Child to Soldier: Stories from Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army
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More fundamentally, Turner seems to suggest that, through the transformative process of liminality, the initiates gain new perspectives about the world around them. In the new communitas, hierarchy, class, and social standing are dissolved to allow initiates to coexist by drawing on their common humanity and values as well as good fellowship. As posited here, however, liminality is an intense process of transformation through which child abductees are subjected to physical and psychological coercion, torture, and extreme violence, which forces them to rethink their prior cultural understanding of how to be and relate as human persons, and to accept a new reality where violence is the currency of everyday existence. Violence against the abductees at this time may be interpreted as deliberate attempts by the LRM/A to create, through intense pain, tabula rasa, near-blank young minds, such that, at least in the short term, previous memories are overcome by the terror of the present. It is at these moments of utter cruelty, of the dehumanizing liminal process induced by extreme violence, that child abductees are forced to do whatever is necessary to survive, including killing other children and committing other terrible acts which over time become routine to them.
But taking on alternative identities as combatants and killers, I argue, does not mean that abductees reject the identities that had been formed before abduction by the LRM/A. Rather, I maintain that, as products of the violent, liminal process, child abductees develop alternative stigmatized identities which allow them to fit and work within the LRM/A culture of violence while retaining the desirable identities that were cultivated early in childhood. They become a tight-knit army of killers who perpetrate unimaginable acts of violence and cruelty on their victims, yes, but they also retain knowledge of who they were before they were abducted. By retaining and seeking to reclaim these pre-LRM/A identities, as we see later in the book, returning CI soldiers experience deep pain when their families and society view them not as innocent child abductees but as rebels.
As a young mother in the LRM/A camp, Miya Aparo retained the same sense of responsibility to others that she had when growing up in the village, but this time it was in the context of the battlefield: ‘Out there if you cooked today, then you had food, if not then you had nothing. When you found food, you had to carry it to help you feed the children we had. I had a child, and needed to look for food, he also needed something to eat, you also needed something to eat, all the other people you had around you wanted something to eat. You had to search for food.’ Having gone through the liminal culture transformation from child to child combatant, Miya, like many other abductees, still saw herself as part of a community in which she had a defined role as a provider. Simultaneously, she also adapted to the new role of combatant where she could perpetrate certain violent acts including killing. She could in an instant, so to speak, slip on her combat identity to prepare for battle. Behaviour that had been taboo prior to her abduction was now part of her daily existence, and did not hold the same moral import it once had in the familiar cultural space of her village prior to the war.
Of course, the LRM/A had an established military structure, with administrative chain of command, training regime, and war strategies, similar to that of other modern guerrilla armies. According to information offered by my informants, at the top of the structure are four spirits – Divo, Silindi, Markey, and Juma Oris – to whom Joseph Kony answers and who provide him with intelligence about the future. Kony is also assisted by senior officers with various roles and functions, including vice-chairman, head of the political wing, head of military intelligence, and chief of operations. Under these senior officers are various officers who control the brigades and the battalions (also see Dolan, 2009, 300). Information is often relayed by radio between field commanders and headquarters.
Based on the information provided by my informants, as well as other sources (notably Dolan [2009] and Behrend ]1999]), I have identified eight phases in the liminal culture process that Acholi children undergo in their transformation into bona fide LRM/A child combatants. These phases are not mutually exclusive or sequential; they tend to overlap, following different steps depending on the circumstances, and taking an indeterminate length of time to complete. Some abductees report a very short phase before they emerged as child combatants, while others claim to have experienced a longer transformational period. Moreover, gender differentiation is observed in some of the stages, where girls are slotted to become wives while boys are pushed towards combat. Generally speaking, bearing in mind the variables outlined above, the eight phases in the liminal culture process of becoming child combatants are: 1) mak (abduction); 2) wot ii lum (going into the bush); 3) lwoko wii cibilan (washing the civilian mind); 4) neko dano (killing a person); 5) wiiro kom ki moo yaa (anointing the body with shea-butter oil); 6) donyo ii gang (entering the residential homestead); 7) pwonyo mony (military training); and 8) cito ii tic (going to work). The relevance of each phase in the process of transforming Acholi children into child combatants is outlined and discussed in detail below.
The Eight Phases in the Liminal Transformationof Children into Soldiers
Mak (Abduction)
All the informants recalled in precise detail what they were doing, the time of day, and the circumstances at the time of mak. Ringo Otigo was returning from the stream where he went to collect water for evening use when he was abducted. Jola Amayo and her sisters were already in bed when the door to their house was kicked open by rebel soldiers. Amal Ataro was returning from school when she was selected for abduction. Payaa Mamit was engaged in the mundane task of pounding dry cassava when the LRM/A rebels entered her compound one evening in September 1992: ‘In the evening, around seven thirty, while pounding some cassava, I heard the dog bark. A soldier emerged from the darkness. I was busy pounding the cassava, and was covered all over in white cassava dust. He said, “Sit down, sit down, and do not run!” Within moments, three others emerged. Then the whole place became dark and, as it turned out, they had surrounded the home.’
Although abductions of children also occur during the day (see Dolan, 2009, 79), night provides the strategic cover of darkness for the LRM/A rebels to escape back into the forest without engaging the UPDF air and ground forces (Dolan, 2009, 79). The choice of night abduction by the LRM/A, I would argue, is also significant from an Acholi cultural viewpoint, mainly because of what darkness means to the child abductees. As in other African cultures (for example, Igbo culture in Achebe, 1958, 7), in the Acholi culture, all bad things including illness, deaths, and witchcraft happen at night. Acholi poet Okot p’Bitek (1966) points out, ‘No one moves at midnight / Except wizards covered in ashes / Dancing stark naked’ (88). The night mostly belongs to people with evil intentions known as lujogi (sing. Lajok; also latal), who practise witchcraft and ply their trade at night. According to J.P. Ocitti (1973), latal is ‘someone who practised black magic by dancing around people’s houses for evil purposes’ (16).
Often the abductees have no clue who the abductors are and where they are being taken. For an Acholi child, therefore, being taken away from family at night by unknown persons is psychologically disarming and as terrifying an ordeal as the prospect of death itself. The darkness, as it were, offers a curtain that cuts the bond between the child and his or her family. To Payaa, ‘The whole place became dark,’ which could very well be a description of the mood that engulfed her home as it became apparent that she was about to be taken away by the rebels.
In any event, at daybreak, when sunlight finally reveals the faces of the abductors, the child is surrounded by strangers, or at the very least is in new, unfamiliar surroundings with no idea of what the future portends. Occasionally, there are familiar faces, as was the case for Can Kwo Obato when he was abducted in May 1996 from his village in Pageya, Gweng-Diya region. He recognized a former village friend who had been abducted two years earlier and was now an LRM/A child combatant. Can Kwo pleaded with the rebel named Obwolo to let him go, but the rebel refused, citing the danger surrounding such a releas
e:
Obwolo said, ‘Is that you Can Kwo?’
I replied, ‘It is me.’ He took me aside and I said, ‘Man, Obwolo, release me so I can return home.’
Obwolo said, ‘Look, I am not going to release you because even if I let you go, they are going to find you, arrest you and kill you. In such event, it would appear as if I caused your death.’
Can Kwo, like other abductees abruptly and unexpectedly snatched from their families, was quickly learning the game of survival by distinguishing himself, creating a personal identity in the eyes of his LRM/A abductors. It was a crucial step in surviving the next phase, that of wot ii lum.
Wot ii Lum (Going into the Bush)
For the abductees, every passing day of survival in the bush brought the realization that their situation with the LRM/A was likely permanent. For Payaa Mamit, her moment of clarity concerning her new identity as olum (rebel) in the bush came on the second day after abduction: ‘I had hoped that I would be freed, but that never happened. After two days in captivity, I realized that there was not much I could do. I said to myself, I used to hear that Holy abducts people, and here I am trying to escape and am captured again, I truly am now in the bush. From that moment, I accepted that I was in the bush.’
Payaa’s apparent surrender to the new situation after only two days in the bush was likely because of what lum means to the Acholi. According to the Lwo-English Dictionary, lum means ‘grass’ (Odonga, 2005, 142). However, lum can also mean ‘bush,’ a mysterious place where people do not go without good reason, or for a prolonged period of time. In Acholi cosmology, as in many African cultures, the dual character of the bush is characterized by the bounty it yields for human sustenance and the dangers it harbours for the unsuspecting. It is a place where wild animals and gemo (evil spirits) live. It is a place that promises both the sweetness of kic ogo, wild honey collected from the hollow of large trees, and the sting of nyig kic (bees). ‘Whatever happens in the bush remains in the bush’ is a popular Acholi saying. It means that what happens in the seclusion of the bush should not be brought home since this may bring bad luck or evil spirits.
Furthermore, in relation to the bush, the Acholi distinguish between paco (ancestral home) and ot (residential home). The ancestral home is where one’s ancestors are buried and where the abila (ancestral shrine) is located. When an Acholi leaves the ancestral home to settle elsewhere, say, in Kampala or abroad, he is said to have a residential home in the bush. However well built, the residential home is seen as a temporary place of abode because every Acholi expects to return to the ancestral home where, eventually, he or she will one day be laid to rest.
Payaa, like the other informants in this study, was keenly aware that the very act of wot ii lum in the company of the LRM/A forced the abductees to assume new identities in the eyes of the civil population that made them indistinguishable from those who had voluntarily gone into the bush to join the rebels. The length of time the abductee spent in the bush was irrelevant since any form of association with the LRM/A, however brief, was considered abhorrent. In this way, LRM/A abductees become olum upon abduction, a stigmatized identity that makes it difficult for them to escape back to their villages where they risk arrest or even death. Indeed, abductees killed by the UPDF were deemed rebels, while those lucky enough to be rescued were paraded as abductees saved from the LRM/A rebels.
Moreover, fully aware of what wot ii lum means to the Acholi, the LRM/A exploited this phase to construct the image of a potent, viable, and deadly insurgent not to be trifled with. Some of the boy child combatants wear wic anginya (dreadlocks), which are unfamiliar to the Acholi.9 Girl combatants, who would in their normal lives in the villages wear beautifully plaited hair, instead let their hair grow unkempt. The sight of young boys in dreadlocks and girls with unkempt hair would have instructed newly abducted children that they were about to enter a new environment that had its own rules and way of looking at things. Ironically, albeit against their will, abductees became guilty by association for coming into contact with the fearsome rebels.
Finally, wot ii lum involves the most perilous and arduous physical exertion of walking for long stretches at a time. My informants often referred to can matek (intense suffering) or piny marac (bad surroundings) to describe their experiences during this time. Over several weeks, even months, children weighed down by looted items are marched relentlessly, often without water and food. Children perish at this stage, often too weak to take another step forward. Those too weak to walk are either abandoned or, more commonly, clubbed to death with lokile (small axe) (Dolan, 2009). One participant described his intense suffering this way: ‘The pattern became, walk, spend the night, walk, and spend the night. We started again in the morning and bathed at two in the afternoon once we reached a big body of water. One day, we walked the entire day, no food, no cooking. On the second day we finally found water at two in the afternoon. We sat down. The permission was given for people to go bathe, and start cooking.’
The LRM/A, in effect, used wot ii lum as a military strategy and element of control. Lacking motorized transportation, the LRM/A made walking a part of the long war, often covering as much as eighty kilometres or more in one day (Dolan, 2009). It served to toughen up the abductees and make them more knowledgeable about bush craft, teaching them to read signs on the trails that less trained eyes might ignore. According to Ringo Otigo, who witnessed the abduction of the Aboke girls, the commanders spent many days moving back and forth over many kilometres. ‘We turned around and came back. After returning, we turned around and walked back to the mouth of the river that very same day.’
Ringo Otigo goes on to say that ‘it appeared that they wanted to confuse the students before taking them to Sudan. They planned to move back and forth so that the students could not remember the direction being taken.’ Wot ii lum, then, also served another purpose, that of confusing the abductees, in effect initiating the brainwashing phase. This was what the LRM/A referred to as lwooko wii cibilan.
Lwoko wii Cibilan (Washing the Civilian Mind)
In the lwoko wii cibilan phase, the LRM/A uses extreme physical exertion and beating to transform timid village children into toughened LRM/A recruits. It is akin to what communist China of the 1950s referred to as hsi nao – washing the brain –which aimed to reform those seen as anti-revolution into fervent supporters of communist ideology (Hunter, 1951; Hunter, 1956; Lifton, 1961; Schein, 1961). According to K. Taylor (2006), ‘brainwashing aims to achieve behavioural change, but behaviour is secondary: its main goal is to change the thoughts of its victims to fit its preferred ideology’ (97). In the case of the LRM/A, washing the civilian mind meant extreme physical torture of abductees. Both Jola Amayo and Ringo Otigo, whose stories are detailed later in the book, were subjected to serious corporal punishment that nearly took their lives. Camconi Oneka recalled how, over several days, the LRM/A had threatened to kill him as a fresh abductee, each time sparing his life. Finally, when they reached the destination under Kilak Hill, he was summoned to appear before the rebels:
They said they needed to exorcise the cen, evil spirit in me. They ordered me to lie down, and they caned me one hundred and fifty times. Then I got up. They asked me when I was abducted, and I told them that I was abducted on such and such a day. They then asked where I was abducted from, and I told them, ‘I was abducted from Camp Coo-pe.’ Then they asked, ‘Who abducted you?’ and I told them that I did not know. They said, ‘How could a big person like you be abducted just like that?’ They told me that I should lie down again, and they hit me on the back seven times with the machete. The skin on my back peeled off.
As part of the torture, the LRM/A constantly reminded the abductees that they could be dealt with ‘as if you are not Acholi.’ The implication and the intended message to the abductees was that the Acholi, as an ethnic entity defined by a common culture and language, look out for each other. Presumably, when one was being treated as an Acholi, one did not suffer the dehumanizing indignities
meted out to those considered ‘not Acholi.’ In essence, the LRM/A linked torture directly to identity formation of the child combatant, distinguishing those deemed to be Acholi from those who were not. Following orders and doing as one was told qualified an abductee as an Acholi and ensured no pain, whereas working against the wishes of the LRM/A brought excruciating pain. As Can Kwo recalled, abductees quickly understood what they needed to do as Acholi in order to survive:
On certain days, beating was administered to all when a recruit escaped. To get rid of any further thought of escape, in the rebels’ way of thinking, we needed to be called on, be given thorough beating before being given stern warnings. The warning given to you was very simple: Should anyone attempt to escape, the sentence is death. Or should one of you escape, you will all be killed. With that, you start thinking that your fellow recruit should not escape before you do. If my fellow abductees are about to escape, I need to spy on them so that I don’t die. That was the politics that we began to consider, to think about, forcing us to keep an eye on each other.
But, as we see in the neko dano phase, the LRM/A made killing a necessary process in the transformation of the child abductee into a child combatant.
Neko Dano (Killing a Person)
Neko dano was the LRM/A’s most crucial phase in transforming children into combatants. Abductees were forced to participate in killing or to witness a fellow abductee being killed (Cook, 2007; de Temmerman, 2001; McDonnell & Akallo, 2007). Ocitti (1973) points out that death is universally feared by the Acholi, and every attempt is made to carry out the proper rituals to pacify the spirit of the dead. The Acholi believe that cen (the evil spirit of the dead), whether killed in war or in a domestic dispute, returns to haunt the perpetrator and extended family. So serious is the issue of killing that special purifications are required to rid the perpetrator of the impending cen.10 Ocitti writes: ‘The Acholi respected dead bodies for fear that their spirits might become vengeance ghosts if neglected. By following certain rites in burial, the “living dead” were believed to feel respected and would therefore refrain from making trouble with the living’ (23).