“I want to do this,” he said.
“Why?” I asked. His motivation was more important to me than his willingness.
He answered carefully. “I’m African,” he said. “And Africans are the solution to Africa’s problems. I’m so invested in a solution to the LRA conflict that I won’t accept a fee for the mission, and I will discount my trainers’ salaries.” He added that he would only agree to the mission if the Ugandan military agreed to do their share, and if we could have some say in regard to screening soldiers for the work ahead.
We’d thought my non-negotiable terms would be impossible to fill. But he was meeting all of them. Despite my qualms over what I knew of his former career, I was beginning to feel strongly that Eeben was our guy.
Now I was really scared.
18
DRONE
THE NEXT DAY, Laren and I flew with Eeben to Kampala to meet with General Aronda. To forge this collaboration we needed more than everyone’s agreement to work together, more than a concrete and thorough plan: we had to overcome differences across three cultures and navigate multiple triangles of trust.
We convened once again at the Emin Pasha Hotel, this time in a private suite. Our first encounter had been in the middle of the night. Now we were actually laying out potential terms of our proposed support. And now Aronda’s eyes were alert instead of half closed. He agreed with many of Eeben’s suggestions, and seemed to respect his outside-the-box thinking.
Then Aronda reminded us that the Ugandan army was covering a distance twice the size of Uganda in pursuit of the LRA. That tracking by foot ended when the food ran out. That the specially trained soldiers would not be effective unless the Ugandan military had the ability to airlift food, fuel, equipment, troops. “If we had three Mi-17s we could transport nearly one hundred troops,” he said.
I was suddenly uncomfortable. Although Eeben had also spoken to us about the advantages of air mobility, I had been very clear from the beginning that Bridgeway was offering to pay for the training of Ugandan soldiers, not buy expensive equipment for the armed forces. James Acker’s warning flashed in my mind: Don’t let them prey on you as a soft target for a few million. I knew General Aronda was already twenty layers deep in counter-LRA work, that he knew a million times more than we did about the hurdles and necessities in fighting the LRA. And I realized how strange we must have seemed to him, how alien it was for a private group to propose assistance with a military action on humanitarian grounds. He had every right to be critical of our inexperience, and even to be suspicious of us, to wonder what favors we might require in return for our resources. But the tentative trust worked both ways. I had a strong fear that something more than shared purpose could be motivating him, that he might be trying to cherry-pick expensive equipment off a gullible donor.
That fear only intensified when he said, “We need intelligence collection. We need a drone.”
I didn’t know then what I came to know later. That the mission would need air support for troop and supply mobility, and that aerial surveillance was needed to locate the LRA. That once the Ugandan military found them—if they found them—they would need video and infrared capabilities to keep an eye on the rebels night and day. That a manned aircraft couldn’t even fly the fourteen to twenty continuous hours to the Central African Republic and back to gather and convey intelligence. That when the general asked for a drone to capture Kony, he wasn’t trying to play me. He was absolutely right.
But in my world, drone was a loaded word. Drones were weaponized; drones had mistakenly and tragically been used to kill civilians; drones were completely beyond our budget. A drone was out of the question, much too great a risk. General Aronda’s mere mention of one had put me over the edge of unease.
“I think this meeting is over,” I said. I stood up and headed for the door.
“No, no,” Aronda said, reaching out to tug on my suit jacket sleeve as I passed his chair. “There’s no need to leave in haste. Sit down. Sit down.”
THE FACE OF GOD
David Ocitti
THE FIRST NIGHT back in Pabbo, David collapsed in the market area and slept. At dawn he wandered the village again. His wounds were throbbing. He knocked on doors, stopped strangers, begged people to tell him if his mother had lived. By afternoon, he had to accept that his mother wasn’t there.
“She might be at another camp,” someone finally told him. “People have been moving around a lot after the recent attacks.”
The next closest camp was Alero. By the time he reached it, his leg was so swollen he could hardly walk. He paused by the side of the road. A man passed him warily.
“Do you know Alero?” David asked.
The man nodded. He barely looked at David. He seemed ready to run.
“Please, I won’t hurt you. I’m looking for my mother,” David said.
The man paused, listened. When David said his mother’s name, the man nodded slowly. “I know who she is,” he said. “Follow me.”
David felt dizzy. The man led him through the winding paths of the Alero camp, and finally stopped near a thatched-roof hut. A woman knelt in the yard, feeding a fire.
It was her. He could tell by the bend of her head, the red and magenta and green of her scarf, her dress. He tried to call to her, but his body had stopped working again. It was the man who yelled her name. She turned. Lips pursed. She saw David. She frowned slightly.
“I brought you your son,” the man said.
His mother brushed ash from her hands and stood. She didn’t smile at David. “Why are you here?” she said.
“Mom, Mom, it’s me. I’m home.”
“No,” she said. “You’re not.”
“I am. I escaped.”
“You’ve just come back to kill us.”
She meant that she was afraid David had brought other LRA members along with him, as was commonplace when abductees were forced to lead the LRA back to their village to commit atrocities. The words fell on David like stones. Who do you love the most? echoed in his head. He started to cry. “Mom,” he said. “Mom.” The tears came rushing out.
She stepped toward him, uncertain. Then she was holding him. “My baby, my baby,” she said. “You gave me a terrible scare.”
David felt her strong arms circling him, her heart thudding against his ribs. He rested his head on top of her head. She smelled like the cooking fire.
“My baby, my baby.” She swayed with him back and forth.
David closed his eyes.
Finally, his mother pulled away and gazed at him. She touched his face, his forehead. “You’re bleeding,” she said. She brought water and clean rags. She daubed the wet rag gently along his cheek, over his forehead, dissolving the dried blood. She bandaged the cut on his head. She performed the same ritual on his leg. It was the first kind touch David had felt in six months. It felt so good—the way she looked at him. The face of God could not have been sweeter.
19
BLACK AND WHITE
AFTER ONE MORE meeting with Eeben Barlow and General Aronda, we had a plan we all agreed on. Bridgeway would fund the training itself. The Ugandan military would cover every other cost and all aspects of the mission: room, board, and salaries for their personnel, all equipment needed for the training, and the weaponry and strategy for the mission to capture Kony and release his hostages. In the meantime, the lawyers I’d consulted had all confirmed that the proposed undertaking to fund specialized training for select Ugandan soldiers was in the clear, that we did not violate state and commerce department international traffic in arms regulations, or any other laws. We were ready to begin.
I created my own council of advisers, talking to a select group of colleagues and mentors in the humanitarian field whom I could trust with sensitive information and count on to offer me useful perspective. I especially sought out the people I thought would be my biggest critics
. I wanted their advice on how to make the intervention as effective and safe as possible.
I was sure the pacifist, Quaker-like sensibility of John Montgomery, Bridgeway’s founder, would help him see the risks and flaws of a military intervention, that he would tell me we had to turn away. But while he was surprised by the idea, he was unswervingly committed to making a world free from mass atrocities. And he trusted me. He’d been part of the whole journey so far, and he knew that nothing else had worked.
I expected Gary Haugen, my former boss at International Justice Mission—the first person to teach me that sometimes advocacy isn’t enough, that sometimes direct intervention is necessary—would warn me about the ways a mission like this could backfire, that a mistake in the field could make it even harder to complete other projects, that I might tarnish my reputation and relationships in such a way that I’d be rendered ineffective in my humanitarian work. But when we met for tacos at Chuy’s, a Tex-Mex restaurant in San Antonio, he simply said, “If we’re going to rid the world of injustice, there must be people as committed to justice as the perpetrators are to committing wrong.”
I was prepared for the biggest pushback from Ken Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch. I went to his New York office ready to field a litany of concerns. He agreed that this was an out-of-the-box idea, a far cry from building a school or drilling a well. But, like the others I’d consulted, he thought the intervention was worth considering. “We keep writing these reports about LRA attacks and massacres,” he said. “We keep beating the drum for the arrest of Kony and the other ICC indictees. But the ICC has no arresting mechanism. You’re helping to close this gap.”
He raised one area of concern, asking if we’d given consideration to the Ugandan military’s history of human rights abuses. “Do you have a plan to avoid providing training to people with a track record of atrocities?” he asked.
I told him we would try to train only soldiers who were thirty years old or younger, too young to have participated in the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Ugandan military in Congo during the 1990s. During the training itself, we would insist that the soldiers receive human rights training, including instruction on how to properly handle defectors, the ethics of operating in small groups and in denied areas where supplies are difficult to find, and an explanation of Geneva Convention and basic human rights standards. Ken said he was glad we were taking these steps, and encouraged us to move ahead.
No one I consulted with said as frankly as I said to myself what I knew to be true: that we were taking a terrible risk in training a foreign force with interests beyond the LRA and a history of human rights abuses with its neighbor, Congo, and led by an aging president who had clung to power for decades. That it could end badly, that it might set a dangerous precedent. In one last attempt to gain advice and perspective before we committed, I met with the most dedicated humanitarian and pacifist I had ever encountered, the final person I more than halfway hoped would turn us back.
* * *
—
I walked in the serene gardens of the Fairlawns resort in Johannesburg, South Africa, with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. We had met working with The Elders, an organization of global leaders Nelson Mandela had brought together in 2007 to work for peace and human rights. At its inception, I’d been invited by a cofounder and friend in philanthropy to serve on the advisory council. I was honored to support The Elders, constantly inspired by the work and commitment of these change makers, and I treasured the personal relationships I had been privileged to build with some of the world’s most loving visionaries. Archibishop Tutu—Arch, as he asked me to call him—had become a dear friend, and I was fortunate to get to visit with him several times a year.
As we strolled together, his bright purple shirt and crisp white cleric’s collar were vivid against the lush green, his large silver cross catching the sun. Some of us in The Elders remarked that many of those involved had a superpower. President Jimmy Carter’s was hope. Virgin founder Richard Branson’s was fun. Archbishop Tutu’s was joy. Even as we took slow, silent steps through the garden, Arch exuded joy. He smiled up at me impishly. He didn’t look like a person who had spent a lifetime confronting humanity’s worst travesties. He looked like someone in possession of a happy secret. He made joy look effortless.
On an Elders trip to Darfur in 2007—where conflict had been ravaging the nation for years, where the violence had forced millions of people into refugee camps where they faced further horrors: not enough food or water, the constant fear of being raped, of attacks by the Janjaweed militias—my heart had been so heavy that I’d barely been able to hold back my tears until we reached our hotel for the night. One blisteringly hot afternoon in the camps when I was particularly struggling against despair, Arch stepped into a throng of refugees and started to dance. His bald head, his white collar, his beaming face flashed in the dusty crowd of people who didn’t know when they would get their next meal, who didn’t know if their children would live through the night—and they broke into laughter when they saw him and joined him in song.
How did he do it? How did he bring joy in such deadly and devastating circumstances? How did he find happiness amid such staggering sadness? On one of our long drives I had asked him about it, and he said, “Sister Shannon, it’s not that I’m not sad. It’s that I choose joy. Even when we’re crying—especially when we’re crying—we have to work to find joy in the world.”
Joy wasn’t his effortless condition. Joy was his discipline.
“What’s troubling you?” he asked me now as we threaded our way across the lawn in Johannesburg, toward a shady grove of palm trees.
I blurted it out. I told him that we were thinking of doing something unprecedented to stop the LRA. I felt strongly that the international community had tried every other possible avenue for an end to Kony’s violence. But as a peacemaker and human rights lawyer, I was afraid that a decision I might make could have the potential to lead to more chaos and death. Despite my rigorous and careful examination of the issue and my countless conversations with human rights advocates well-versed in the conflict, there were still variables that I couldn’t account for because they were impossible to predict, or simply invisible to me. It wasn’t enough to have good intentions and committed allies, to share a conviction for peace and justice. I was wrestling with one of the golden rules of humanitarian work: first, do no harm. Our ideals and commitment didn’t protect anyone from all the ways, seen and unseen, that an intervention could go wrong. I could choose to take risks with my organization’s reputation and resources. But these were insignificant compared with the risks on the ground, of warfare and retribution. Of course, as I was learning, not to act was the biggest risk of all. I asked Arch to help me weigh my desire and responsibility to do right with the very real possibility that others could suffer because of choices I’d made.
Arch didn’t seem at all surprised. He didn’t miss a beat. It was like he already knew. He took my hand. “Sister Shannon,” he said, “things are rarely black and white. But this one is clear. Put your fears to rest. You already know in your heart what you are going to do.”
* * *
—
As vigorously as I faced and tried to eliminate the risks, I had no way to know how long the mission would last, or what the costs would be. On November 7, 2010, Eeben sent the request for authorization. I signed it. Operation Viper would begin on February 3, 2011.
PART TWO
Silence in the face of evil is itself evil:
God will not hold us guiltless.
Not to speak is to speak.
Not to act is to act.
—DIETRICH BONHOEFFER
20
IN AT HALF
ONE MORNING SHORTLY before Christmas, my hardworking and meticulously organized assistant, Jen, asked for me to weigh in on an odd meeting request. She’d recently been contacted by the assista
nt to someone she had never heard of, asking to schedule a meeting with me as soon as possible. When she’d replied that my schedule was booked solid for the next three months, the stranger’s assistant had persisted, so Jen had googled the name of the man who was requesting a meeting, and discovered that he—Muneer Satter—was a high-level partner at the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs. He wanted to meet me for an hour lunch. He would fly to San Antonio, I would pick him up at the private plane terminal, take him to lunch, and drop him back to meet his plane.
No one had ever gone to such extraordinary lengths to arrange a meeting with me before and I agreed, mainly out of curiosity. But I was cautious when, a few days before Christmas, I waited in the lobby of the small airport to meet Muneer Satter. Right on time, an impeccably dressed man in a collared shirt and dress shoes walked—almost bounced, he was that energetic—through the sliding doors from the tarmac. His dark eyes twinkled from behind his rimless glasses, his face lit up.
At an Italian restaurant near the airport, after some brief pleasantries, he looked across the table and explained why he wanted to meet. He said he was very interested in the work we were doing to stop Kony.
I wracked my brain trying to figure out how he knew about the work, and what exactly he knew. Our mission had been kept so quiet, yet he seemed to be aware of details my own family didn’t know. I was shocked, and scared that if he knew this much, others must know, too.
Muneer told me that he had supported Ken Roth at Human Rights Watch in going after Charles Taylor, an infamous Liberian warlord. When Taylor had been captured, he’d asked Roth who they should target next. Ken had said Joseph Kony. Muneer had immediately begun funding organizations that were working to end Kony’s war, including some of the same NGOs that Bridgeway funded. But he was a results-oriented man, and he had grown weary of the advocacy-only approach to change.
To Stop a Warlord Page 11