OK, well read on for information on the recent and horrific
conflict that has given Northern Uganda such a sad history.
Over the past 20 years, Northern Uganda has been ripped
apart by domestic violence most notably by a group calling themselves the Lords
Resistance Army led by an purely evil man named Joseph Koney. They were at one time labeled a Terrorist
organization as they used terror as their primary strategy of accomplishing
their missions. The saddest part in all
of this is that they use innocent children as their soldiers. Koney’s organization would go into villages,
burn them to the ground, kill many of the men, rape the women, and abduct all
the young boys of all ages. They would
basically tell the boys that if they didn’t do everything they were told, they
would simply kill them. So the poor boys
really had no choice but to obey orders.
Horrifically, these orders were of the most inhumane nature. I warn you, that if you have a weak stomach,
you may want to skip reading this next part which I will mark with *…*.
*In order to make
sure these boys wouldn’t return to their villages they used tactics of shame
and guilt. So they would make the boys kill their own family members by either
shooting of beating them to death with a club. Then to make it worst, they
would take parts of their families’ bodies, cook them, and force the kids to
eat their own family members. How could
a boy ever return to his village, even if he escaped from the LRA, with that
type of shame forced upon him? If
children weren’t forced to kill people, they would often be forced to maim
their victims by cutting off their ears, nose and lips as just another way of
striking terror and fear into their opponents. *
The other tactical (and sick) reason for using young boys is
the moral dilemma of how Uganda’s army could wage war against its own
sons? In other words, of they went in to
an all out battle against the LRA, they would effectively be killing boys who
would be the future of their country.
The LRA only attacked innocent civilian villages and never military
targets. Thus, one of the reasons they
were labeled terrorist even though over 80% of its combatants were children
under the age of 16.
The best answer the Ugandan government could come up with
for many years was to forcibly displace about 1.5 million people from their
homes where they’d be possible targets of the LRA and move them into
“protective camps.� From the
documentaries, I’ve watched, these camps had worst conditions than many of the
WWII Japanese-American internment camps, and this was Uganda’s own government
trying to provide a safe haven for its own people. The camps at best were safe but unsanitary;
at their worst, they didn’t even provide
sufficient safety from LRA. But instead,
they became an easy target for the LRA as larger groups of civilians were down
herded into one location, and often times didn’t even provide the protection
that they were intended for. In fact,
over 10,000 children were abducted from these so-called protective camps. In
all, the government estimates that over 25,000 of Uganda’s children were taken
captive by the LRA.
These camps became breeding grounds for excessive
alcoholism, as there was very little to do in terms of being able to work or
entertain themselves in any way. Excessive drinking then led to violence, rape,
and eventually all out sodomy which sky-rocketed the HIV prevalence throughout
Northern Uganda during this time.
Currently the LRA has signed a peace agreement with Uganda’s government
and are not find harbor in a neighboring African country.
All this to say that many of the people here are still
living in fear and hopelessness in the wake of this very recent atrocity. There are members in the local church who
have been directly and certainly indirectly affected by the brutality of the
LRA. Its seems to be nearly an impossible
issue to encourage someone who has had to live through these inhumanities, and
certainly without God, I don’t think I could even give any sort of
encouragement. But thank the Lord that
he brings hope to the hopeless and provides comfort for those who may seem to
us inconsolable. It’s no wonder many
African churches seem to cry out to God is much more palpable ways than many
American churches. They have so much
hurt and hopelessness that they are laying at God’s feet and begging for
comfort and provision. It really makes
me not only put my own issues in America into perspective, but also helps me
recognize how big God as he has promised he has already overcome the world
(John 16:33).
Please keep this country in your prayers as you too now know
what it has dealt with and therefore have a responsibility to, at the very
least, lift them up in prayer.
Be well,
J
