Kitgum.

This testimony corroborates the story of Sylvia, one of several wives to a senior commander, who was freely released during peace negotiations in late 2004. The

58 Dominic Ongwen is one of the five LRA commanders indicted by the ICC, but is also the only one who was abducted as a child and grew up in the bush.

86 whereabouts of her eldest child, having been shot and captured during an UPDF ambush several months earlier, were unknown. She went on:

I think Kony saw how women were suffering. You have a kid on your back, you’ve got one in your hands, you have to carry your saucepans on your head, the others are in your hand – I think that is when he said, “Let these women go back home.” And then for us, our husbands refused, saying, “No, they’re not coming back.” But Kony had ordered that all mothers with two children or more should be released.

After heated disagreements between commanders, Sylvia was eventually released to Betty Bigombe59 with the blessing of her husband. She returned to Uganda where she found her son alive and in the hospital.

For those women active in battle and not granted release, the opportunity to escape came when they were either captured or rescued by the UPDF during the confusion of firefights or ambushes. Jennifer (see above) stumbled upon UPDF soldiers who accepted her claim to be an abductee because she knew to raise her hands in order to appear non-threatening. The same was true for Ketty:

I remember before I was abducted, soldiers and policemen used to teach children that, “You children, when you’ve been abducted, this is what you do – you raise your hands up. Then they will never shoot you people.” So I had that thing in my mind. So when these people [the LRA and UPDF] started fighting, the leader of our group was telling us, “You come and we go, you come and we go! If you don’t come, we’re going to shoot you.” But for us, we laid down because the [UPDF] helicopter was coming around. So when we lay down, we decided to run away. So when we ran away, we raised our hands up and this is how we stopped those people [the UPDF] from shooting at us. And that is how we were rescued by the UPDF.

Still others who were not freely liberated or captured/rescued by the UPDF found their situations to be intolerable, particularly in the absence of the at least minimal social and physical protection afforded to them by their bush husbands. “I really mourned him because he was the only one who was there for me,” said Frances of her first husband,

59 Chief negotiator for the Government during the 1994 peace talks.

87 who died in battle. Kevin explained that it was her husband’s death that prompted her to first attempt escape. She narrated in detail:

When I heard my husband had died, I also tried to escape. I left the children. But walking for some time I realized that I was again in the place of the Kony [in rebel territory]. They caught me and they took me back.

Kevin and another woman caught trying to escape around the same time were sent for punishment. The other woman was beaten to death, while Kevin was battered so severely on her buttocks that she could not sit for two years. This did not deter her from escaping, however:

Kony ordered that all mothers should be taken to a place called Nisitu. That is where now I carried my kids. Since my life was near the base where the top commanders were staying, I used hear how they used to say, “So-and-so has escaped and from there the person went to a mission place and he was able to be handed over to the UN.” So I kept that on my mind that, ‘Eh, if I am to escape and go to a mission, I’ll be able to go back home.’ That is when now I got the courage and I escaped.

Tempted by the prospect of the Catholic Mission garden, full of food, Kevin snuck away, this time with her three children aged two, six, and nine years old. Carrying two of the children at a time, she walked through one hundred kilometres of hostile territory until she reached the Mission at the border of Sudan and Uganda. She used skills acquired in captivity to communicate who she was and what she needed:

By that time, because I had been in Sudan, I knew a bit of Arabic. I knew Arabic in that other times they could call us to serve big, big people that come there and people who used to speak Arabic. During that time, Kony used to collaborate with the Arabs. So they could come and then definitely there wasn’t any way to communicate. So you’re forced to learn the language. That is how I learned. So, I called one person and told the person in the Arabic language, “You call for me an Acholi from Pajok60 so that the person translates my what? My language.” So that is when they called a person and I was able to tell them that, “I escaped from these people; I want you people to help me.” It was good luck that I

60 Maps of southern Sudan are inconsistent and sparsely detailed; consequently I was unable to find any reliable information on Pajok. Based on the references the women made to it, however, I suspect that it is a border town or village with an indigenous Acholi population or at least a large proportion of Acholi migrants.

88 found very many Acholis who had also run, and they were in the camps there. So that was my luck. They welcomed me well and kept me there, then later handed me to the UN.

Kevin and her children were flown from Juba to Khartoum, where they were kept in a reception centre for six months – until a sufficient amount of returnees had been gathered to justify the cost of their repatriation by plane to Uganda. “Our work was just eating, time for bathing, eating, sitting, dancing, ah! Just sitting,” she reminisced.

Like many returnees – or FAPs (Formerly Abducted Persons), as they came to be known – Kevin and her children relied on the immediate aid provided by local and international NGOs once they arrived in the hub of Gulu Town, still the centre of the on- going war. Far from joyous homecomings, however, what awaited the women were a new series of challenges as daunting (if not so immediate in their ferocity) as those they had left behind them in the bush.

89 CHAPTER 4: Competing Evangelisms and the Luxury of Justice

My husband kept on disturbing people to look for me. That is why I decided to stay in Gulu. Those who have come back after me are saying that he has been killed. At first, I felt happy because I knew if he was to get me he was going to kill me. But later, when I looked at the child, I said, “Eh, if this man was here, at least he could help me with my child if he had returned.”

- Mercy, 5 October 2009

Mercy’s admission – that her vicious bush husband might be of more use to her alive than dead – speaks volumes of the lived experiences of women who have returned to civilian life after the LRA. In the context of ongoing displacement and social collapse, official and unofficial mechanisms in the DDR (Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration) process have done little to ease the social and economic vulnerabilities of most returned women, disadvantaged by their gender and the constant public reminders of their spiritual pollution: their children born of rape.

Far from experiencing homecoming as a simple and comforting rupture with past suffering, ex-LRA abductees have found themselves to be the victim-objects at the centre of local, national, and global debates on what justice is and how it must be realized. Largely included in these debates only inasmuch as they represent “bare life” humanity (Agamben 1998) and ideal victimhood (Bouris 2007), returned women are in fact real subjects that transcend a de-politicized victim/perpetrator dichotomy. They are quietly engaged in negotiating their own memories of war and pain through their relationships with each other, with their children, with the spirits of the dead, and with Lubanga.

The practical and moral challenges faced by returned women and their children are thus the subject of this chapter. Part I details the immediate experiences of women out of captivity, explaining where they go and how they are received. Particular attention is paid to the disconnect between their experiences and the intentions of official DDR processes and legal instruments – namely Uganda’s Amnesty Act and the Government’s Peace, Recovery, and Development Plan (PRPD). The danger and moral difficulty of bush husbands returning to “claim” their wives and children is discussed in relation to the

90 grinding poverty of single-motherhood and the unstable identities of fatherless (or father- absent) Acholi children. In addition, the spectre of cen constantly threatens to unbalance the tenuous relations between returnees and their spouses, families and neighbours.

Part II considers the global project of transitional justice in direct relation to cen and the returnee women’s turn to evangelical Christianity. This section approaches the intervention of the International Criminal Court in light of the rise of NGO activists, Christian missions, and the eclipse of the sovereign welfare state, describing the multiple ways in which justice is conceived of in Acholi today. Tensions between individual and collective rights, political and socio-economic rights, retribution and reconciliation are all at play. In refutation of Weber’s theory of disenchantment (1918), I argue that human rights justice in this case has become a form of secular evangelism, with its adherents and apostates alike accepting the alterity of Acholi indigeneity or heterogeneity only inasmuch as it can be moulded into an exoticized and friendly echo of contemporary Western values. This popularly acceptable “otherness” or uncritical embrace of “primal sovereignty” (Comaroff and Comaroff 1997) excludes the multiplicity of Acholi-shaped Christianities, uncomfortable reminders to outsiders in Uganda of the shame of European colonial history. Nevertheless, Acholi Christians are also deeply embedded in peace and reconciliation work with the war-affected population. Amidst the presence of these colonial contradictions and competing evangelisms (secular and religious), I address how returned women conceive of justice within the practice of memory work – in silences, storytelling, spirit possession, and religiosity.

I. HOMECOMING

The soldiers came to take me to the barracks in Kitgum. So from there in Kitgum they were supposed to bring me to GUSCO [reception centre], but the soldiers said, “We cannot send her to GUSCO until we find her people [family].” So I stayed in Kitgum for a while. [While I was there] I gave birth, but my child passed away after three months. He was a boy, and I had named him Bakenna – that mean’s “God Alone.” After his death, I went back to those people to see if they could bring me back to GUSCO so I could get some assistance. No one wanted to bring me. So I went to my mother’s sister’s house to stay; to my auntie’s.

91 My mother’s sister said, “Don’t worry, we are taking you to Gulu for work. I’ll take you.” But when we reached Gulu, she didn’t bother about me. Whatever I could ask my auntie, she would not even mind. Instead I became her housekeeper. I found life was hard and so I got a man. I conceived and had a child. Later, when I gave birth, the man said that he didn’t know I was from the bush. If he had known I was from the bush, he would not have taken me. So he left me with the child. Sometimes I think I should just go back to the bush and stay there because I’m now not managing life here. Life has become difficult.

– Lucy, 6 September 2009

Each of the women featured in this thesis returned to the Acholi sub-region before the August 2006 Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (CoH) put an end to the LRA’s presence in northern Uganda. Consequently, each entered into a situation of ongoing emergency, where family members were often missing or dead and threats of violence or re- abduction remained serious possibilities. Some, like Lucy, were first met and questioned by UPDF soldiers, often granted legal immunity under the 2000 Amnesty Act and given a small reintegration package – some seeds, maybe a few hundred thousand shillings,61 or a foam mattress. Others were brought directly to one of several “reception” centres in Gulu, Pader, or Kitgum towns, where they were counselled and temporarily cared for by social workers.62 Families were traced by social workers and army personnel, notified that they should pick up their children (and often, grandchildren). Some, again like Lucy, had no living parents, others were welcomed with open arms, and some were rejected immediately or after brief “honeymoon” periods of welcome. The majority did not report to a reception centre or barracks, instead searching for relatives who were still displaced in the camps or who had migrated to the slums of Acholi’s largest towns. Many resorted to taking up multiple sexual partners for some modicum of financial security, only to be abandoned later.

61 One Canadian dollar is equivalent to approximately 2,400 Uganda Shillings. 62 These centres include: Gulu Support the Children Organisation (GUSCO) in Gulu Town, World Vision Children of War Center in Gulu Town, Concerned Parents’ Association (CPA) in Kitgum Town, Kitgum Concerned Women’s Association (KICWA) in Kitgum Town, and Christian Counselling Fellowship (CCF) in Pader Town.

92 This section describes the immediate social, legal, and economic challenges faced by returned LRA women and their children. It is not a comprehensive or expert review of official or unofficial DDR mechanisms, nor a prescription for best practices, but is rather a further series of ethnographic observations that detail the stories of return narrated to me by the women who lived them. The clarity of codified laws and policy documents is contrasted with the messiness of real life, where reconciliation is easily undone and want is ever present. a.) The Blunt Arm of the Law: Women and DDR

If they rescue a child, they say, “We have rescued children.” If they kill a child they say, “We have killed a terrorist.”

- Okumu Ronald Reagan, MP, Uganda Rising, 2006

The DDR process for bush returnees was (and continues to be) composed of a series of ad hoc laws, government policies, and local program initiatives for the reception and reintegration of ex-combatants. The most significant of these consisted of a national blanket amnesty; makeshift disarmament and “de-briefing” (intelligence gathering) of returnees by the UPDF; locally-run reception centres for the interim housing, counselling, and skills-training of ex-LRA; and finally the Government of Uganda’s Peace, Recovery, and Development Plan (PRDP), a four-year policy document that emerged from agreements made at the Juba Peace Talks from 2006 to 2008. I refer to these as “blunt” instruments in that they tend to be applied (and in the case of the Amnesty Act, codified) in a socially and gender-blind fashion, disregarding the diverse histories of adults and children, foot soldiers and commanders, men and women. Their impact on the women featured herein appears to be inconsistent and negligible, for reasons of which I discuss below.

Having left the LRA, the first people that most of the women encountered were either UPDF soldiers, who kept them for hours or days in the “Child Protection Unit” (CPU) before releasing them to civilian-run reception centres, or local government officials who assisted them in finding their families or in taking them to reception centres. Hundreds of male returnees were not demobilized, instead being integrated into

93 the UPDF’s 105th and 106th Battalions – composed primarily of ex-LRA combatants who were sent back to fight the LRA in Sudan. Under-age combatants who wished to avoid the desperation of camp life and instead use their most employable skill – soldiering – were often recruited into Local Defence Units (LDUs), paramilitary groups spread across the Acholi sub-region (Allen and Schomerus 2006: 32).63

It is unknown how many of these UPDF or LDU recruits are women and girls, if any. Instead, those women who did process through CPUs or UPDF barracks were passed on to family or social workers. “We were taken to the barracks. From there we were kept in Patongo [Pader District] for two weeks, and then we were brought to World Vision in Gulu,” recalled Jennifer. Christine had a similar experience, also recounting few details about what happened at the UPDF barracks: “We stayed in the barracks for over two weeks. They didn’t disturb us. From there, they called our parents to come. We were put in the hands of our parents and the LC.” The locally-elected LCs (Local Counsellors) in each area were a common point of contact by which to find relatives or assistance; several women asked the first people they encountered on the road to take them to the LC’s office, believing them to be the most politically and socially connected members of each community. In one mass household survey of formerly abducted women, LC officials were listed as the most trustworthy members of their communities, far more than local police (Annan et al. 2008: 62). Although none of the women interviewed for this project reported immediate abuse at the hands of the UPDF, they were wary of the possibility, given that they could be received either as “terrorist” LRA or as victims – a risk articulated by Acholi Member of Parliament, Okumu Ronald Reagan, quoted above.

Indeed, after years of intense and sustained lobbying by Acholi elders, civil society, and religious leaders, in 2000 the Government of Uganda acquiesced and implemented a blanket amnesty law that enabled any Ugandan over the age of twelve, having take up arms against the Government (or having been abducted by a rebel force for at least four months), to renounce rebellion in order to receive official pardon and immunity from prosecution (Republic of Uganda 2000). While the intent of the law was to encourage the defection of LRA fighters and to entice the escape of abducted children

63 Depending on the sub-region or district, these local militias are also called “Amuka” or “Arrow Boys” elsewhere in northern Uganda and southern Sudan.

94 and youth (using, for example, radio broadcasts made from Gulu and transmitted far afield),64 the war-affected populace hoped the blanket amnesty might relieve their suffering and encourage an end to hostilities. After the ICC warrants were unsealed in 2005, the Act was amended to exclude the High Command of the LRA (Republic of Uganda 2006). However, this did not occur before several alleged senior architects of the LRA’s atrocities were captured by the UPDF and granted amnesty (Hopwood et al. 2008: 6).

Although the Amnesty Act was a triumphant success for the parents of abducted children and Acholi elders and religious leaders who were promoting forgiveness, it also had the effect of giving the Government of Uganda both the moral and strategic high ground. While it kept abductees from being prosecuted, by definition it forgave victims who had not been protected from forced recruitment. This did not go unnoticed, however, with one international observation team remarking that “80 per cent of the so-called rebels and ‘terrorists’ are abducted children whom the UPDF were under legal, political, constitutional, and moral duty to protect against the LRA in the first place” (Human Rights & Peace Centre et al. 2003: 113). The Act was said to have infuriated the LRA’s High Command, which regarded it not only as a potential blow against its troop numbers, but as an infantilizing insult to its political legitimacy (Finnström 2010: 149). Secondly, by controlling the legal and practical terms of disarmament and reintegration, the Government ensured that it could keep tabs on returnees of interest – commanders with valuable inside knowledge. It became politically expedient to grant ex-LRA commanders protection, generous allowances and comparable rank within the UPDF, in exchange for military intelligence. In at least one case, a pardoned LRA brigadier continued to live in town with his abducted teenage “wives” in free and open impunity (Hopwood et al. 2008: 7-8).

64 Dwog Paco, or “You Come Back Home,” was a hugely successful program on Gulu’s Radio Mega FM that featured the testimonies of newly-returned LRA soldiers, affirming that they had not been killed or jailed upon return to civilian life (in contrast to the propaganda spread by the High Command of the LRA, which stated that soldiers had nowhere safe to be outside of the LRA). The show was also used as a tracing tool to reunite families. While not all abductees in the bush had access to radio, enough did for the message to be transmitted into the bush (Hovil and Lomo 2005: 10).

95 Amnesty could be granted to LRA commanders captured by the UPDF and escaped children alike, though the package a reporter65 then received was entirely dependent upon where and when the Amnesty Certificate was granted (Allen and Schomerus 2006: 11). However, less than one-third of formerly abducted youth applied for an Amnesty Certificate or a reintegration package, and evidence suggests that the process is poorly understood by returned women, who either do not know how to receive amnesty or erroneously believe themselves to be ineligible (Annan et al. 2008: 73-74). For those who have reported to representatives of the Amnesty Commission, not all have received the standard reinsertion packages (usually consisting of basic household items, agricultural tools, seeds, and a lump sum cash payment), though the material benefits of the process are thought to be the main impetus for returnees to report, rather than desire for amnesty itself (Allen and Schomerus 2006: 38). Only one of the women interviewed for this thesis volunteered the statement that she had received an Amnesty Certificate, suggesting that its importance was either not understood or was considered largely irrelevant to their experience of return. Their bush-born children (discussed further below) inhabit a space of legal and social liminality, a conundrum unaccounted for in the Amnesty Reintegration Programme (ARP).

More salient to the experiences of the women were the brief stays that most of them had at reception centres in the two major towns of Acholi: Gulu and Kitgum. Although it is estimated that only a third of all abducted women return through a formal reception centre, this probability increases exponentially with the length of abduction time (Annan et al. 2008: 37). Consequently, most of the women I interviewed (who spent an average of six-and-a-half years in captivity) went through a reception centre. Esther’s experience, at the World Vision Children of War Center in Gulu, was typical:

While I was still at World Vision, there they were giving us guidance and counselling. Like they tell us to forget about the past; we have to see our future. We should not mind for those who point or speak bad things against us. We should always be happy to people. Then also they advised us to take good care of the children with whom we came back from the bush because it was not our own making, but God knows why things happen like that. So apart from that one, also we were given a tailoring course.

65 In the context of The Amnesty Act (2000) a “reporter” refers to any individual who pursues amnesty under the auspices of the Amnesty Commission.

96

Staying at World Vision or GUSCO from mere days to upwards of six months, the women described being provided with basic medical services, food, counselling, and usually a tailoring course. However, it is important to note what “counselling” means here. In Sandra’s words:

I stayed in GUSCO and life became easy because anything we asked for they could give us. I stayed for two days there and then I started saying, “Ah, I want to come back home to go and meet my parents.” They told me I could not leave GUSCO because I had not taken long in the Centre and I still had that heart of attacking, that heart of the bush, so I should stay in GUSCO so that I could be counselled.

When the term was elaborated by the women, it could more accurately be described as “advice,” “suggestions for proper behaviour,” or, in many cases, “Christian evangelizing.” Allen and Schomerus noted this trend as well, and in their review of northern Uganda’s reception centres found that the phrase “psychosocial support” is used by most aid agencies in the North, regardless of actual capacity to deliver psychotherapeutic counselling (2006: 50). Consequently, those women who did go through a reception process described the counselling in simple terms of behavioural instruction and, particularly in the case of World Vision, the suggestion that the women and their children should become born-again Christians. Jennifer noted:

They were just educating us. Counselling. They used to tell us that, “Since you people, you’ve come back home, there’s nothing bad that’s going to happen to you. You should live the life these people here are living. No one is going to kill you.” In World Vision, most people are saved. So we used to pray the way they used to pray. They are born-again. So I became born-again. I found life here is easier than the life I went through.

As was detailed in Chapter 3, it is important to temper statements like Jennifer’s with the knowledge that belief and acceptance of the supernatural – Christian, indigenous, and “hybrid” or syncretic– should not be taken at face value. Rather, it should be understood within the social system of ongoing war and existential uncertainty, whereby beliefs and their practical applications are especially fluid and amenable to change and manipulation. How women have negotiated these beliefs within the challenges of return is discussed further below.

97 Given that almost every abducted child and youth had her education interrupted by the war, having returned with dependents offered an even more stressful financial situation than for those who returned alone. Of the research sample, only two women returned without children, and many women found themselves responsible for the children of co-wives (orphaned or separated from their mothers in the bush) or of younger brothers and sisters in the camps. Florence explained the sacrifices she had to make for the good of her brothers and sisters:

When my brothers and sisters heard that I had come back, they came to check on me in GUSCO. They had come with some things that our uncle sent. He said: “You go, if you find she is there, then this food will help you.” I found out that my mother and father had already died. My mum was killed by the LRA, but I don’t know what killed my father. So after they told me how they were living at home with our uncle, with no education and no proper feeding, I decided to sell the things they came with. When I sold them, I decided to go and rent a house in Pece [a neighbourhood of Gulu Town]. And then from there that is when I started living with them and I took them back to school. And I could no longer now continue staying in GUSCO. GUSCO wanted me to attend a tailoring course, but due to the problems I had at home, I had to look for food for my young ones. So I could not attend that course. I haven’t gone to school since I was abducted in P3.

The small amount of material and financial assistance granted to women during the reception stay additionally burdened them with the expectation that they would provide for relatives, inasmuch as the general population was also needy. Consequently, reinsertion packages sometimes led to stigma or feelings of resentment against returnees. Nevertheless, reception centres attempted to provide skills-training courses to those residents who could stay long enough to participate in such schemes, with women and girls typically being taught tailoring and boys and men being taught bricklaying and carpentry. These courses, though well intentioned to help empower ex-LRA, served to flood the market with very limited skill sets. I often visited women in their homes and noticed sewing machines gathering dust underneath beds – unable to find work as seamstresses, women were understandably frustrated by their inability to find employment. This finding is in line with two separate labour market analyses conducted in the Acholi sub-region, which determined that vocational training for formerly abducted persons has largely caused market saturation and unmet expectations (Annan et al. 2006: 34, Bean and McKibben 2009: 7-8). In addition, because ex-LRA women are generally

98 regarded as poor candidates for marriage (discussed further below) and traditionally unable to inherit land, they are doubly prevented from accessing sources of income.

While the Amnesty Act ultimately lacks provisions to recognize social stratification in the LRA and amongst returnees (let alone inequalities in gender and rank), the agreements resultant from the six agenda items of the Juba Peace Talks are notable for specifically addressing the challenges faced by LRA women and their children - all within the UN’s technocratic language of gender mainstreaming and child protection.66 This is significant given that DDR provisions negotiated during peace talks have historically overlooked the complex and multifaceted roles that women and girls play in armed forces, usually excluding them from eligibility through legal or practical means or failing to address the unique challenges faced by boys, girls, men, and women. It is often erroneously assumed that females do not engage in combat, that they are camp followers or prostitutes for “real” soldiers, or that their roles are marginal or negligible in the grand scheme of the transition to peace. These oversights have been documented in conflict zones worldwide (Honwana 2006: 76, McKay and Mazurana 2004: 15).

Specifically, the Agreement on Accountability and Reconciliation (Agenda Item Three) and the Agreement on Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (Agenda Item Five) are of particular relevance in addressing the needs of girls and women in the LRA. The Agreement on Accountability and Reconciliation, signed by all parties, states:

11. WOMEN AND GIRLS In the implementation of this Agreement it is agreed to: (i) Recognise and address the special needs of women and girls.

66 Of particular importance here is Uganda’s attempt to respond to UNICEF’s “Cape Town Principles and Best Practices on the Prevention of Recruitment of Children into the Armed Forces and on Demobilization and Social reintegration of Child Soldiers in Africa” (“the Cape Town Principles,” 1997) and their 2007 revision, “Principles and Guidelines on Children Associated with Armed Forces or Armed Groups” (“the Paris Principles”); as well as United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1325 (Women, Peace and Security, 2000), 1612 (Children in Armed Conflict, 2005), and 1820 (Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict). However, SCR 1820 explicitly excludes crimes of sexual violence from amnesty provisions (operative paragraph 4), which therefore contradicts the Amnesty Act 2000. SCR 1325 and 1820 are complementary to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which states that sexual and gender-based (SGBV) violence can independently constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide (as opposed to considering SGBV “collateral damage” in war).

99 (ii) Ensure that the experiences, views and concerns of women and girls are recognised and taken into account. (iii) Protect the dignity, privacy and security of women and girls. (iv) Encourage and facilitate the participation of women and girls in the processes for implementing this agreement.

In addition to setting out provisions for reparations to be accorded to LRA victims (loosely defined), the Agreement explicitly declares that each of its sub-sections is to be implemented within a framework of gender equality (Juba, June 2007). The Agreement on DDR goes further, stating that all government reintegration programs will give specific attention to the needs of young mothers and their children, with specific funding earmarked for educational and livelihood opportunities (operative clauses 2.8-2.9, Juba, February 2008). Operative clause 7.4 additionally states: “All former LRA members who wish to go to school, including vocational training schools, shall be assisted to do so.”

Widespread and sustained global involvement67 and international representation68 at the Juba Talks may help account for the comprehensiveness of the agenda item agreements, but it is also likely that the both the LRA and Government delegations were particularly motivated to implement UN resolutions and create a national legal and institutional framework complementary to the Rome Statute of the ICC in an attempt to convince the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor to withdraw or suspend the outstanding indictments. Despite the establishment of a War Crimes Division of the Ugandan High Court in May of 2008, the Office of the Chief Prosecutor has not suspended or rescinded the warrants for arrest. When Kony failed repeatedly to appear at a designated meeting point in Southern Sudan to give his signature to the Final Peace Agreement (FPA), he and his representatives cited the outstanding warrants and lack of clarity over the proposed role and jurisdiction of the War Crimes Division as the reason.

This does not, however, mean that the pre-FPA Agreements are moot. From the outset, the Juba talks were plagued with the accusation that the LRA delegation was not

67 Religious and traditional leaders, as well as NGO and CSO (civil society organization) delegates, representatives from supranational organizations (such as the UN) and human rights activists all lobbied the negotiating teams during the talks. 68 Vice President Riek Machar acted as the Chief Mediator (though he is also a Lieutenant General of the SPLA, a frequent adversary of the LRA); former President of Mozambique Joaquim Chissano acted as the Special Envoy of the United Nations Secretary General for LRA affected areas; and representatives from the governments of Canada, DR Congo, the European Union, Kenya, Norway, South Africa, Tanzania, all the United States each participated in the negotiations.

100 representative of the LRA leadership – Kony and his then-deputy, Vincent Otti, refused to enter Juba as long as the possibility existed that they would be arrested under the ICC warrants that had been issued for both of them. Consequently, the legitimacy of the LRA negotiating team was frequently called in to question, particularly as its members were primarily from the Acholi diaspora and non-resident in the region. When rumours (later determined to be true) surfaced in late October 2007 that Otti has been executed under Kony’s orders, it was alleged that Kony had considered his deputy’s enthusiastic commitment to the Peace Talks to be mutinous (The New Vision 2007: n.p.). While the negotiations were put in jeopardy following independent confirmation that Otti was dead and Kony would not emerge to sign the FPA, Chief Mediator Riek Machar noted in his June 2008 report:

The mediation believes that the agreements reached in Juba are all legally valid: they are not provisional instruments. They require no further negotiations. All were signed or initialled by the parties. Although some of the agreements will await signature and the LRA compliance to be implemented, there is no legal bar to implementing the other aspects of the agreements, with necessary modifications (2008: 8).

The Government of Uganda, therefore, was urged to act on the agreements despite the fact that no mass influx of LRA combatants would need to undergo immediate DDR.

The Peace, Recovery and Development Plan for Northern Uganda, published (perhaps prematurely) by the Government in September 2007, was Uganda’s flagship policy document in response to the Juba negotiations and the permanent ceasefire in the North. In light of the key role of NGOs in the Acholi sub-region over the last two decades, it is significant that the first of four strategic objectives outlined in the PRDP is the consolidation of state authority in the North (2007: vii), declaring that the Government is responsible for protecting and enabling the return of displaced persons (section 3.3.2. vi.). Promising to maintain a focus on gender, human rights, and other hot- button issues throughout each of its discreet interventions (2007: 32), the PRDP nevertheless fails to incorporate the substantive agreements of Juba. Its fourth and last strategic objective, "Peace Building and Reconciliation," was not amended after the signing of the fifth agenda item agreement (DDR) of the peace negotiations, and remains silent on the issue of young mothers and their children in particular. DDR is once again

101 based entirely within the ARP, under the auspices of the Amnesty Commission (2007: 100). With a budget of US$100 million for the years 2007 to 2010, it pledges to grant education bursaries to 20% of amnesty reporters and skills training bursaries for another 50% of reporters (ibid: 102). Recalling that only a third of all eligible females have applied for amnesty (Annan et al. 2008: 73) and that no national reintegration programming exists outside of the ARP, to the women returned from LRA captivity the effect is as if the Juba talks never happened. b.) Mony Pe Wat: Navigating Social Life

The Acholi saying, “mony pe wat” means “women are strangers.” The words refer to the status (or non-status) of women amongst their affinal kin: upon marriage, a woman ceases to be part of her own clan or family, yet she is not fully accepted into her husband’s family until she has borne him many children, submitted to him and his mother on all things, and laboured at the homestead for years. Only then has she earned the respect of her husband and family, and will be counted among the familiar.

In spite of this painful reality, marriage is the primary marker of social and economic security for an Acholi woman. Unable to inherit land from her own family, she largely depends on the aid of her husband’s family and his access to income for her survival. Having “bought” a wife’s services with cash, land, and livestock, a husband and his family are thus invested in an economic and reproductive arrangement. Children are considered the property and responsibility of their father and his clan, with their mother nurturing them and their father ideally providing the funds for school fees and other common expenses. If a wife fails to produce children, she will be unceremoniously returned home. This is not to say that women never work outside the home or that no Acholi women can be successful without marriage, but patriarchy is the dominant state of affairs and marriage the most salient institution.

The “marriages” that occur in the bush are overwhelmingly regarded as illegitimate unions by non-LRA Acholi (given that they are based on force or coercion, are not formalized by either Christian or secular rites, and do not involve the transfer of bride wealth from the husband’s family to the wife’s family). However perverted, the purpose and form of marriage in the LRA is nevertheless reminiscent of wider Acholi

102 norms. As Allen and Schomerus write, “…in taking young women as ‘wives’, the LRA has systematically manipulated and corrupted certain existing conventions and moral norms. This is a crucially important aspect of its power. The LRA is not something completely alien. Its atrocities are finely tuned” (2006: 24).

What emerges from this corruption is the worst of both worlds for ex-LRA women – regarded as second-tier beings both by virtue of their gender and their status as formerly abducted persons, without moral compromise they are denied the measures of security afforded to “properly” married women and are unable to meet the demands of Acholi womanhood. At the outset, it would seem that the annulment of bush unions would be welcomed by the “wives,” victims of grisly sexual, physical, and emotional abuse at the hands of their husbands. Indeed, the researchers of one prominent study of young ex-LRA mothers found that ninety seven percent of their sample had no interest in reuniting with their bush husbands (Anyeko et al. 2006: 2). According to Carlson and Mazurana, the threat of being tracked by returning husbands has led many women to seek lives in the relative anonymity of urban centres, away from family ties and social connections (2008: 28).

Yet without adequate physical and economic protection from either the state or NGOs, coupled with the popular belief that ex-LRA women are “damaged goods,” so to speak, many of the returned women have entered into temporary (and often abusive relationships) with those men who haphazardly offer even the most minute form of financial security. Frances, abducted at the age of nine and a wife since the age of thirteen, had no one to greet her at the reception centre in Gulu. Having spent sixteen of her twenty-five years in the LRA, she had a limited set of skills, no known living relatives, and three children in tow. “So,” she said, “I got another man and had another baby boy.” The relationship did not last long, however, and in a move that became disappointingly familiar to other ex-LRA women, Frances’ new husband abandoned her once the child was born:

But the father separated from me, saying I have come back from the bush, I have cen with me, so he cannot stay with me, and then I even have children and he cannot keep those children who are from the bush. So we separated. He used to say that I come from the bush and if I don’t kill myself then I could kill him. So

103 we could really fight. So we had to involve the police and they are the ones who separated us.

Betty reported the same experience after settling with a new man: “he used to abuse me and say that people like me have bad spirits,” she recounted. Despite the precariousness of her situation, Betty left him: “And so I am alone because I cannot continue with that kind of life.”

Notwithstanding the aforementioned abhorrence with which ex-LRA women regard their bush husbands, a few women nevertheless agree to less-than-ideal partnerships with them. When I first met a woman named Sylvia and asked her to tell me about life since she was released from the LRA, I discovered that she was living with her bush husband, an infamous senior commander. She had this to say:

I really wanted to go back home, but I looked and said, “Where am I going with all these children? Right now people are in the village. How will they welcome me with all these children?” That is why I decided to stay. But at first I had that bitter heart: “My husband mistreated me in the bush. Why should I stay with him?” But later, I thought of it and said, “My children have to go to a good school. In the village there is no good school.” That is why I decided to stay and in the end I also forgave my husband. Because if I went home, who would take care of the kids? Let my man pay the children in school. That is why I decided to stay.

Sylvia returned from captivity with four children (two her natural born, two the offspring of her deceased co-wife) and gave birth to a fifth shortly thereafter. While the family struggles to maintain its basic upkeep, Sylvia was adamant that she not be regarded as a passive victim of her husband: “My life in the bush with my husband…my husband never did any wrong thing to me. But my co, my co really mistreated me. At one time she even pointed at me with a gun and wanted to kill me.” Her statement speaks to an uncomfortable truth: that the emotional alliances made by LRA women (in the bush or at home) are rooted in a certain moral calculus; in some respects their resiliency is owed to a reluctant but practical assent to injustice.

Without their families having negotiated bride price and blessing their bush unions, the status of returnees’ marriages is precarious and the social position of their children in even more doubt. An Acholi child born out of wedlock is generally considered part of his mother’s clan. Yet the ambiguity of bush marriages, combined with

104 the fear and suspicion with which a child born in the LRA is regarded, means that the familial division of responsibility to that child is uncertain. One author suggests that traditional Acholi leaders encourage returned male LRA fighters to pay fines to their “wives” families (most appropriately in the form of herds of cattle or goats) and continue their relationships (Apio 2007: 105). While at first glance I regarded this proposal to be an abhorrent and potentially cruel response to the marriage question, a further examination of how ex-LRA women describe their own socio-economic positions (exemplified in the first quote of this chapter) leads me to begrudgingly accept its raw logic. Betty complained that her bush husband’s family members were not meeting their socially mandated duties: “He [my husband] died in battle and there’s nothing I could do. But the one thing I feel bad about is that I know where his place is here in Gulu, but they are not concerned – they are not even supporting the children.” For similar reasons, Esther also consented to officially marry her LRA husband:

This man went up to my father’s home. He talked to my parents and asked my parents to allow me to come back with him. Because even though I did not say, “I love you,” it was like that: I had two children. And we feel we should take care of the children together. So my parents asked him that if he’s planning to take their daughter, if he can take good care of their daughter and the children, it’s fine, there is nothing that can stop them from staying together. That is how we managed to come back together.

“It was like that,” she said. Her ambivalence towards her husband was overruled by her sense of duty to her children, concerned with their economic well-being as well as their identity.

The problem of identity is particularly troubling for those who were born in or have spent a significant portion of their lives in the bush. It is unknown how many children have been born as the result of rape and forced marriage within the LRA. However, they are certain to number in the thousands, given the number of forced marriages that have occurred. Although not the norm, there have additionally been cases of children who have escaped the LRA, but could no longer remember their own names, those of their parents or of their clans – both indispensable features of “traditional” Acholi identities. GUSCO, for example, received unaccompanied children who did not know who their families were, their parents were either dead or missing (Apio 2007:

105 104). Frances noted: “my Mum gave birth to me while she was in school. She didn’t tell anyone where her father came from, so I don’t know my clan. I don’t know where I come from.” This loss of identity is common to the members of her generation in Acholi – not just those who have spent significant time in the bush. The disruption of war to social life has created ruptures in all social structures.

In addition to the physical and psychological challenges experienced by children born in captivity (inadequate pre and post-natal nutrition, war wounds, no access to basic immunizations, etc.), they are susceptible to rejection from their mothers’ families and communities (ibid: 96). Amongst the women interviewed for this thesis, however, few claimed that their children were outright rejected by family members or neighbours, and many in fact described warm welcomes. Even so, the acceptance and rejection of LRA returnees and their children should be thought of more of as a process than an event – and the process, as always, reveals complications. “When I first came back, I was warmly welcomed home,” remembered Winnie. “But I had other little sisters who were at home. This [one] sister of mine proved to be very stubborn [bad or mischievous].” Winnie continued:

She would take all sorts of gossip to my mum. I wouldn’t do anything bad, but they paid me back bitterly. They would sometimes abuse me. That, “Why did you come back with those children to disturb us? The children are really giving us problems” Feeding was a very big problem to us. They said I should have died with the children in the bush rather than coming out to disturb them. So those are the kinds of bad things I started to see immediately when I came back. Even mere eating; they never wanted the children to eat. So no one was friendly to me… I left them. I decided to stay on my own with my children since they don’t want my children. So I’m on my own.

Winnie’s narrative contains a feature common to the family reception stories I was told: good intentions marred by competition for already stretched resources. According to the women who spoke with me, their children are the butt of jokes and taunts by others; those children who are in school complain to their mothers of being called “Kony’s son” or “Kony’s daughter,” “rebel,” “olum olum,”69 or other offensive monikers, particularly ones that accuse the children of harbouring cen and infecting other children with madness. As this new generation of war-born children grows up, it will be particularly interesting to

69 This term translates to “bush bush” and is a derogatory term for LRA abductees.

106 see how issues of identity and belonging, as well as practical issues of inheritance and entitlement, play out where they are concerned.

For the mothers, name-calling is only part of the stigma that they endure. Several base-line surveys have been conducted in Acholi to determine, amongst other conflict- related subject matters, the general population’s attitude towards ex-combatants.70 The Survey for War-Affected Youth, for example, has produced several flagship reports that have done well to dispel assumptions and myths about LRA combatants. The Survey accomplished the monumental task of quantifying abduction rates, lengths of abduction, determining the sex of those abducted, age, etc. By producing hard data, its researchers have countered the common assumption that all LRA abductees are victims of traumatic violence, psychologically ruined and irreparably shunned upon return. They have cautioned research colleagues and policy-makers to avoid placing undue focus on the formerly abducted at the expense of the experiences and needs of the general Acholi populace, warning that an unwarranted focus on child soldiering can have the unintended effect of increasing stigma against survivors (Annan et al. 2008: 87). Nevertheless, according to the Survey, social stigma against returnees in general has decreased significantly over the last several years (ibid: 55), while Bean and McKibben claim that discrimination towards former abductees is overestimated and largely imagined (2009: 10).71 Yet the women who spent the longest time in the bush – those forced into marriage and motherhood – are the most likely to experience difficulty reintegrating. Their narratives paint a more complicated picture.

When Kevin first returned to Acholi, she did not encounter any significant discrimination from those around her: “I was welcomed well with the children. The family members welcomed us well,” she said. “But I don’t know deep in their hearts [they welcomed us],” she cautioned, “Because there was that saying that, “People in the bush have made us suffer.”…Then other people from outside [the LRA] keep on pinpointing us: “Eh, look at her, she’s from the bush! What what [etcetera].”” Florence had a similar assessment of her own situation:

70 See, for example: Annan et al. 2006, Baines et al. 2007, Pham et al. 2007b, UNHCHR 2007. 71 The reason for the discrepancy between my own observations of stigma and these other conclusions that claim discrimination has abated is not immediately obvious, but is likely related to differences in methodology and scale.

107 I was welcomed well, but when people are not your true parents they can’t always appreciate whatever you do. For the first day they will welcome you, but the next day they will just look at you. So I was happily welcomed, but sometimes I was left to begin life on my own.

The affect permeating Kevin and Florence’s narratives is not easily translatable into lucid evidence of stigma. What is the reasoning behind a dirty look? Sylvia mused on the reason why she infrequently returns to her home village, preferring instead to stay in town: “These days, even though I go, they don’t really welcome me well because all the people in the area whom I was abducted with were killed. So some people feel I should have also died like others who also died. So there is no good welcome, so I don’t frequently go home.” Frances has never returned home, for fear of the same response:

Since I came back home, I haven’t gone back to our village. Because people in that area don’t look at me well. Most people who were abducted in that area died. But for me, I came back alive. And they’re saying, “Well, why did she come back alive and yet other people died?” And so I have never gone back home.

Some women described this state of affairs as a kind of segregation, wherein they live in relative peace in the towns, tacitly accepted by neighbours but aware of the fragility of their integration. Harriet was painfully reminded of this fragility when she sought the community’s help to recover her newborn baby, kidnapped one night by a stranger. Although the abductor’s motives were unclear, her neighbours were suspicious of why, after having showed no signs of pregnancy, she appeared one day with a newborn child. Even though Harriet lived on the other side of town and did not know the abductor, rumours spread like wildfire and she soon discovered the whereabouts of the baby:

It was a very hard time for me. Even before I found where the baby was, I reported the case to the LCIII [government official] of this area…The LCIII immediately sent some UPDF soldiers in a pickup to try and find the baby. They were abusing me in very many languages; that I was from the bush, maybe I was mentally ill. Maybe I had been killing people in the bush, maybe demons possessed me and I strangled the baby myself and threw it in a pit latrine myself. They were making a lot of nonsense and abuse on me. All sorts of words were said to me.

To accuse Harriet of being possessed by demons was to lump her in the unstable category also inhabited by haunting, or cen. It took many months of legal wrangling to get her child back, as the police and soldiers considered her to be de facto untrustworthy.

108 Although the baby is now in her custody, he no longer knows how to breastfeed and she cannot afford formula. The survival of her baby is uncertain.

For Harriet, the support of other ex-LRA women has been invaluable, particularly the friendship of co-wives. The relationships women and girls had with one another in the bush – guarded and perfunctory – are now arguably of such importance that they replace what once might have been stable family and clan relationships, largely absent after the decades-long war. By pooling together their minimal resources into systems of revolving loans, women in peer support groups are fending for themselves, emotionally and materially. These groups are the sites of friendship, advocacy, social and economic reintegration, and cultural belonging (Hopwood and Osburn 2008: 3). When I met with Nancy, who was captive in the LRA for over a decade, she spoke of the troubles she had in raising her four children. When I asked where their father was, she explained that the father of the first three had also left the LRA and was living with another bush wife. She had no interest in reuniting with him or the co-wife, and so started a sexual relationship with another man. Once she was pregnant with her fourth child, however, he abandoned the family:

The father is there [alive, around]. He used to be a boda.72 And he has an elderly wife, also. But since this issue of saying we have cen, we are from the bush and whatever, this man has gone back to the village. He is digging [farming]. I have never seen him since he went back to the village to dig. He does not come to check up on us.

Nancy turned to her last living blood relative, her brother, and despite displaying no symptoms of haunting, she was once again accused of having cen:

The same Kony rebels killed my mum. And we were a family of only three. One of my brothers was shot dead during war also. Then this younger one who was home, you know, he is mentally disturbed. He is not okay. The one was shot dead, and this one remaining has women – he has two women, but I cannot go to stay with the women. I cannot settle with him because they keep on abusing me, using all sorts of words. They say I have cen. So I cannot stay with him and he cannot support me anymore.

72 A boda boda is a bicycle or motorcycle taxi driver.

109 Like many others, therefore, Nancy turned to a semi-formal peer support group composed of former co-wives and friends from the bush. Although they work with limited material resources, Nancy’s group is now her strength.

In fact, some ex-LRA peer support groups have admitted non-abductees as members, confirming the significance of peer support in the absence of a functioning welfare state. The social ruptures in Acholi are indeed not unique to the situations of the formerly abducted; the impact of so many years of violence and displacement has left Acholi youth as a whole vulnerable. The success of these groups has prompted some jealousy, however; on more than one occasion the groups with whom I was familiar had their goods or money stolen, while others lacked the minimum funds needed to deposit their money safely in a bank account. Frances, whose husband had accused her of having cen, was not impervious to theft despite the fact that she was able to make use of a bank:

After the police separated us, I was trained to make necklaces by Action Aid [NGO]. After the training, I was given Ush200,000 to begin a business. So later, when I raised my money up to Ush700,000, I opened up an account with Crane Bank. Then later my children fell sick. When they fell sick, I went to the hospital, but I forgot my PIN number for the bank at home. Then my husband got my card, went to the bank and withdrew all the money. So when he withdrew all of the money that is when I involved the police again. But I didn’t even recover the money the husband withdrew from the bank.

Still, others had good things to say about their relationships with family members and neighbours, and they often indicated that their problems were surmountable as long as they were able to rely on one another. Esther is one woman who is bolstered by the moral support of her family:

I was warmly welcomed home by my family members. Even up to now they really love me so, so much. And that is why I look strong. Because they would always support me, they would always defend me. There are some few neighbours around who will speak bad things against me. Because it’s like, when many people are abducted in the same area, others are killed, others don’t come back. And it is like they are jealous seeing me. Maybe my neighbour has someone who is not back. So they would speak bad things against me, but I’m always encouraged not to mind because that is how human beings are. I would even myself try to speak to them happily so that they change their attitude. So that is it. For me, I’m very okay and my guardians, my parents are very good. They’re responsible. They love me. There is nothing bad.

110 Betty, having been abandoned by her husband and rejected by her surviving relatives, cannot say the same as Esther: “I really feel bad because people are leaving me alone and it is a lonely life. But the good things [I have are] because of prayer.” Betty’s life, like the one she left behind in the bush, is once again in concert with the spiritual.

II. JUSTICE

So if we are to talk of life in the bush, there are a lot of bad things, and there are a lot of challenges we meet in the bush, to the extent you cannot even tell. There is really a lot.

- Esther, 23 September 2009

We were sitting on the packed dirt floor inside Esther’s darkened hut, just around a bend from the local UPDF detachment. In her arms she cradled her youngest boy, feverish and weak from cerebral malaria. Our conversation came in fits and starts, interrupted by the sounds of soldiers exercising on the adjacent path and, more uncomfortably, stretches of pregnant silence. Although she had told me the story of her abduction and eight years in the bush, she was quick to remind me of existence those things “you cannot even tell;” of the raw details of lived experience. In the search for justice in Acholi, those silences are not empty, but thick with meaning.

This section surveys attempts to achieve both the necessary and the impossible: justice. Although monumentally complex and often inchoate, several themes can be extracted from the disputes and discussions about how best to bring about “justice” in northern Uganda. While the most polarized champions of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and those of “traditional” Acholi justice mechanisms claim to better serve the interests of victims, the characteristics of victimhood are not clearly delineated by either. The justice debate, most bluntly portrayed as a contest between proponents of retributive international tribunals and those who favour locally led reconciliation projects, fosters a multitude of false dichotomies that serve to eclipse the practical political, economic, and spiritual demands of most Acholi people. For ex-LRA women in particular, the act of storytelling, the practice of evangelical Christianity, and the phenomenon of war-related spirit possession are in themselves idiomatic calls for justice.

111 a.) A Plurality of Enchantments

I don’t know what ICC is. I hear about it over the radio, but I don’t know anything concerning ICC.

- Sylvia, 1 September 2009

These days, there is no one what can direct you to do this or do that. People have rights. So people are following their rights – you do what you want. There is no one sticking on us that we must follow the traditional ways. There is no one. Because our elders – most of them, they have all passed away due to this war and poverty. A lot of things have happened.

- Concy, 2 September 2009

It is tempting to interpret the advent of the International Criminal Court as the culmination of centuries of human progress, or as Max Weber might opine, as the crowning institution of rational legal authority. In a 1918 lecture, Weber proposed that the world was becoming disenchanted; modernity meant the divorce of existential meaning from everyday action. He explained:

Hence, that principally there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play, but rather that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation. This means that the world is disenchanted. One need no longer have recourse to magical means in order to master or implore the spirits, as did the savage, for whom such mysterious powers existed. Technical means and calculations perform the service (Gerth and Wright Mills 1948: 139).

In the case of transitional justice in Uganda, the state of disenchantment would therefore preclude any provisions for the restoration of relationships with the spirit world, the redemptive motivations of Christian forgiveness, or the collective catharsis that might result from the punishment of a public or intimate enemy. Instead, the technocratic practitioners of secular law would dispassionately mete out proscribed sanctions against individual perpetrators of crime.

Everyday life, however, is not so detached from the tendrils of enchantment. The doctrine of human rights is in itself both charismatic and legalistic, based on principles of natural law and the sanctity of radical individualism. As Harri Englund has noted, human rights are both deeply political yet depoliticized, its advocates often acting with an

112 evangelical fervour that may silence alternative regimes of justice and belonging (2006: 31). The ICC is part of this paradigm and should thus be approached as a cultural system in itself, one that is not immune from mystical conceptions of justice. The idea that localized atrocities can be considered as crimes against humanity – humanity in all its entirety – requires a willingness to believe that there is a spiritual essence to humanity, and that these atrocities have psychically wounded it. More forcefully, ”the idea that any part of humanity is entitled to punish those guilty of “crimes against humanity” necessarily entails a rejection of others’ autonomy and self-determination,” suggests Adam Branch (2004: 25). This is not to discount the realpolitik of international law or to overstate the romantic leanings of those who practice it. Instead, I wish to point to what Kamari Clarke, in her recent study of the ICC, has also noted: that the Court has the performative power to show “justice as triumph” in a way that obscures the political realities of its investigations (2009: 105).

When President Museveni invited the Office of the Chief Prosecutor, headed by Luis Moreno-Ocampo, to investigate the situation in northern Uganda, critics charged that the President abused the principle of complementarity73 in order to manipulate the moral and political landscape of the war in his favour. Knowing the first case of the fledgling74 Court would not be successful without a strong local partner, argues Branch, Museveni cynically invited (and befriended) the Court to ensure any crimes alleged by officials in the Government or national army would not be seriously investigated. “In making decisions as to what cases to accept and whom to prosecute, the Office of the Prosecutor responds to genuine episodes of egregious violence,” he writes, “but must also respond to the ICC’s need to be effective. Thus, global and local politics enter ICC decisions mediated by the court’s [sic] institutional self-interest” (2007: 189). While

73 The principle of complementarity refers to Article 17 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998), which establishes that the Court has jurisdiction only in those situations where a state party is unable (due to inadequate infrastructure or legislation, for example) or unwilling to conduct its own investigations and prosecutions. Consequently, the ICC does not have universal jurisdiction and is commonly referred to as the “court of last resort.” 74 The ICC is significantly hampered by the refusal of the United States to become a member. (Although President Clinton signed the Rome Statute in 2000, it was not ratified. President George W. Bush later suspended the country’s signature.) Threatened by the possibility of its nationals being subject to prosecution outside its borders and protective of its Security Council veto (Schabas 2004), the United States has subsequently signed bilateral immunity agreements with over one hundred countries (The Coalition for the International Criminal Court 2006).

113 Moreno-Ocampo has repeatedly argued that the alleged crimes committed by government or UPDF officials do not meet the threshold of gravity required to render them admissible for investigation by the Court (Finnström 2010: 142), his assertions largely ring hollow to those in Acholi, whom I often heard complaining about “one-sided justice.”75 In a lively group discussion I held with formerly abducted youth of both sexes, one young man had this to say:

If they are taking Kony to the ICC, and his commanders, then Museveni should also be taken with his commanders. Because during the bush, they have got you, they have caught you in captivity. When you speak Acholi, they kill you. And those were the Government soldiers. They kill you. So, if they are taking Kony to ICC, Museveni should also be taken, plus some of his commanders who were here in the North.

His refrain was one that I encountered often in my discussions with not only ex- combatants, but with most northerners with little interest in the minutiae of international law. In the aftermath of a two decades-long war that bloodied the hands of Acholi youth and professional soldiers alike, the principle of “command responsibility” leaves much to be desired.

In the international discourse produced by ICC supporters, advocacy organizations and filmmakers, the Acholi populace has been reduced to a one- dimensional caricature of ideal the ideal victim – passive, innocent, singular, apolitical, wretched, and in need of saving.76 In defining the Acholi conflict as a humanitarian rather than a political crisis, “it is influential stakeholders like the media, international human rights organizations and the Ugandan government that have the upper hand in defining the discourse on meaning, while the LRA/M has become the moral category of evil” (Finnström 2010: 143). In the tradition of philosophers from Hannah Arendt to Giorgio

75 The issue of temporal jurisdiction further validates these criticisms. The ICC may only investigate and prosecute crimes75 alleged to have been committed after the date in which the Rome Statute became operational: 1 July 2002. Inasmuch as the bulk of the war and its grisly crimes (which were not exclusively perpetrated by the LRA) occurred well before that date, the Court’s intervention is regarded by many Acholi as “too little, too late.” 76 Although the politics of humanitarianism and representation are outside the scope of this thesis, appeals to worldwide “publics” (Niezen 2010: 1-66 inter alia) with regards to the war in Acholi have overwhelmingly focused on essentialized portrayals of displacement and child soldiering, transmitted through various forms of media. One advocacy group from the United States has been repeatedly charged with the commodification of Acholi children’s suffering under the guise of humanitarianism (see Victor 2008 and Okot Bitek 2009).

114 Agamben, the LRA abductee is a purely biological being, bare life zoe, restricted from the polis of civil adulthood and forever relegated to the category “child soldier,” while those LRA soldiers on the wrong side of the moral divide – its commanders – are assumed to lack basic traces of humanness.

In truth, there is no pure victim, and ex-LRA are regularly faced with the moral conundrum of being at once victims and perpetrators, the most famous of them being the ICC-indicted Dominic Ongwen, abducted at the age of ten and now a ruthless brigadier (Baines 2008). Nighty was beaten regularly by her co-wives, themselves victims of abduction, slavery, and rape, problematizing the assumption that there is a singular type of woman, sinless by the grace of her femininity and her youth. Sylvia, herself the wife of a senior commander, spoke of her resentment towards the most senior of all the wives (Kony’s):

Kony’s women didn’t want to come back because from there they were like bosses. We would cook for them; everything was just done for them. They just bring for you food, water for bathing, everything – you just order and they do it for you. So that is why they didn’t want to come back. That is the reason why some women of Kony’s, when they brought them here, they wanted to escape and go back to their husband because now doing their own work, they find it hard. They were used to that kind of life. You just order people, “Do for me this.” And then everything is done for you.

Unlike Ongwen, who is still at large, thousands of these liminal people have returned to their home communities, where they are forced to swallow their bitterness and survive together. While the most prominent perpetrators may garner the attention of international powerbrokers, the false victim/perpetrator dichotomy serves only to sow the seeds of further political violence at home, where an identity of victimhood can be used to justify further conflict (Bouris 2007).77

The immediate threat of violence has been a much more prominent concern for Acholi leaders, however, who have largely perceived the ICC indictments to be a staggering blow towards peace. Having spent years lobbying the national government for

77 See, for example, Mahmood Mamdani’s When Victims Become Killers (2001), which details the deep roots of political grievances that precipitated the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

115 a general amnesty and sending confidence-building delegations of religious, “cultural,”78 and political leaders into the bush for nearly two decades (painstaking and skilful work that mostly escaped the indifferent gaze of the international community), civil society leaders argued that the arrest warrants compromised their gains for the sake of retributive justice (Hovil and Lomo 2005; Hovil and Quinn 2005). Once the Amnesty Act was revised to exclude the indicted LRA commanders from its provisions, many stakeholders condemned the ICC as a neo-colonialist institution that privileges the Western tradition of codified law above all else, an accusation levelled against the Court outside Acholi as well Clarke 2009: 134).

In addition to being accused of arrogance, secrecy, and aloofness by both local and international commentators (see Branch 2007: 188; Finnström 2010: 137), the ICC has been challenged to convey its mission to a largely illiterate and war-weary populace. When I individually asked ex-LRA women to explain the mandate of the International Criminal Court in basic terms, their responses were pithy and dismissive, as demonstrated in Sylvia’s words at the beginning of this section. When pressed, their responses indicated fundamental understandings of the Court’s purpose and operations. Many respondents expressed fear that the Court will prosecute low-level commanders or even foot soldiers, while some erroneously believed the Court has the ability to carry out executions. Sylvia commented:

In future, if I told there is going to be any problem or it’s like a court, I don’t see reason as to why they should…other officers should be disturbed. These officers do not have any power. For them, they don’t have any ways of doing things. Kony just dictates on them. When he tells you do this, you must do it. And from there also, if you start thinking bad against him, before you’ve said it out loud, he’s already known. He would have known about it already. So all those things being done, it is not them doing it because they want it to be done, but they have been given pressure to do it. So there is no way you can blame other officers for the mistakes they have been making. They follow orders, and if you don’t obey the orders, they also kill you.

Her anxiety-laced denial speaks volumes to the Court’s failure to successfully engage with and earn the trust of communities in the Acholi sub-region.

78 Tellingly, both Acholi and outsiders alike used the terms “cultural leader” or “traditional leader” to identify ladit (elders), rwodi (chiefs), and mego (elderly women). The implication is that political and religious leaders are somehow a-cultural or more modern than their counterparts.

116 What, then, is to be done in the interest of justice? Even the fiercest supporters of the ICC are aware of its limitations, acknowledging that high-level prosecutions are but one piece of the transitional justice “toolkit.” Much has been written about implementing a justice system in northern Uganda that is more resonant with the cultural proclivities of the Acholi sub-region (see Pain 1997; Liu Institute for Global Issues et al. 2005; Baines 2010; Harlacher et al. 2006; Hovil and Lomo 2005; and Hovil and Quinn 2005). In keeping with the spirit of the Amnesty – ostensibly showcasing a unique African or Acholi capacity to forgive even the most grave of offences (Allen 2007: 153) – calls for “local” or “traditional” methods of justice and reconciliation have prompted a flurry of debate and research into just what those methods entail and how they can be adapted to the present situation. Leaders in Acholi have paid particular attention to the reconciliation process known as mato oput and to a repertoire of spiritual cleansing ceremonies, amongst them nyono tong gweno, moyo kum, ryemo cen and moyo piny.

Mato oput, which means “drinking the bitter root,” is a method of justice and dispute resolution traditionally employed by two clans in the event that one individual murdered or unintentionally killed a person from another Acholi clan. The goal of the process is to restore relations between the clans (rather than individuals) (Liu Institute for Global Issues et al. 2005: 30). The voluntary process, which can take years and even decades, involves a cooling-off period during which the clans cease contact, a subsequent period of shuttle diplomacy during which the truth is established and confessions are heard, material compensation between clans for the loss of the deceased, confession and the admission of guilt, and finally a ceremony and feast where clan representatives (rather than the perpetrator(s)) drink a brew of sheep blood and the bitter oput root, symbolizing the washing away of bitterness (ibid.).

As indicated in Chapter 2, persons who have been in the wilderness and return home are regarded as ritually unclean; the same can be said of any person who leaves home for a significant period of time (to go to war or to school, for example). The returning person may undergo a ritual called nyono tong gweno (“stepping on the egg”) during which he or she walks over a hen’s egg that has been placed on a branch of the slippery opobo tree. The egg symbolizes purity and thus the person is cleansed through the act (Liu Institute for Global Issues 2005: 26). Since the time of mass escapes and

117 returns of LRA soldiers during the battle chaos of Operation Iron Fist I and II (2002 and 2005, respectively), mass nyono tong gweno ceremonies, initiated by Ker Kwaro Acoli (the council of chiefs and elders), were organized in camps and towns in order to welcome people home and encourage the defections of others still in the bush (ibid: 27). In a similar vein, moyo kum and ryemo cen are ceremonies that aim to rid a person of bad spirits (or “to chase away cen”), while moyo piny attempts to cleanse an area of bad spirits (such as at the site of massacres).

The application of these processes and rituals to the context of the war is made difficult for several serious reasons. In a study that involved interviewing hundreds of elders, rwodi, mego, formerly abducted persons, displaced persons and other community members, the majority of respondents argued that the unprecedented scale of atrocities in the war has made the mato oput requirement of compensation unfeasible. Secondly, the LRA is still active, rendering the possibility of reconciliation moot. Thirdly, reconciliation cannot occur between clans if either party to a killing is anonymous, a situation very common in the present circumstance, and not all belligerents are Acholi (ibid: 67). In observing those processes that did occur during the study period, the researchers found that women were largely excluded from the process of mediation between the clans, though women did participate in the final ceremony as participants, observers, and officiators (64). Indeed, when I questioned a group of ex-LRA women about the presence of haunting spirits and the significance of traditional ceremonies, one group member spoke of the exclusion they felt:

Spirits are there and the Rwot is doing cleansings. They are appeasing the spirits with moyo piny and moyo cere.79 It’s not our age-mates. The age [of the person participating] matters. It’s the elderly people who participate in that. The young women are not taken. Elderly women – women who don’t produce [children] and women who don’t menstruate – are the people who do those kinds of things. And they’re selected from the royal clan. It’s not just anybody.

Nevertheless, many women still expressed a wish that mato oput and cleansing ceremonies occur, with most citing their desire for peace as their primary motivator. “I think reconciliation is a better way, so let Kony and Museveni also reconcile and mato

79 Moyo cere or tumu cere is the cleansing of/ offering of sacrifices to spirits of the dead who reside on hilltops.

118 oput,” said Paska, “Because if they don’t reconcile, what of us, the young kids? How will we stay? So those big people should first reconcile between themselves.”

The common theme of these processes is forgiveness and the restoration of social relationships instead of retribution, and indeed many elders and “big people,” as Paska described them, have stressed that forgiveness is an important part of Acholi culture (Liu Institute for Global Issues et al. 2005: 64). A 2002 assessment of the implementation and impact of the Amnesty Act, carried out by the Acholi Religious Leaders’ Peace Initiative (ARLPI), the Women’s Desk of Caritas Gulu, and the Justice and Peace Commission (JPC) of Gulu Archdiocese, was entitled “Seventy Times Seven.” The title takes its name from a passage in the Gospel of Matthew in which Jesus implores his disciples to forgive wrongdoers not seven times, “but seventy times seven” (ARLPI et al. 2002: 3). “Both our religious traditions and the Acholi culture of “Mato Oput” tell us that…we must move beyond retributive justice to restorative justice, in which victim and perpetrator are reconciled,” states the report (ibid: 25). While the women studied for this project often echoed this desire for forgiveness, that desire was by no means straightforward. Sylvia, who was quoted above discussing her trepidation towards retributive justice, also expressed resentment to the idea of unconditional reconciliation and to the idea that the unrepentant should be forgiven:

For me, I have no words for the LRA. I cannot even say, “Let them forgive them.” But the only way is let them to ask for forgiveness from those people to whom they have done wrong. And I cannot force anyone. Like now, if Otti80 has killed your relative, I cannot come to you and say, “Now, you forgive Otti.” So it’s that person that Otti has done wrong to who is the one to forgive Otti. Those ones who have had wrong done to them are the ones to forgive the LRA. Because they did wrong to them. Someone who has done wrong should face the law.

Sylvia’s opinion is unusually candid. A rhetoric of harmony and an oft-repeated policy of forgiveness has been entrenched into the discourse of justice in Acholi with such force that one prominent critic posits that “traditional” is little more than romantic fantasy, co- opted by Acholi elites to entrench their power and reassert patriarchal authority (Allen 2007: 159; 2006: 167).

80 “Otti” most likely refers to Vincent Otti, who had been accused of masterminding LRA atrocities before he was executed in 2007. However, this could also have been a reference to Otti Lagony, a commander executed by Kony in 1999.

119 The definition of “tradition” in Acholi is indeed problematic. That once flexible customs of social order have been made rigid through codification is well documented in colonial and post-colonial Africa, where the reification of laws and the very invention of traditions have served to legitimate elite power and silence political dissent (see Moore 1986 and Ranger 1992 for two prominent examples). Anthropologist Tim Allen has argued that the practices that make up “traditional” justice in Acholi are inconsistently understood or respected by the general populace, are often violent or humiliating, and are rarely (if ever) performed or wanted (2006: 133; 2007: 154). Consequently, he writes that the enthusiasm with which international NGOs and other advocates approach traditional justice overlooks politics and tensions between factions of elders and religious leaders (2007: 157) and is inherently racist – the push for “tradition” or “tribal” justice implies that the Acholi are primitive, not “advanced” or “developed” enough to deserve or understand the rule of law (2007: 163).81 Even more damningly, ethnographic evidence exists which points to traditional ceremonies that involved the torture or murder of individuals accused of wrongdoing, a far cry from the principles of restoration and forgiveness (2006: 167). Still other returnees are upset by the element of blood sacrifice (with livestock) and the ritual actions in the ceremonies because it reminds them of LRA rites forced upon them in the bush (Allen and Schomerus 2006: 18).

These are important observations and much-needed critiques of mato oput and other local justice practices. However, to report the absence or ignorance of traditional rituals, to challenge their authenticity through careful intellectual genealogy, and to debunk the enchantment of “forgiveness” – to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak – is also problematic. It is true that the British colonization of Uganda took complex, nuanced, and flexible systems of social order and either wiped them out or simplified them. Yet one of the most prominent casualties of war has been the transmission of even this knowledge between generations, a casualty often lamented by Acholi youth who often express the wish to “learn” their culture. Despite the problems of mato oput, the cathartic idea of sincere forgiveness seems to resonate with a significant number of those affected by the war, demonstrating that culture is an adaptable resource

81 This seems to be a contemporary echo of the colonial contradiction between primal sovereignty and radical individualism (see Comaroff and Comaroff 1997).

120 and that “tradition” is a reflection of present circumstances. The conflict between “local versus international justice” is indicative of the false dichotomies that pepper life in Acholi today - peace versus justice, impunity versus retribution, religion versus secularism, religion versus spirituality, victim versus perpetrator, local versus international, culture versus globalization. Instead, it is useful to acknowledge the complexities, as well as the contradictions, that emerge from the behaviour and narratives of everyday life.

When I asked Scovia if she thought traditional justice was useful, she answered simply: “To some it is. But to others, no.” While many young Acholi desire a cultural revival of sorts, other ex-LRA like Scovia seek a different kind of identity and a source of belonging outside of victimhood or ethnicity, and this is no more apparent than in the realm of justice. Rather than ascribing to an identity tied to Acholi tradition or one centred on nationality and the rule of law, person after person cited Christianity as their anchor of belonging. An ex-LRA woman named Stella was adamant that I understand: “To get rid of cen, you should just resort to prayer, and then you should leave whatever is cultural. You should forget about cultural beliefs,” she said. The tension between generations was also obvious when a young male ex-combatant told me that the “ways” of his ancestors offered little anymore, saying: “For me, I think our grandparents should be the first to refuse. So when they refuse, then us the young kids will also refuse. Refuse all their ways. You should not accept whatever they want you to do.” Yet another returnee saw no tension between Christianity and Acholi custom, asserting: We should use the mato oput method because it is even written in the Bible that you should not do harm to someone who hurts you. If he [Kony] agrees to come back, and we mato oput together, we can do it and peace will prevail.”

Just as many have assumed that to be “Acholi” is to have an essential quality, it has been assumed by observers of transitional justice in northern Uganda that Christianity is monolithic and ultimately harmful to the purity and resilience of Acholi culture, contrary to the best interests of a just society. For those who stress the psychological and social benefits of nyono tong gweno, for example, the fact that many born-again returnees decline to engage in the ceremony (believing that is satanic or evil) points to the failures of the reception process rather than the possibility that some refusals may be the result of

121 independent thought. To be clear, criticisms against inappropriate proselytising are well founded, with at least two independent research teams finding that some reception centres pressured newly returned abductees to become “saved” (Allen and Schomerus 2006: 18; Liu Institute for Global Issues et al. 2005: 43). Most appallingly, several formerly abducted persons were told given that “if they stepped on the egg they would be re- abducted” (ibid: 43). Acholi youth are raised display absolute obedience to their elders and this fact, combined with the psychological stress that many returnees did and do experience, have left Acholi youth particularly vulnerable to aggressive religious conversion without being well-equipped to think critically.

However, the claim that “information on cultural ceremonies provided at religiously-based reception centres is undermining and threatening to cultural beliefs” (ibid) suggests that “religion” is both singular and beyond the scope of authentic Acholi life. To judge “culture” as a narrow and irreproachable truth is to silence dissent, in this case expressed through a manifestation of Christianity that upsets quixotic understandings of Acholi-ness. This attitude was not something I observed being held solely by fellow foreigners in northern Uganda; I was often stuck by the chauvinistic way in which Ugandans spoke of themselves and of one another, displaying how deeply the language of colonialism has inscribed itself. To be Anglican or Catholic is to be modern and cosmopolitan, to live to deep in rural are is to be primitive and timeless. My own research into “the Other” was thrown back in my face when it was assumed by my Acholi friends in town that I would prefer to travel to the most “untouched” areas of the sub- region. During one large discussion group I moderated, held in a school for young ex- LRA, I asked the class to tell me about jogi. One young man prompted the whole class to erupt in laughter when he cheekily said to me: “For me, I think you cannot refuse the traditional ways of believing in jok. Because if we refuse, what are you going to study? Yeah, you came to study that!”

The young man’s mockery showed that belonging entails a form of performance. In the absence of a strong state presence in the region so disturbed by the conditions of displacement and violence, I suggest that many Acholi (and certainly the women who are the subject of this thesis) are turning to Pentecostalism as a new source of collective identity and citizenship. Reaching beyond the boundaries of nationality and ethnicity, this

122 form of Christianity acts as a vehicle of agency for war-troubled youth in particular, who face ontological insecurity on a daily basis. This is a “new” Christian fellowship, one not found in the colonial-era churches (Anglican and Roman Catholic) that dominate the justice debates in Acholi. A more useful approach to the role of Christianity in the justice and reconciliation process in Uganda, therefore, should first acknowledge the deep rift between evangelical churches and the established Catholic and Anglican denominations in Uganda. They have opposing stances towards “cultural” justice practices, with the former shunning reconciliation ceremonies (regarded as satanic) and the latter promoting them heavily.82 The distinction of denomination is thus problematic for both adherents and observers alike: upon meeting with one Anglican priest, for example, I was taken aback when he complained about “the Christians” and their opposition to mato oput. He said: “the Christians were very bitter because they were…they did not agree with us when we prayed together with the Muslims.”

Many ex-LRA abductees became Christians long before their time in the bush and others have become born-again of their own volition. When I asked a group of women if they believed prayer helped them to return from the bush, their response was in unison: “He answered and that is why we are back.” Indeed, several claimed that only lega (prayer) could be relied upon. “Lega, lega. Soldiers cannot manage. It’s only prayer,” said one, while her neighbour nodded her head and added: “It’s only prayer that made most of us return.” Another group interviewed yielded identical results, with the women laughing when I asked them if prayer helped them, as though the answer was obvious. One woman chuckled, “Without God, we wouldn’t be here. It was through our prayer to God that we made it back home.” Nighty recalled her experience:

My first day when I reached home, I did not yet enter in the home because when they saw me, they started moving and searching for those traditional things: looking for the eggs, looking for the spear, looking for what, so that I step on it before I enter in the home [things required for nyono tong gweno]. But what I told them is, “That is not the reason as to why I came back home. And that is not the purpose for me back home. It is not for the purpose that is why I am back home. You’d better remove it away. And if you want it to be there, then let me go back

82 The Acholi Religious Leaders’ Peace Initiative (ARLPI) has been at the forefront of peace and reconciliation lobbying based on the principles of the aforementioned local justice practices. The Anglican, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim faith groups all participate in its activities, while Pentecostal churches have refused membership.

123 to the bush.” Then I turned; I started moving back. I never wanted to step on it since these things, ever since my childhood, I never wanted to encourage it. To me I find it’s not fair. I don’t like it even. I don’t know why. I just find myself like that. I don’t like it. So they decided to remove those things, then they let me come.

Nighty was a Christian before her abduction and she did not pass through a reception centre, suggesting her rejection of “tradition” was not the result of having been manipulated by an unscrupulous social worker. To dismiss her convictions as inauthentic or morally repugnant would be to further exclude her, and women like her, from the search for justice in Acholi.

My intent here is neither to condemn nor promote the International Criminal Court, Pentecostalism, “mainstream” religion, mato oput or other justice practices in northern Uganda. Few observers would claim that either the ICC or reconciliation ceremonies are a panacea on their own. The point is rather to identify in which ways the varied approaches resonate with or alienate northern Ugandans, and in the case of ex- LRA women, how they exclude. What is common in each of these pursuits of justice are a strong sense of moral belief and a willingness to be enchanted by the hope they bring, no matter their failings. What can be seen in the justice debate is a particular notion of what it means to be cultural, what it means to be religious, and what it means to be modern.

That ex-LRA women have been reforming and re-inventing the parameters of their identity is seen most obviously in the context of post-war justice and reconciliation. Given that the combined effect of most of these debates is to exclude these women from the discussion – if not by design then by practice – shows that justice is a luxury can only be approached, but never fully attained. Alison des Forges, the late scholar of Rwanda, mused on the prospects for justice in that country, saying: “It is tempting to say that a genocide in and of itself doesn't make sense so any attempt to do justice for it isn't going to make sense either. The scale of this is so enormous that it is difficult to imagine a system which could in fact deliver justice” (Sharp 2007: n.p.). Those who search for justice in northern Uganda face a similar quandary.

124 b.) Polite Suffering: the Memories of Spirits

Inasmuch as politically recognized justice practices in northern Uganda often exclude ex- LRA women, it might follow that they are relegated to suffer and remember in silence, publicly toeing the line of the forgiveness narrative. In the charged social space that they inhabit, to be indignant is a moral luxury that they women cannot easily afford. The patterns of emotional and spiritual invasiveness that were ubiquitous in the LRA are mirrored in the cultural constraints imposed on the public and private memories of returnee women. Consequently, the war narratives of the women are replete with loud silences. My informants often reminded me that, despite their openness to my questions, there were some experiences of which they could not speak.

Silence, however, is not necessarily passive. The idea that unvoiced memories are psychologically ruinous is beginning to be challenged by several scholars of transitional justice, particularly as organized attempts to amass the narratives of war-affected women worldwide have largely failed. Kimberly Theidon, in comparing the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) with similar projects, has noted that frustrated TRC organizers complain, “women don’t speak,” especially about rape (2007: 456). Theidon argues instead that the silence of survivors of war-based sexual violence in Peru is active: in their refusal to speak of individual violations of their bodily integrity, they challenge how truth and memory are gendered in the TRC process. Instead, women in Peru have direct their narratives to the socioeconomic injustice of war and the suffering of their family members and communities (ibid: 469). In a similar vein, Tim Kelsall writes that victims who participated in the Sierra Leone TRC focused their testimonies on calling attention to their economic plight (2005: 370).

When at the end of every interview I asked the respondent, “Is there anything else you’d like to discuss that we haven’t talked about?” the answer was nearly universal: “How can we be helped?” Women worried about school fees for their children, about rent for their meagre dwellings, about sickness and hunger, about loneliness and the presence of ghosts. While it would be naive to discount the effect my presence had on their responses and on their narratives in general (my status as an educated foreigner came with a set of material expectations that required constant management), the women’s

125 constant references to the everyday struggles of life – indeed, those struggles not necessarily unique to LRA abductees – are significant. Whereas the politics of transitional justice and reconciliation in Acholi often alienate women, those same women express more concern for how to best navigate networks of NGO aid and the welfare of a nearly-eclipsed state. “I’m not sure where this help can come from,” said one young woman, one of the very few who have been admitted into a yearlong school programme for ex-LRA youth. “There’s nothing we know, some come and join here, but if you don’t know how to do that right, you’ll not be able to do anything and you’ll go back bare- handed without any certificate. So how can we be helped, I ask you?”

By speaking of a collective experience rather than individual predicaments, suffering is displaced and, perhaps, made bearable. In addressing the challenge many researchers have found in eliciting the experiences and opinions of girls and young women in post-war Angola and Mozambique, Honwana invokes Veena Das, arguing that their refusal to talk of painful or shameful events is agency in itself (2006: 80). Even though a handful of women requested that I help them transcribe their life histories, many more agreed to share their stories with the caveat that they ultimately wanted to forget. “The moment you’re reminded,” one said, “or someone starts speaking of things connected or similar to what happened before, it brings a lot of problems to us.” Rosalind Shaw, in her ethnography of post-war Sierra Leone, writes that youth in that country are engaged in directed forgetting, opposing the TRC’s assumption that speaking directly of atrocities is necessarily therapeutic and conducive to reconciliation (2007). In his study of the same Commission, Kelsall noted that public confession failed as a vehicle for “truth production” in Sierra Leone, where truth is evasive, secretive, and indirect (2005: 383). The same can be said of northern Uganda.

Nevertheless, the spirits of the dead challenge the active forgetting of ex-LRA women. Cen breaks through women’s silences and forces those around them to listen. Emily, whose sister died in battle, is a host for her sibling’s ghost:

My sister who died in the bush could even come and speak through me. Those things could even happen to me. She was telling me that I should go with her. She’s staying alone and she’s lonely. She said, “Don’t you think about me? Me, I love you.” I tell her, “Me, I can’t go with you. You go alone. I cannot go with you.” Then later I wake up.

126 That her sister implores her to “go with [her]” (to die), implies that Emily and her sister’s spirit are struggling with the injustice of her premature death and Emily’s survival. Most often violent, possession by cen is difficult to hide from others, as it involves ferocious nightmares, hallucinations and convulsions, and the forceful control of the host’s voice. Despite the suffering it causes, the horror has a moral purpose – to redress the past and repair relationships between the living and the dead. In post-war Mozambique, Igreja et al. have similarly demonstrated how the spirit possession of young women acts as a force of moral renewal in communities shattered by the sixteen-year civil war. It is through the medium of the female body that magamba (the spirits of males who have died violent deaths) retell their histories and demand justice for violations committed during the war, particularly those moral violations committed by the woman or the woman’s kin. By aiding to repair relations shattered by the war, spirits and their hosts are situated in dynamic systems of meaning (2008: 353). Erin Baines recognizes that in northern Uganda, interactions with the spirit world are “the only recourse for social reconstruction” available to many Acholi (2010: 430).

Beyond the violation of their individual bodies, then, women demand justice in the area of what might be called the “body spiritual”. Once again, however, there is epistemological competition between those who wish to help women relieve themselves of cen. “Traditionalists” and mainstream Christians have promoted cleansing ceremonies such as ryemo cen (to “chase away” spirits), conflicting with the Pentecostal solution of prayer. Emily has rejected ryemo cen:

I don’t believe in ryemo cen. For me, I can believe in prayer. I know that ryemo cen does not chase the evil spirits away because it is only God who can do it. It’s only prayers. I don’t believe in the ajwaka. I pray. I don’t ever miss it. Even when I’m going to sleep, I pray. I pray for my sisters and brothers who are still in the bush – let them come back home.

It is notable that Emily is so adamant in her dismissal of ryemo cen while others in her situation are less obstinate in their approaches to spirit possession. Evelyn, haunted by the ghost of a man whom she helped to murder, was ritually cleansed, but found that she still suffered from cen. Consequently, she took action and became “saved.”

127 “If I was to stop praying, the thing would come and attack me again,” she said, and so her prayers have served practical rather than moral purposes. Like many of her peers, Emily has refused the beliefs of the elder generation and turned to monotheism, while Evelyn actively “shops” for a means to spiritual peace. Unlike the pluralistic cosmos of indigenous spirits, Pentecostal Christianity professes a grand narrative of good and evil, transcending the ambiguity of life in the visible world. Shaw considers the growing spread of evangelical Christianity amongst Sierra Leone’s youth to be indicative of a similar idiom of spiritual warfare, one in which the grand narrative of God’s battle with Satan is reproduced in a form of memory work that helps to overpower memories of political violence (2007).

Young women in northern Uganda also use this strategy of prayer. In beating their demons, both literal and figurative, ex-LRA women approach the problem of memory with the same resilience they have shown against the other obstacles of return.

128 CONCLUSION

I left Gulu Town early on the morning of the 9th of October 2009, the forty-seventh anniversary of Uganda’s independence from Britain. The roads were packed with women heading to the market to buy and sell produce, men were walking and riding bicycles to the official celebrations at the dusty parade grounds, and the town was abuzz with excitement. The night before, as I had said my goodbyes to the women and their children, it had not occurred to me to ask them if they would participate in the festivities. Would they resent the cheers for a country so divided? Or would they rejoice for Uganda, defying the rules of the bush? However they spent that day, I am certain that they lived it with conviction.

I have argued throughout this thesis that the girls and women who survived for multiple years in the Lord’s Resistance Army are more than their biological bodies. Born into a war with deep historical roots, they are individuals who did and continue to expertly navigate a perilous and uncertain social existence. Their narratives show that not only do women of the LRA have agency in captivity, but that story-telling about their experiences is itself an expression of that agency – a vehicle by which ex-LRA women attempt to master the intricacies of their lives. They demonstrate that girls and women of the LRA are more than the “sex slaves” they are popularly imagined to be; like boys and men of the LRA, they are complex actors who have been forced to make difficult decisions. Women learned to live with each other and as forced wives. Many successfully orchestrated their own escapes, with children and infants in tow, risking their own lives in the process. They possess a multitude of identities that transcend the trope of “child soldier,” and indeed, they have aspirations and futures. Even so, we will never hear the stories of the women and girls who were murdered for breaking taboos or trying but failing to escape, who died in battle or childbirth, or who chose suicide over life in the LRA. The pall of death falls over the stories of the living.

Just as they relied on their own emotional savvy and deep-seeded beliefs in a multiplicity of spirit worlds in order to cope with quotidian violence in “the bush,” women who have returned to civilian life seek comfort and identity beyond a secular episteme. As an old ladit told me: “People should know that when you die, your eyes do

129 not die. Your eyes keep on seeing.” The spirit world is ever present in Acholi, where the dead demand the attentions of the living and reconciliation with those who have wronged them. How spirits demand attention and reconciliation is the cause of disputes and moral stalemates between those who concern themselves with justice in Acholi. The beings in question cannot be easily assigned to “cultural” or “colonial” categories, and yet they still beg redress – the eyes keep on seeing because death does not rot. Alan Klima wrote: “Something undone, unquiet, not dead, not passed returns because it has nowhere else it can go” (2002: 14). His assertion is applicable to the situation of ex-LRA women, who seek justice and ontological security in spite of – perhaps because of – their practical exclusion from formal justice practices. As they struggle with being both victims and perpetrators at once, so they struggle with cen. How women remember and forget is as important as what they remember and forget.

130 WORKS CITED

Acholi Religious Leaders’ Peace Initiative, the Women’s Desk of Caritas Gulu, and the Justice and Peace Commission of Gulu Archdiocese 2002 Seventy Times Seven: The Implementation and Impact of the Amnesty Law in Acholi. February. Gulu.

Acholi Times 2010 Gulu District. Last modified March 20. http://www.acholitimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=bl og&id=26&Itemid=25

Agamben, Giorgio 1998 Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Daniel Heller-Roazen, trans. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Agence France-Press 2003 War in northern Uganda world's worst forgotten crisis: UN. Last modified November 11. http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/AllDocsByUNID/e1f176894430fdeec1256ddb005 6ea4c

Allen, Tim 2006 Trial Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Lord’s Resistance Army. London: Zed Books.

--- 2007 The International Criminal Court and the Invention of Traditional Justice in Northern Uganda. Politique africaine 107: 147-166.

Allen, Tim, and Mareike Schomerus 2006 A Hard Homecoming: Lessons Learned from the Reception Center Process in Northern Uganda. Independent Study Commissioned by USAID and UNICEF. 15 August.

Alison, Miranda 2007 Wartime sexual violence: women’s human rights and questions of masculinity. Review of International Studies 33: 75-90.

Annan, Jeannie, and Christopher Blattman, and Roger Horton 2006 The State of Youth and Youth Protection in Northern Uganda: Findings from the Survey of War-Affected Youth (SWAY) Phase I. Kampala: UNICEF Uganda. September.

131 Annan, Jeannie, and Christopher Blattman, Khristopher Carlson, and Dyan Mazurana 2008 The State of Female Youth in Northern Uganda: Findings from the Survey of War-Affected Youth (SWAY) Phase II. Boston: Survey of War-Affected Youth. April.

Anyeko, Ketty, and Erin Baines, Kica Richard, Owor Ogora Lino, and Ojok Boniface 2006 Young Mothers, Marriage, and Reintegration in Northern Uganda: Considerations for the Juba Peace Talks. The Justice and Reconciliation Project. Field Notes 2. Vancouver and Gulu, Uganda: Liu Institute for Global Issues and the Gulu District NGO Forum. September.

Apio, Eunice 2007 Uganda’s Forgotten Children of War. In Born of War: Protecting Children of Sexual Violence Survivors in Conflict Zones. R. Charli Carpenter, ed. Pp. 94-109. West Hartford: Kumarian Press.

Atkinson, Ronald R. 1994 The origins of the Acholi of Uganda. Kampala: Fountain Publishers.

AVSI and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 2010 A Time Between: Moving on From Internal Displacement in Northern Uganda. Milan and Geneva. April 1.

Baines, Erin, and Boniface Ojok, Letha Victor, Ketty Anyeko, Lino Owor Ogora, and Emon Komakech 2007 The Cooling of Hearts: Community Truth-Telling in Acholi-land. Vancouver and Gulu, Uganda: Liu Institute for Global Issues and the Gulu District NGO Forum. July.

Baines, Erin K. 2007 The Haunting of Alice: Local Approaches to Justice and Reconciliation in Northern Uganda. The International Journal of Transitional Justice 1: 91-114.

--- 2008 Complicating Victims and Perpetrators in Northern Uganda: On Dominic Ongwen. The Justice and Reconciliation Project. Field Notes 7. Vancouver and Gulu, Uganda: Liu Institute for Global Issues and the Gulu District NGO Forum. July.

--- 2010 Spirits and Social Reconstruction After Mass Violence: Rethinking Transitional Justice. African Affairs 109 (436): 409-430.

BBC News 2004 War threatens Uganda Aids success. Last modified September 27. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3694372.stm

132 BBC News 2009 DR Congo warlord witness retracts. Last modified January 28. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/7857230.stm

Beah, Ishmael 2007 A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre.

Bean, James, and Gareth McKibben 2009 Labour Market Analysis: Amuru, Gulu, Kitgum, Pader. International Organization for Migration. Kampala. October.

Behrend, Heike 1999 Alice Lakwena and the Holy Spirits: War in Northern Uganda, 1986-97. Kampala: Fountain Publishers.

Boccassino, Renato 1939 The nature and characteristics of the Supreme Being worshipped among the Acholi of Uganda. Uganda Journal 6(4): 195-201.

Bouris, Erica 2007 Complex Political Victims. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press.

Branch, Adam 2004 International Justice, Local Injustice. Dissent 51(3): 22-26.

--- 2007 Uganda’s Civil War and the Politics of ICC Intervention. Ethics and International Affairs 21 (2): 179-198.

--- 2008 Against Humanitarian Impunity: Rethinking Responsibility for Displacement and Disaster in Northern Uganda. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 2(2): 151-173.

Butcher, Tim 2000 Return of the virus that kills at a touch. The Telegraph. Last modified October 21. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/uganda/1371228/Re turn-of-the-virus-that-kills-at-a-touch.html

Cakaj, Ledio 2010 “This is our land now.” Lord’s Resistance Army attacks in Bas Uele, northeastern Congo. Washington: The Enough Project. August.

Carlson, Khristopher, and Dyan Mazurana 2008 Forced Marriage within the Lord’s Resistance Army, Uganda. Boston: Feinstein International Center. May.

133

Clarke, Kamari Maxine 2009 Fictions of Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Challenge of Legal Pluraism in Sub-Saharan Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press.

The Coalition for the International Criminal Court 2006 Status of US Bilateral Immunity Agreements (BIAs). December 11. New York.

Comaroff, Jean and John Comaroff 1991 Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume One: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

--- 1997 Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume Two: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Cook, Kathy 2007 Stolen Angels: The Kidnapped Girls of Northern Uganda. Toronto: Penguin Group.

Daniel, E. Valentine 1996 Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropology of Violence. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

De Temmerman, Els 1995 Aboke Girls: Children Abducted in Northern Uganda. Kampala: Fountain Publishers.

Dolan, Chris 2009 Social Torture: The Case of Northern Uganda, 1986-2006. New York: Berghahn Books.

Doom, Ruddy, and Koen Vlassenroot 1999 Kony’s Message: A New Koine? The Lord’s Resistance Army in Northern Uganda. African Affairs 98 (390): 5-36.

Edwards, Adrian 2010 UNHCR seeing new displacement caused by Lord’s Resistance Army. UNHRC Briefing Notes. Last modified October 15. http://www.unhcr.org/4cb832c29.html

Englund, Harri 2006 Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor. Berkeley: University of California Press.

134 Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. 1976 (1937) Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Finnström, Sverker 2003 Living with Bad Surroundings: War and Existential Uncertainty in Acholiland, Northern Uganda. Uppsala: Uppsala University Press.

--- 2010 Reconciliation grown bitter? : War, retribution, and ritual action in northern Uganda. In Localizing Transitional Justice: Interventions and Priorities after Mass Violence. Rosalind Shaw and Lars Waldorf, with Pierre Hazan, eds. Pp. 135-156. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Galtung, Johan 1964 A Structural Theory of Aggression. Journal of Peace Research 1 (2) 95-119.

--- 1990 Cultural Violence. Journal of Peace Research 27 (3): 291-305.

Geertz, Clifford 1973 The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.

Gettleman, Jeffrey 2010 Africa’s Forever Wars: Why the continent’s conflicts never end. Foreign Policy. March/ April.

Gersony, Robert 1997 The Anguish of Northern Uganda: Results of a Field-Based Assessment of the Civil Conflicts of Northern Uganda. Kampala: USAID Mission, United States Embassy.

Glaser, Barney G. and Anselm L. Strauss 1977 The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. New York: Aldine Transaction.

Green, Matthew 2008 The Wizard of the Nile: The Hunt for Africa’s Most Wanted. London: Portobello Books.

Harlacher, Thomas, and Ronald Atkinson, Francis Xavier Okot, Caroline Aloyao Obonyo, and Mychelle Balthazard 2006 Traditional Ways of Coping in Acholi: Cultural Provisions for Reconciliation and Healing from War. Kampala: Caritas Gulu Archdiocese.

135 Honwana, Alcinda 2006 Child Soldiers in Africa. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Hopwood, Julian, and Chessa Osburn 2008 Sharing the Burden of the Past: Peer Support and Self Help Amongst Former LRA Youth. The Justice and Reconciliation Project and Quaker Peace and Social Witness. Vancouver and Gulu, Uganda: Liu Institute for Global Issues and the Gulu District NGO Forum. May.

Hopwood, Julian, and Chessa Osburn, Letha Victor, and Erin Baines 2008 With or Without Peace: Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration in Northern Uganda. The Justice and Reconciliation Project and Quaker Peace and Social Witness. Field Notes 6. Vancouver and Gulu, Uganda: Liu Institute for Global Issues and the Gulu District NGO Forum. February.

Hovil, Lucy, and Joanna R. Quinn 2005 Peace First, Justice Later: Traditional Justice in Northern Uganda. Refugee Law Project Working Paper No. 17. Kampala: Refugee Law Project.

Hovil, Lucy, and Zachary Lomo 2005 Whose Justice? Perceptions of Uganda’s Amnesty Act 2000: The Potential for Conflict Resolution and Long-Term Reconciliation. Refugee Law Project Working Paper No. 15: Kampala: Refugee Law Project.

Huber, Jessica 2010 Conflict and Recovery Briefing Report No. 6. 1 October 2009 to 31 March 2009. SPRING: Stability, Peace, and Reconciliation in Northern Uganda and The Great Lakes Centre for Conflict Resolution (GLACCR). Kampala: USAID.

Human Rights & Peace Centre (HURIPEC) and Liu Institute for Global Issues 2003 The Hidden War: The Forgotten People. War in Acholiland and its Ramifications for Peace and Security in Uganda. Kampala. October 30.

Human Rights Watch 2005a Uprooted and Forgotten: Impunity and Human Rights Abuses in Northern Uganda. Human Rights Watch 17 (12A). New York. September.

--- 2005b ICC Takes Decisive Step for Justice in Uganda: Governments Must Cooperate to Ensure Arrest Warrants Are Served. Last modified October 14. http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2005/10/14/icc-takes-decisive-step-justice-uganda

Igreja, Victor, Béatrice Dias-Lambranca and Annemiek Rickters 2008 Gamba Spirits, Gender Relations, and Healing in Post-Civil War Gorongosa, Mozambique. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 14: 350-367.

136 Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) 2008 Uganda: Uncertain future for IDPs while peace remains elusive. A profile of the internal displacement situation. Geneva: Norwegian Refugee Council. April 24.

Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) 2009 Uganda: Returns Outpace Recovery Planning. A profile of the internal displacement situation. Geneva: Norwegian Refugee Council. August 19.

International Crisis Group 2004 Northern Uganda: Understanding and Solving the Conflict. ICG Africa Report no. 77. Nairobi/Brussels. April 14.

Jackson, Michael 2002 The Politics of Storytelling: Violence, Transgression, and Intersubjectivity. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.

Keatley, Patrick 2003 Obituary: Idi Amin. The Guardian. London. Last modified August 18. http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2003/aug/18/guardianobituaries

Kelsall, Tim 2005 Truth, Lies, Ritual: Preliminary Reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone. Human Rights Quarterly 27: 361-391.

Klima, Alan 2002 The Funeral Casino: Meditation, Massacre, and Exchange with the Dead in Thailand. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Levi, Primo 1988 The Gray Zone. In Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology. Nancy Scheper- Hughes and Philippe Bourgois, eds. Pp. 83-90. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Liu Institute for Global Issues, Gulu District NGO Forum, and Ker Kwaro Acholi 2005 Roco Wat i Acholi. Restoring Relationships in Acholi-land: Traditional Approaches to Justice and Reconciliation. Gulu and Vancouver.

Lomo, Zachary, and Lucy Hovil 2004 Behind the Violence: Causes, Consequences, and the Search for Solutions to the War in Northern Uganda. Refugee Law Project Working Paper No. 11: Kampala: Refugee Law Project.

Lucima, Okello 2009 We are sending God mail using the wrong address. The Daily Monitor. August 23.

137 Machar, Riek Teny-Dhurgon 2008 Report and Recommendations of the Chief Mediator of the Peace Process Between the Government of the Republic of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army. Juba. June 16.

Mamdani, Mahmood 2001 When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

McDonnell, Faith J. H., and Grace Akallo 2007 Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda’s Children. Grand Rapids: Chosen Books.

McKay, Susan, and Dyan Mazurana 2004 Where are the Girls? Montreal: Rights & Democracy/Canadian International Development Agency.

Moore, Sally Falk 1986 Social Facts and Fabrications; “Customary” Law on Kilimanjaro, 1880-1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mukasa, Henry 2008 UPDF Planes Attack Kony’s Congo Base. The New Vision. Last modified December 14. http://allafrica.com/stories/200812150001.html

Mwanguhya, Charles 2009 Museveni admits using witchcraft in bush. The Monitor. Last modified July 29. http://allafrica.com/stories/200907290038.html

The New Vision 2007 Interview with Sunday Otto: How Vincent Otti was killed. Last modified December 9. http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/120/130/601064/

Niezen, Ronald 2010 Public Justice and the Anthropology of Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ochan, Clement 2009 Assessing Uganda’s Cross-Border Pursuit of the Lord’s Resistance Army. Medford, MA: Feinstein International Center. February.

Odonga, Alexander 2005 Lwo-English Dictionary. Kampala: Fountain Publishers.

138 Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) 2007 Making Peace Our Own: Victims’ Perceptions of Accountability, Reconciliation and Transitional Justice in Northern Uganda. Geneva. August.

Okot p’Bitek 1963 The concept of Jok among the Acholi and Lango. Uganda Journal 27(1): 5-29.

Okot Bitek, Juliane 2009 Commercializing Children’s Suffering is Macabre. Black Star News. Last modified April 29. http://www.blackstarnews.com/?c=135&a=5605

Owor Ogora, Lino and Erin Baines 2008 Massacre in Mucwini. The Justice and Reconciliation Project. Field Notes 8. Gulu: Gulu District NGO Forum. November.

Pain, Dennis 1997 The Bending of Spears: producing consensus for peace and development in Northern Uganda. International Alert and Kacoke Madit. London. December.

Pham, Phuong, and Patrick Vinck, and Eric Stover 2007 Abducted: The Lord’s Resistance Army and Forced Conscription in Northern Uganda. The Berkeley-Tulane Initiative on Vulnerable Populations. June.

Pham, Phuong, and Patrick Vinck, Eric Stover, Andrew Moss, Marieke Wierda, and Richard Bailey 2007 When the War Ends: A Population-Based Survey on Attitudes about Peace, Justice, and Social Reconstruction in Northern Uganda. The Berkeley-Tulane Initiative on Vulnerable Populations and the International Center for Transitional Justice. December.

Prendergast, John 2007 The Answer to the Lord’s Resistance Army. Strategy Paper 3. Washington: The Enough Project.

Ranger, Terence 1992 The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa. In The Invention of Tradition, Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger, eds. Pp. 211-261. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Republic of Uganda. Parliament. 2000 The Amnesty Act. Kampala. 21 January.

--- 2006 The Amnesty (Amendment) Act, 2006. Kampala. 24 May.

139 Republic of Uganda 2007 Peace, Recovery and Development Plan for Northern Uganda (PRDP), 2007- 2010. Kampala. September.

The Republic of Uganda Ministry of Health 2005 Health and mortality survey among internally displaced persons in Gulu, Kitgum and Pader districts, northern Uganda. Kampala. July.

Schabas, William A. 2004 United States Hostility Towards the International Criminal Court: It’s All About the Security Council. European Journal of International Law 15 (4): 701-720.

Schomerus, Mareike 2007 The Lord’s Resistance Army in Sudan: A History and Overview. Small Arms Survey. Sudan Human Security Baseline Assessment Working Paper 8. Geneva: Small Arms Survey, Graduate Institute of International Studies.

Sebunya, Crespo 2003 How About Use of Magical Powers to Eliminate Kony? African Church Information Service. Last modified August 18. http://allafrica.com/stories/200308181063.html

Sharp, Jeb 2007 Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts. PRI’s The World. Last modified 14 February. http://www.pri.org/theworld/?q=node/8032

Shaw, Rosalind 2003 Robert Kaplan and “Juju Journalism” in Sierra Leone: The Primitivizing of an African Conflict. In Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment. Birgit Meyer and Peter Pels, eds. Pp. 81-102. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

--- 2007 Displacing Violence: Making Pentecostal Memory in Postwar Sierra Leone. Cultural Anthropology 22 (1): 66-93.

Theidon, Kimberly 2007 Gender in Transition: Common Sense, Women, and War. Journal of Human Rights 6: 453-478.

Uganda Bureau of Statistics 2006 2002 Uganda Population and Housing Census Analytical Report. Kampala. October.

Uganda Rising 2006 Jesse James Miller and Pete McCormac, dirs. 82 min. Mindset Media. Vancouver.

140 UNICEF 1997 Cape Town Principles and Best Practices on the Prevention of Recruitment of Children into the Armed Forces and on Demobilization and Social reintegration of Child Soldiers in Africa. Cape Town. April.

--- 2007 The Paris Principles: Principles and Guidelines on Children Associated with Armed Forces or Armed Groups. Paris. February.

United Nations 1998 The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Rome: United Nations.

Utas, Mats 2003 Sweet Battlefields: Youth and the Liberian Civil War. PhD dissertation, Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University.

Victor, Letha 2007 Abomination: Local Belief Systems and International Justice. The Justice and Reconciliation Project. Field Notes 5. Vancouver and Gulu, Uganda: Liu Institute for Global Issues and the Gulu District NGO Forum. September.

--- 2008 The Needs of the Giver: Development, Youth, and Structural Violence in Northern Uganda. Unpublished manuscript. Montréal: McGill University.

Weber, Max 1998 (1948) [1918] Science as a Vocation. In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. 2nd edition. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds. and trans. Pp. 129-156. New York: Routledge.

Westcott, Kathryn 2003 Sex slavery awaits Ugandan schoolgirls. BBC News Online. Last modified June 25. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3019838.stm

Wright, A.C.A. 1939 The Supreme Being worshipped among the Acholi of Uganda – Another viewpoint. Uganda Journal 7(3): 130-137.

141 APPENDICES

Appendix A: Glossary of Acronyms

ARLPI The Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative, 1997 – present ARP Amnesty Reintegration Programme, 2006 – present CAR Central African Republic CoH Cessation of Hostilities Agreement, August 2006 CPU Child Protection Unit DDR Disarmament, Demobilisation, and Reintegration DRC Democratic Republic of the Congo GoU Government of Uganda GUSCO Gulu Support the Children Organisation, 1994 – present HSM/F Holy Spirit Movement/Forces, 1986 – 1987 ICC International Criminal Court, 1 July 2002 – present83 IDP Internally Displaced Person FAP Formerly Abducted Person FPA Final Peace Agreement, April 2008 (Juba Talks, July 2006 – April 2008) KKA Ker Kwaro Acholi, 2000 – present LC Local Counsellor LDU Local Defence Unit LRA Lord’s Resistance Army, 1987 – present84 NRM/A National Resistance Movement/Army, 1981 – 199585 OCP Office of the Chief Prosecutor (ICC), 1 July 2002 – present PRDP Peace, Recovery, & Development Plan for Northern Uganda, 2007 – 2010 RDC Resident District Commissioner SPLM/A Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army, 1983 – present UNLF/A Uganda National Liberation Front/Army, 1979 – 1986 UPDA Uganda People’s Defence Army, 1986 – 1988 UPDF Uganda People’s Defence Force, 1995 – present WFP World Food Programme

83 Rome Statue adopted 1998 84 The LRA underwent several name changes before settling on the current name around 1992. These other names included such permutations as the Uganda Peoples’ Democratic Christian Army (UPDCA) and The Lord’s Army. 85 Note: the NRA was not demobilized, but rather was re-named the UPDF under the terms of the Constitution of the Republic of Uganda, 1995.

142 Appendix B: Maps

Source: Conciliation Resources, 2010 http://www.c-r.org/our-work/accord/northern-uganda/maps2.php

143 Source: Conciliation Resources, 2010 http://www.c-r.org/our-work/accord/northern-uganda-update/images/areas_map.png

144

, Kampala,2009 IMU/UNOCHA Source: Source: Detail, Uganda Administrative UnitsMap NORTHERN UGANDA

145 Appendix C: Two Women Tell Their Stories

BETTY

My name is Betty. I was born in a village in Gulu District, but I do not know when. Before I was abducted, I was living with my parents in the village. I was not in school. I was about twelve years old when I was abducted. I think it was in December or June of 1994. I can remember what happened. They started by abducting my father. They killed him, then after one week they came back and abducted me. When they came to abduct me, my mother was sick and I was inside cooking. So when I just came out abruptly I didn’t realise the rebels were out. So I came out and that is when they just took me. When I came out and I saw that these were rebels, I took off and ran so fast, but they also followed me very fast and ran and caught me. I fell and hit my leg and kept running with the wound, but they caught me. I was bleeding heavily. When they caught me, they started giving me slaps and beating me. There’s a particular man who caught me and he slapped me seriously. They brought me back home to where they had gathered all of the other people they had abducted. There were very many. So they brought me among the abductees. So when they brought me, my mother started pleading, “You people, please release my daughter, she is very sick [injured]! Look at her leg!” “How sick is she?” they asked. When my mother was pleading, one of them said to her, “If you keep pleading to release her we will kill you.” And they hit her on the back and beat her with the back of the gun so that she stopped pleading. Then my mother’s sister was also there. She started pleading with them, “This is the only daughter we have now at home, please, release her for us!” Then they asked, “Is this the first death you are seeing? They now tied me up and started moving with me. We left our home. They took my shirt and tied my arms with it. We moved a bit and got some other girl, and then they tied six of us on the same rope so that if one of us was to fall, both would have to fall. So we moved, we went to that side [north in the direction] of Atiak. We were trying to cross the road, and this very man who had chased me told us to stop. So we stopped, then he came and untied me. He asked, “If I release you from here, will you be able to go back home?” Because in the past I had heard that if you are abducted and they ask you if you would be able to go back home and you say yes, they will kill you immediately. The man said, “We’re not very far from your home. Do you want me to release you?”

146 But I refused, and I said, “No, I cannot go back home because it is already far. I am just a visitor to this village, so if you release me I will not be able to find my way back home.” So the man said that I would be taken with them, but he said, “From this point, you should move very fast with the rest of us. If you start limping we will just kill you.” When they started moving with me, it was the dry season and there were thorns everywhere. They had removed my sandals when they caught me. This man [who had slapped me] was called Komakec and he again called for me to come. I was the youngest of the girls. He came to me and told me to carry his gun, but I said I could not because I didn’t know how to use it. He said, “You can’t just carry the gun?” and I said, “No, I cannot carry something I do not know how to use.” So he gave me to some boys to watch over me for the time being. As we were moving, we got some women on the road from a village and they were heading to the [Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF)] barracks. From there, this very man again asked the boys to bring me back to him. He got a gun and wanted to hit me, but these women came in to interfere. He left me to run and catch the women and asked them who they were and why they were out. They said they were going for a burial. They had sim sim [sesame] paste and cassava and each had ten litres of local brew [high-proof alcohol] in jerry cans. So he ordered them to start taking all of it – to drink all the alcohol. This woman had a kid of two years, but they only made the women drink it or they would kill them. They left them there helpless, and they probably died. We crossed at some well, some water source and we sat down to rest. Komakec again sent for me and they took me to him. He said, “I know your home area, I know your place well, I know all the people in your area. So if you tell me any lie now I will know and I will just kill you. If you want to escape death you will tell me right now the name of your father, your mother, and all the other people in your home.” I had a lot of fear in my heart and I couldn’t even remember the names of my father and mother and I just started saying names, I can’t even remember what they were. So he grew very annoyed and he sent for some boys, about two escorts, and said, “You take this girl to the well [river or stream] and return with her clothes only. I only want her clothes so that I know that you have killed her.” They took me to the well but said, “Why should we kill this innocent girl?” So they removed my clothes and asked me to escape. Before they would allow me to run and take off my clothes, they said that the man would not believe they had killed me unless there was blood on my clothes. I still had that wound on my leg, so they pierced the wound and rubbed some of the blood on my clothes and on their pangas [machetes]. But then that man had sent another boy to check and see if they had killed me. He asked, “You people, have you killed this girl yet? Why are you still arguing?” And they said, “No, we cannot kill an innocent girl.” They were arguing when another boy who was sent again came and said, “If you have not yet killed this girl you should stop.” This was because Kony [the LRA leader] himself had sent a message that now was not a time of killing, but a time for prayers. They were not even to kill a chicken or a cow or a goat.

147 So Kony had said that there was to be a week without any bloodshed. When they brought me back to Komakec, he said, “You people, you have brought her back alive after I have told you to kill her? I have made a big mistake. From now on if someone is to be killed they will be killed right here, next to me. I will not let you go with a person. They will be killed within my sight.” We started our journey now direct to Sudan. Usually when they take young girls to Sudan they call the commanders, the top commanders to come and pick from the girls to be babysitters to their babies. But we arrived late and they were tired, so all the girls were to be taken directly to Kony’s place. But Komakec was still after me, and he kept me behind when all the other girls left. He also had a home from there, and he told me to enter. He had many bags in the room and he told me that I was to sit between them and hide. If anyone came looking for me or called my name, he told me that he would kill me if I responded and let them know my whereabouts. He piled the bags on top of me. “You will not even say a word and you will not even cough. No coughing. If after they come here asking for you, you will tell them that you were picked from the girls being distributed to be sent here.” He said I would not leave him; that I would stay in his house. Then he locked me in the house with a padlock. I was locked in that house from the night until about 3pm the next day without even some food. So Raska Lukwiya [then the LRA third-in-command] sent for me and I told him that I had been picked from the other girls. I said it out of fear. Raska had sent the boys to fetch me because someone had told him that I remained. But Komakec was very rude to the boys and sent them back, and so Raska himself came to the house. He said to Komakec that he knew that he wanted to keep me, but there were other commanders who wanted me, and they had a very serious quarrel. Raska said that in this situation there is only to kill the girl that is dividing people. He went back to Kony to tell him how they had quarrelled and Kony said that I and Komakec must be brought to him. When we were leaving the house, Komakec said that if I said anything to Kony or Raska he would kill me. Kony warned him to stop that habit and told Komakec that I would not be staying with him. Kony gave me to an old man; he was old enough even to be my father’s age mate. But this mzee [elderly man] also had an interest in marrying me. His name was Nyeko. I was taken to Nyeko’s house and his wives were there, but they were all elderly to me. They said, “This man is planning to take this young girl as his wife, but we cannot allow it. We must kill her.” So they would harass me and refuse to give me food. They would give me water to wash my hands, but no food. I went days without eating, and you don’t want to report it to anyone – you have to persevere and keep quiet. If someone came by and asked me if I had eaten, out of fear I would say yes because I thought, “What will these ladies do to me when the other people go?” One day the old man called me into the house and said, “From this day on I will be using you as a wife. But you should not tell anyone. If you tell anyone that I am using you as a wife, I will kill you. But I will now be using you as a wife.” I started crying because I was young and had not known a man. He slapped me. I left the house and went to where some escorts were in the adak [subterranean military building] and they asked

148 me why I was crying. I narrated the whole story to them, and they said I should take care not to go back to this house. I spent the night with these boys and they brought me back to Nyeko’s house in the morning. He had been looking for me. When he saw me, he ordered the boys to beat me until I was dead. So they got some sticks and they caned me fifty strokes before Nyeko came back and said, “These girls will put beans on the fire. You beat her until the beans have boiled and cooked and people have eaten.” One of the escorts said, “This girl is very young. Beans take so long to cook. You know that if we beat her until the beans are ready, she will die.” He said that he did not care: “So what. She’d better die. This girl thinks she is smarter than me, but I am smarter.” So while they were beating me, another commander came and asked them why they were beating me. They said that Nyeko had ordered them to do it. So that commander called Nyeko and said that he must stop mistreating these girls or he would report him to Kony: “But this girl, she is still very young, you cannot treat her like this.” So they stopped beating me and sent me back into the home. These other ladies were still hating me and one of them said, “Even though we are told she is to eat, I say now this girl will not eat today.” She was scared that the husband would come and beat her for not giving food, but she still refused. Somehow, I just got the courage to speak back and said, “Why are you always on this food issue?” The woman got up and just slapped me hard across the face. I then thought of escaping, but if they catch you they will step on you until all your bones are broken and you die or they will melt a jerry can on you until the burns kill you. I somehow got strong and I bit that woman on the thigh. I threw her down to the ground and started biting everywhere: her face, her nose, her ears, her neck, everywhere. Nyeko saw what was happening and came over. He said, “From now on I am chasing all of you stubborn girls away, and only this young girl will stay as my wife.” I replied to him. “I cannot be your wife. You shameless man! You are even my father’s age-mate. I will not be your wife.” He slapped me so hard on my check and knocked me to the ground where he stepped on me. He put the gun right in my face and yelled that if I ever refused to be his wife again he would just blow me away. I was not seeing my period yet. We were only in Uganda one week before we had reached Sudan, so at that time I was still twelve years. I was with them for two months before I became a wife, and then I stayed as his wife for three days. After three days, Nyeko was chosen amongst the men to go back to Uganda to fight in battle. We received word that he had been shot and killed in Uganda. Kony ordered that the older wives were to be re-distributed amongst the commanders, while the young girls were to be taken to hospital for treatment. So we were taken to the hospital for treatment and then they re- distributed us again.

149 When I was redistributed, I was given to a young man named Odoki Mark. I was his third wife. Of the two women, one tried to escape. Odoki was a boy from Kitgum. His first wife tried to escape, but she was caught and they killed her. She was prompted to escape because they had abducted some new girls and one of them was from the same village as her and they planned to go together. But they were caught and they shot them both. One day they brought us to fight in Uganda. When we entered from Sudan, we were in a big ambush and a serious fight began. I had two children with me, three and one years, from Odoki. Odoki’s other wife was killed in that battle. Another girl was shot and she was calling for me, “Don’t leave me here, please help me!” She had a baby on her back. But I said I could not help her because I had the two children to protect. The baby survived with only a wound in the foot, but I could not carry it and so I left it there after the woman died. So many people died during those battles. The Government soldiers saw me and began chasing me and yelling, “Don’t run, stop, stop!” But I had to keep running to separate myself from the rest because my plan was to escape. I entered some forest and I hid myself and my children there for two days without taking any food. In my hiding place, I came out and found myself again in the rebels’ group. I pretended that I had lost them and was only looking for them. I told one of the girls again in that group that I had that plan to escape, but that girl when back to the commanders and reported on me. They called on me and beat me seriously. They started calling all the rebel groups in Uganda to gather in Kitgum so that we could journey back to Sudan together. My husband had already been taken back to Sudan. I didn’t know whether he was alive or not. We were divided into groups. I was divided into a group with sixty-five people and only six women. I became very stubborn and I refused to carry anything because I just wanted to find a way to escape, especially after they beat me so seriously. The rest were complaining, “Why don’t you want to help us carry things? Why are you so stubborn?” But I said no, and I had that plan to escape. So when we moved, we had no food to eat and we were all hungry. We were sent to go find food and all I found was two pieces of cassava. I carried them in my hand and we started moving again. They were so harsh on me, “Now since you have refused to carry any luggage, we shall not help you carry your children. You shall suffer alone and we will not help you to carry your children.” When we started to cross the Lira road to go to Kitgum, I was very stubborn and I started moving very slowly so that I could escape. The group had split into two, but I made sure I was not among those in front and not among those behind. The first group went and did not know I was missing and I hid in a sorghum plantation with my children. The second group was coming up and my child began to cry because she was hungry and was asking for her Dad. I told her not to cry: “Do you want to go back to the suffering in the bush? These people are hunting us.” I had to give the child the cassava I had uprooted, but she stopped crying. After the group had passed, I saw that there was an isolated grass hutch house by the road, and so I entered in the house. There were broken pots outside. I went to kneel to pray, but before I said a prayer I removed the vial of water and from my neck and the stone from Odek that had been sewn under the skin of my hand. We spent the night there.

150 I left at around 5pm the next day and began following the road to Pajule barracks. I met a woman on the way who asked about me and if I was having problems, and I narrated my escape. She told me to go ahead to the barracks, but I asked her to take me. She said no, but I said, “If you don’t go with me, then I might as well go back to the bush.” So she called some two men for help and they said, “No, let’s first take her to the LC [local government counsellor].” We went to the LC and he called ahead to the barracks. They were told to escort me there. So we reached there at around 8 in the evening. And from there they took me to Caritas Pajule at 6am, where I was kept for one month. I entered Caritas [Catholic charity] on the 6th of July, and on the 6th of August they took me to GUSCO [Gulu Support the Children Organization – reception centre for demobilized LRA]. When I came to GUSCO, there was no one at my home. I found out when I was there that I had left my brother and mother at home, but the rebels had come to abduct my brother and my mother had protested again. They killed them both. This boy from my home area came to GUSCO to visit someone, so I said to him, “You take this letter to my place. If you find any of my relatives are still alive, please give it to them and you tell them to come for me.” But still I stayed for two months and no one came. I wondered, ‘Have I made a mistake? I should have stayed in the bush. I came out and now there is no one there to come for me.’ From there, I waited in vain and I requested GUSCO to send an announcement about me on the Mega FM Radio. So they sent it, and my sister heard it and came to see me because she was staying in Gulu. She came to see me and went to tell our mother’s sister that I was alive. They paid me a visit, but when it came time to pick me, no one came. So that boy who had brought a letter and the other girl he had visited who was in GUSCO with me came and signed for me and picked me from the centre. They thought they should not leave me. But I became very sick, to the extent that I could not even speak. So they brought me to Independent [hospital]. That was in 2004. When we started to cross the Lira road to go to Kitgum, I was very stubborn and I started moving very slowly so that I could escape. The group had split into two, but I made sure I was not among those in front and not among those behind. The first group went and did not know I was missing and I hid in a sorghum plantation with my children. The second group was coming up and my child began to cry because she was hungry and was asking for her Dad. I told her not to cry: “Do you want to go back to the suffering in the bush? These people are hunting us.” I had to give the child the cassava I had uprooted, but she stopped crying. After the group had passed, I saw that there was an isolated grass hutch house by the road, and so I entered in the house. There were broken pots outside. I went to kneel to pray, but before I said a prayer I removed the vial of water and from my neck and the stone from Odek that had been sewn under the skin of my hand. We spent the night there. I left at around 5pm the next day and began following the road to Pajule barracks. I met a woman on the way who asked about me and if I was having problems, and I narrated my escape. She told me to go ahead to the barracks, but I asked her to take me. She said no, but I said, “If you don’t go with me, then I might as well go back to the bush.” So she called some two men for help and they said, “No, let’s first take her to the LC [local government counsellor].”

151 We went to the LC and he called ahead to the barracks. They were told to escort me there. So we reached there at around 8 in the evening. And from there they took me to Caritas Pajule at 6am, where I was kept for one month. I entered Caritas [Catholic charity] on the 6th of July, and on the 6th of August they took me to GUSCO [Gulu Support the Children Organization – reception centre for demobilized LRA]. When I came to GUSCO, there was no one at my home. I found out when I was there that I had left my brother and mother at home, but the rebels had come to abduct my brother and my mother had protested again. They killed them both. This boy from my home area came to GUSCO to visit someone, so I said to him, “You take this letter to my place. If you find any of my relatives are still alive, please give it to them and you tell them to come for me.” But still I stayed for two months and no one came. I wondered, ‘Have I made a mistake? I should have stayed in the bush. I came out and now there is no one there to come for me.’ From there, I waited in vain and I requested GUSCO to send an announcement about me on the Mega FM Radio. So they sent it, and my sister heard it and came to see me because she was staying in Gulu. She came to see me and went to tell our mother’s sister that I was alive. They paid me a visit, but when it came time to pick me, no one came. So that boy who had brought a letter and the other girl he had visited who was in GUSCO with me came and signed for me and picked me from the centre. They thought they should not leave me. But I became very sick, to the extent that I could not even speak. So they brought me to Independent [hospital]. That was in 2004. When we started to cross the Lira road to go to Kitgum, I was very stubborn and I started moving very slowly so that I could escape. The group had split into two, but I made sure I was not among those in front and not among those behind. The first group went and did not know I was missing and I hid in a sorghum plantation with my children. The second group was coming up and my child began to cry because she was hungry and was asking for her Dad. I told her not to cry: “Do you want to go back to the suffering in the bush? These people are hunting us.” I had to give the child the cassava I had uprooted, but she stopped crying. After the group had passed, I saw that there was an isolated grass hutch house by the road, and so I entered in the house. There were broken pots outside. I went to kneel to pray, but before I said a prayer I removed the vial of water and from my neck and the stone from Odek that had been sewn under the skin of my hand. We spent the night there. I left at around 5pm the next day and began following the road to Pajule barracks. I met a woman on the way who asked about me and if I was having problems, and I narrated my escape. She told me to go ahead to the barracks, but I asked her to take me. She said no, but I said, “If you don’t go with me, then I might as well go back to the bush.” So she called some two men for help and they said, “No, let’s first take her to the LC [local government counsellor].” We went to the LC and he called ahead to the barracks. They were told to escort me there. So we reached there at around 8 in the evening. And from there they took me to Caritas Pajule at 6am, where I was kept for one month. I entered Caritas [Catholic charity] on the 6th of July, and on the 6th of August they took me to GUSCO [Gulu Support the Children Organization – reception centre for demobilized LRA]. When I came to GUSCO, there was no one at my home. I found out when I was there that I had

152 left my brother and mother at home, but the rebels had come to abduct my brother and my mother had protested again. They killed them both. This boy from my home area came to GUSCO to visit someone, so I said to him, “You take this letter to my place. If you find any of my relatives are still alive, please give it to them and you tell them to come for me.” But still I stayed for two months and no one came. I wondered, ‘Have I made a mistake? I should have stayed in the bush. I came out and now there is no one there to come for me.’ From there, I waited in vain and I requested GUSCO to send an announcement about me on the Mega FM Radio. So they sent it, and my sister heard it and came to see me because she was staying in Gulu. She came to see me and went to tell our mother’s sister that I was alive. They paid me a visit, but when it came time to pick me, no one came. So that boy who had brought a letter and the other girl he had visited who was in GUSCO with me came and signed for me and picked me from the centre. They thought they should not leave me. But I became very sick, to the extent that I could not even speak. So they brought me to Independent [hospital]. That was in 2004. I heard the story in 2005 that Odoki Mark had died. A friend who had been helping him in the bush, who was like an escort, he escaped and was the one who sent the report. The person came back and told me about it. I knew that if I was to worry, there would be no point. He had already died and it was not my fault. He died in battle and there’s nothing I could do. But the one thing I feel bad about is that I know where his place is here in Gulu, but they are not concerned – they are not even supporting the children. You know life in the bush, you don’t always stay like a wife and a husband always in the house. Like the first baby – I was left when I was only one month pregnant and the man came back when the baby was already one year. Then the second born, he left me one month pregnant and came when the baby was already out again. So you don’t stay together. They can maybe sleep with you today, but you don’t see him again because he’s fighting in battles. I’m not sure if he loved me, but at least he was not beating me. The eldest of my children is a boy of nine years, and the younger is a girl of six years. The eldest is in P2. The second one isn’t in school because I cannot afford to pay her way. But I had another child from here. I got a husband who I was supposed to settle with. I even settled with him, but he used to abuse me and say that people like me have bad spirits and so I am alone because I cannot continue with that kind of life.

- 5 September 2009, Gulu Town

153 NIGHTY

My name is Nighty. I am thirty-four years old. I was born in Amuru District in 1975, and I am the youngest of all my brothers and sisters. Due to insecurity, it wasn’t good to remain in our village, so I was brought to town to stay with a relative because I wanted to go to school. Before they abducted me, my parents used to love me so much; that is why they brought me to town. My mum decided to remain in the village while I stayed with a relative and attended primary school in Pabo. I was in P4 [grade four] when I was abducted. I spent four years [with the LRA] in Uganda; then when we made it to Sudan I only stayed for one and a half years before I escaped. By the time they abducted me in 1988 I was about fourteen years old. That day, they came and abducted very many girls: they abducted fourteen of us from our school. We were sleeping in the same room. We were taken to the bush, but having reached there, some of the girls were released to come back home because they were older. But for me, I was the youngest, so they didn’t allow me to come back home. When those people returned home, I cried, but there was nothing I could do then so I decided to just keep quiet. I started living with them. When I stayed there for a month, they gave me to a certain man whom I was to stay with. I tried to refuse him, but they told me if I failed to stay with that man they would kill me. So I started living with that man. He is called Bashir in the bush, but from home here he is called Okot Geoffrey. While I was still a young girl, before I even got married to that man, I was still living with him as a house girl and a baby sitter. But when I was seeing my period, I became his wife. Life in the bush there, you are not handled like a housewife from here. You’re always taken like a soldier. He had four women. I was the fifth. But I found that in his absence sometimes his other wives would beat me for nothing. I don’t even know why they would keep beating me. Sometimes they would cook food and they would refuse to give me any of it to eat. I stayed like that. When we were travelling anywhere, they would give me the biggest luggage to carry. There are jobs there, but you’re not paid for it. They only train you to do the job, but you’re not paid. For example, they had a doctor, they had nurses, they had builders. We work, but we’re not paid. The major job in the bush is battling. That is the major job. And I had been participating in it fully. Not fighting, but practically: I have been all along close to there because when someone is hurt, you have to carry and give first aid to that person. So I have been very close to that. In the bush, there are different categories of people among the abducted. Others are learned, others are non-learned. If you happen to be among the people who are educated, normally you don’t go anywhere. You will always stay with the big man, with Kony. Because there are a lot of assignments that they will give you to do. Like, for instance, you know Kony did not go very much in school. He is not very much educated. So if there is a letter coming from somewhere, there is something they need to discuss, these kinds of things, people will be helping. That is the kind of work they give you. And others, most of them were working like doctors and nurses. We used to sing songs from there. We would use the Catholic songs, songs for the Born Again [Christians], we would sing also for the Protestants. And again during

154 prayers, you would bend down like the Muslims. But there is nowhere meant for praying in the bush. You can gather anywhere when time comes for praying and you pray there, or individually you can even pray. There was even a time when they called a meeting, and it was Kony who asked me to stand up. And do you know what he told people about me? He told people, “You know this girl, look at her carefully. She is in the list to be killed. Because what is in her heart is bad. She does not respect us; neither does she value us. God is still with her, but her time will come.” You know, I doubted them. And I don’t respect them; I don’t value them. I would look at them like all evildoers. While I was in the bush I would pray to God because I used to be a very stubborn girl when I was in the bush. But the God that those people worship is not the creator of heaven and earth. That is what I’ve seen. I did not believe in the issue of tipu [spirits] because I knew about how it came about. I was taught already, that is why I never believed in it. But the issue of cen [haunting spirit of a person who has died violently], cen is there. I have seen many who have returned from the bush. I cannot say everyone who comes from the bush has not killed. Some of them were killing. Some did not kill. More especially, you find that those whom cen is disturbing a lot are those who were cutting people using knives. You know, you cut someone into pieces…those are the kind of killing whereby if you manage to do it, cen will follow you. Cen will disturb you. They are there. I have seen many. Cen is really disturbing them also. I did not believe in tipu because I was very close to Kony’s elderly brother. His elderly brother taught me a lot about his tipu and how it [his spirit possession] started so I never wanted to believe in it. We have only one spirit in the bush, that is the spirit I know. I’ve never seen the spirits of those who died in the bush. But the ones I know are for Kony. He has many spirits. Maybe I can tell people this: a spirit can come in the shape of a good spirit, but it is not a good spirit, it’s a bad spirit. His brother told me that when Kony first went to the bush, all the family members were in the bush. Even the dad, even the mum, even the father, even the brothers, they were all in the bush at first. Most of them have left. Some of them died even. But his elderly brother taught me a lot about tipu and how it started so I never wanted to believe in it. He told me that in those days before the war, Joseph and his brothers were bathing in a stream near their home in Odek. They were bathing in this small river and his brothers got out after they had finished, but Joseph was still downstream. He was smearing soap on a stone and suddenly, the stone split into two. Immediately, Kony was nowhere to be seen. They say that they saw it with their own true eyes: Kony was there, then that thing broke into two, and it swallowed him. He was nowhere to be seen. They searched everywhere, in all directions, but they couldn’t find him. So they went home to the parents. When they reached home and reported the case to the dad, the dad came back to where they had been bathing. He himself started searching for Kony. He searched for him, but failed to get him. After that, Kony stayed underwater for one month. And that is where he was taken by the spirit. For one month he was there. You know, his father, since he was told that he disappeared from there, from time to time he would come back

155 to check on his son. Kony knows what people are thinking because of that spirit, he came out of it from the water. He would tell if you are thinking something bad about him, even though you are not with him. The spirit tells him. He knows everything. After, there was time they were on top of the mountain in Odek and found Kony on top of that mountain. They started talking to him, but he couldn’t talk. He could not talk. But after two weeks he started talking and the first thing he said was: “I want to break this government. This government will cease to exist.” That is the first thing he said when he started speaking. His father would tell him not to say such a thing, but he would not assent to anyone. He would keep on repeating the same thing again and again. Before he left home to go to the bush, he went back to that mountain were he got power and started praying. Before he went to Sudan, before there was any fighting or any battle, he would go and get power from there. Whenever there was going to be a battle, you would find Kony would go to that place in Odek where he is from. There is some soil near where that mountain is. He would remove the soil and that clean water from the river, and people would tie it in a vial around their necks. It was always collected from there with a little bit of soil put in. It is for protection. Normally when you put that thing, even though you are fighting you will not get hurt by the bullets. There is nothing we used apart from that one. He does not want to see anything like from the witch doctors or the what what what [etcetera]. He does not want. What he only wants is that one: the water, the soil, and moo-ya [blessed oil from the shea tree]. That is what he uses. After five years of living with that man I realised I was pregnant. There is a difference in the way children who are abducted are treated to those who are born in the bush. Because if you compare those who are abducted and those who were produced from there, you find that they tend to protect those ones who are delivered from the bush. They take care of them, and it is like…the hope is when they grow up they should be a soldier. They should serve as soldiers. For example, there is a lady who was produced from the bush. Right now as we speak she has made twelve years. She has returned home. She has just returned home. There are very many children whom I have been seeing from the bush. They have been produced in the bush and they are even in the bush up till now. For example, the sons: Kony’s son is there. He is sixteen years old. What I still think about are some little children who are remaining in the bush…the ones who were abducted. They had really been supporting me when I was in the bush. Like they would carry my children, in case of anything they would help me carry luggage, they have been very supportive to me. That is what bothers me most. Some of them have returned, but some of them I have not seen up to now. No one hurt me when I was pregnant, except when I was two months pregnant and I was intending to escape. While I was in the bush, there was a lady whom I used to know here; she was even once my schoolmate. We lived together; her home was even near my home. So when I was in the bush, I even met her in the bush. So when I shared my feelings with her that I wanted to escape, instead she told me that she does not want to go anywhere, she’ll not be escaping. There in the bush we have friends, but not the kind of friends we have here. If you are here, you can tell your friends your secrets. But from there, you cannot tell your friend your secrets. She is remaining in the bush and she

156 is the one who passed the messages to the elderly people. That is how they came to know about it. Before they started beating me, they told me how they would beat me. “If God allows her to live, then she will live, if not, she will die.” Because they don’t mind whatever happens to you; they are so cold. And they don’t value any human being in this world. I was caned two hundred strokes, and I was beaten almost to death. I was unconscious, and then when I was coming back to my senses, I realized I was put in the bush. It’s very hard to tell if they left me in the bush because they believed I was dead because they beat me to the extent that I did not know anything. I didn’t know anything. I only realized that there was no one where I was laid. That is only what I can remember. When I woke I realised “I am alone,” where I was. I got up and went were I was supposed to be. After I was beaten, the very person who reported me was the one who was nicer. Because in the bush there, you’re not allowed to keep grudges. They don’t want hatreds. When they learn that you hate someone and you don’t want to talk to that person because of a, b, c, d, they don’t want those kinds of behaviour in the bush. I carried the pregnancy, and I even delivered the baby from there, the first baby. That baby was actually twins! I delivered twins. I hated the names of Opiyo and Acen [traditional names given to twins]. So when I escaped I re-named them. They are now Onen Moses and Nyero Benjamin. It wasn’t a very easy time for me because during war, you know I had those two children I had to carry with me. So it became very difficult for me and unbearable, so I started planning how to escape from the bush. You know when I was even still in the bush, I was shot in the shoulder. That gunshot made it not very easy to me to carry the children. It was a time of problems. I had stayed with only one man simply because I decided to sneak out before it was too late for me. I did not take long with him. After delivery of my boys, I managed to stay there for six months before I escaped. I escaped with both my sons in 1994, and at first I did not go very far. I hid myself in the bush. So immediately, after learning that I was not around, they started searching for me. They reached were I was, but God was great. Both the two kids were asleep. So they searched for me and searched, they couldn’t get me, they kept saying, “You know this woman cannot go anywhere, we shall get her, she has not yet gone very far with the two children. We shall get her.” I want to thank God for having kept me, because their plan was that if they get me they would kill me for sneaking away from them. During that time, there weren’t yet any reception centres. So I went straight home. Thereafter I was brought to town, then I was taken to the RDC’s [Resident District Counsellor of national Government] office. My first day when I reached home, I did not yet enter in the home because when they saw me, they started moving and searching for those traditional things: looking for the eggs, looking for the spear, looking for what, so that I step on it before I enter in the home [things required for nyono tong gweno, a cleansing ceremony]. But what I told them is, “That is not the reason as to why I came back home. And that is not the purpose for me back home. It is not for the purpose that is why I am back home. You’d better remove it away. And if you want it to be there, then

157 let me go back to the bush.” Then I turned; I started moving back. I never wanted to step on it since these things, ever since my childhood, I never wanted to encourage it. To me I find it’s not fair. I don’t like it even. I don’t know why. I just find myself like that. I don’t like it. So they decided to remove those things, then they let me come. That is how I came home. When I returned home, the love they used to show me had all gone away. No one loved me as they did before. By the time I came back, I wasn’t okay. I was even suffering from Guinea worms that had eaten all my body. You know, when you are not taking drugs, Guinea worms keep on multiplying. They were everywhere and they ate me here in the shin and they ate another part of my body. I also had two different kinds of worms other than the Guinea worms. I took a long time, like two years, with it. Due to my illness and the love they didn’t show me at home – even the children were disturbing me, no one would bother – even my real mum who used to show me love, she would not even bother to pay attention to my problems. The condition that I was passing through wasn’t easy. It had reached to the point where I saw no one around me would bother taking care of me, so I decided to make up my mind that these children; God gave them to me. Now it is my role to play so that my children can live happily if I start living my only life. But during that time, the conditions were worsening day and night. The first person, or the first person, or the first parties who should have shown love to us much more was our family members. Because if you cannot get love at home, then you cannot get love anywhere. The government can show love to you, but if your family members cannot love you, you cannot feel that love. So it is always very important for love to start from home. I have been very close with my brothers and sisters. I go and visit them, but I can never stay with them. It is very difficult, you know, in Acholi culture. If my babies would have been girls, it was going to be easy because time will come and they’ll go away. But now that they are boys, you know, people look at things in very many perspectives. When they go home they think of fighting for land, they think of very many things. So it is not very easy. I can never settle with them anymore. I have forgiven my brothers and sisters and my relatives. They never showed me love, so they only idea was that God was with me. I forgave everyone for the wrong they had done, so I don’t have anything to tackle with them. I found out after I escaped that my husband passed away. When one of the commanders was captured and returned home, I got a report from him: he told me that my husband died. I have no more children because I got a man I wanted to settle with, but you know the way that man was even taking me wasn’t right. He had another older woman already, the first wife was there and I was to be the second wife. But now he would tell me that he could not stay with me because I am like a Kony. He cannot share me and the other wife. He cannot live with me. So since that time I have never picked interest of settling with a man. I am alone and taking care of the children I came back from the bush with. And it is not for my case only. Most of the girls who are from the bush, they have that problem. I managed to keep my children up until now because I know God. I was taught that God is good, and caring. Though people can leave you, God can never leave you. So I got saved. I was deep-rooted in prayers, and that is why you see me up to now. Life is a little bit easier for me because I have known God. And I get a little bit of happiness in my

158 life. But only one big task I have now is taking care of my boys, I have them. My brothers do not show love to them. It’s me always to battle with them, they don’t have any home, neither any place; they have nowhere to go to! There was also woman who was my neighbour, and one day she passed away from because she was HIV positive. She was living a single life with three children. So I felt bad, and I checked on myself: even though I am poor, I can still afford to take care of these children instead of leaving them to die. So I decided to take care, to bring those children with me. They are not my relatives, but I am taking care of them! So that is the problem I am in now.

- 9 September 2009, Gulu Town

159