Child to Soldier: Stories from Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army

by Opiyo Oloya

  Furthermore, in the Acholi culture as in other African traditional cultures which abhor violence generally and forbid killing specifically, a person who kills another is said to have kwa cwiny (red heartedness) or col cwiny (dark heartedness), either of which denotes anger, extreme narcissism, and evil, qualities considered by the Acholi as anti-family and anti-community. p’Bitek (1966) writes of the Acholi attitude towards someone regarded or known to be a killer:

  A woman with a black heart

  Who kills people with poison

  Is called Akwir or Anek (p’Bitek, 1966, 130)

  But, according to my informants, not every abducted child was forced to kill someone, though all abductees would have witnessed the killing of someone within the first few weeks of living with the LRM/A. The LRM/A, it seemed, exploited the Acholi fear of death and killing in three different ways. First, the killings of civilians could be interpreted as a multipurpose military strategy which aimed, foremost, to ensure that the whereabouts of the rebels remained a secret. This seemed to be the case when, as recounted in the Introduction, Miya Aparo encountered killing for the first time after abduction. She had developed a serious leg swelling that made it impossible for her to walk. The rebel commanders had haggled over whether they should kill her since she could no longer walk. Instead, a rebel named Okello Triga commandeered an old man to push a bicycle with Miya placed on the carrier. To Miya’s horror, when the services of the old man were no longer needed, the rebels killed him.

  Second, making abductees watch and participate in killing served as powerful reminders of the fate that could befall those who disobeyed orders or attempted to escape. Death served as a deterrent to would-be escapees, making it clear that they would meet a similar fate should they attempt to run away.

  Third, killing was deliberately trivialized, it was casual, without any apparent reason, and it was final. But it also trained the children not to be afraid of killing, inuring them to the sight of blood. The killing of the old man would have brought home to Miya Aparo the Acholi saying of wot ki too (walking with death), the idea that death strikes at any time, and one must always be mindful to do everything one can to stay alive. The ordinariness, some would say the banality, of the violent circumstance of the old man’s death, combined with the cultural fear associated with death, would have been a strong psychological barrier against any thought of escape or not following LRM/A orders. Camconi Oneka was forced to kill two men in the second week of his captivity. He had participated in an LRM/A raid on a community centre where many civilians were abducted. As they marched back to the rebels’ base at the foot of Kilak Hill, his handlers asked him to kill two of the captured civilian men:

  At first I hesitated, trying to bide my time, hoping I would not have to kill the men. The rebels told me that should I continue wasting time, I would be killed in the place of the condemned men. Given the level of threat, guns pointing at me, I decided there was no point in dying. I decided to kill the men; I killed them with a club. I clubbed them to death. Then the rebels told me to lick the blood of the dead men – it was the kind of threat which made me hate the bush completely. I licked the blood. Then they told me to scoop the blood in my cupped hands and take it to them. I did that, and they told me to take it back. I returned it to the ground.

  At a deeper cultural level, ordering children to participate in killing accustomed them to the terrifying notion of being luneko (sing. laneko), killers who must forever bear the collective guilt that arises from the act of killing. It was a significant severing of the moral bridge that connected the child who grew up in the familiar culture of the village, where life is respected, to his or her new identity as a combatant, for whom killing is part of the job description.

  Aware of Acholi’s deep antipathy to death, the LRM/A forced the children to kill other children, thereby making them confront their own Acholi cultural upbringing in which heavy sanctions and taboos were associated with killing and the very notion of death was too difficult to countenance let alone something that one could personally bring about. In essence, the abductees were forced to choose between two equally repulsing options, suffering instant death for disobeying orders or taking an innocent life, an act that is strictly forbidden in Acholi culture and so, if committed, would result in them losing their cultural sense of being human persons. By opting to participate in killing, the abductees secured their survival, but in the process they were pushed to relinquish the notion of leng cwiny (clean heartedness or purity of heart), a cardinal virtue in Acholi culture and a requirement for retaining membership in the community from which they were abducted and to which they hoped to return one day. In fact, Acholi civil society regards returning child combatants as killers who, although they may have been forced to commit killings to avoid being killed themselves, need to be purified with the appropriate traditional cleansing ceremonies in which the returnees set things right with the spirits of those they killed (Liu Institute for Global Issues, Gulu District NGO Forum, & Ker Kwaro Acholi, 2005, 39–43).

  Wiiro Kom (Anointing with Shea Butter)

  In the wiiro kom phase, LRM/A abductees are made to undergo an elaborate ritual involving the use of a mixture of moo yaa (shea-butter oil) and water; the latter must be either collected rain water or water taken from a stream early in the morning before anyone else has touched it. Some of the informants were told that the mixture is a camoflast (camouflage) which protects the rebel soldiers from enemy bullets. Although the practice of anointing the body before battle has historical precedence in Acholi culture (Dolan, 2009), there is no evidence that the LRM/A, unlike Lakwena’s HSM (Behrend, 1998), believed in its efficacy in protecting its army in a very specific way, say, from bullets. Instead, I would argue that the wiiro kom ritual was carefully orchestrated to convey a different meaning to the abductees. Moo yaa is traditionally used by the Acholi as a rare food delicacy, eaten with dek ngor, the thickened sauce of split cowpeas, and kwon bel (millet bread). It is also used at the installation of a new rwot (chief). Equally inescapable is the parallel to the Christian rite of baptism in which the body is anointed with holy water, signifying entry into a new community of believers. Well aware that the abductees understand perfectly the concept and the context of moo yaa in Acholi culture, namely its use only on the most auspicious of occasions, the LRM/A applied it to the abductees chest area as a sign of admission into the rebel movement. In this case, wiiro kom ritual became a form of identity card, a signifier that the recruit had crossed the threshold into the fold of the LRM/A.

  The purification ceremony itself takes place in the ‘Yards,’ an open-air space, and is presided over by a ‘controller yard.’11 The space may also be used as a gathering spot for spirit possession and for open-air addresses by LRM/A commanders. As one informant described the ceremony:

  Once we got to the main camp, arrangements were made to have all the new abductees brought to the yard to be anointed with Lakwena’s oil so that we become the army of Lakwena. If you are not anointed, you are not allowed to eat with those who have been anointed.

  During the purification ceremony, you took off your clothes, remaining bare-chested, and a gun is handed to you, before you step forward to be anointed. There were lines of people singing. The controller yard took some water, oil and a rock, and walked toward you, and circled you three times, placed the stone in the oil, then poured water on top, and then put the mixture on your body. The stone was placed on a string around your neck. Once that was done, you passed.

  However, not all cases of anointing abductees take place in elaborate ceremonies. Often, junior LRM/A soldiers administer the moo yaa to abductees in the field. Camconi Oneka and Can Kwo were anointed without ceremony. For Can Kwo, undergoing the wiiro kom ritual marked his entry into the bush as a rebel combatant: ‘The putting of moo yaa on my chest made me realize that, okay, what I am about to do is different from what I normally do. Furthermore, I discovered that the way I was spoken to was not to teach me. Instead, your existence was now
shaped by forceful demands and beating for no reason. Those are my first experiences.’

  Payaa Mamit, accused of ‘speaking with the Devil,’ was made to ‘raise my arms so that if my body was possessed by evil spirit, it would be chased away.’ Although nothing happened even with a prolonged prayer session, ‘they sprinkled water on me, and put some shea-butter on my chest and my back.’ In the case of Jola Amayo, who had just suffered a serious snakebite, the anointing served a dual purpose. It marked her as one chosen to become an LRM/A abductee, and also served as an antidote to the snake poison in her swollen leg:

  They came and found me lying outside beside the house. ‘What is wrong with this child?’ they asked.

  ‘The child, yesterday, was bitten by a snake.’

  One of them said, ‘Mother, God will help this child, she will recover.’

  They had with them shea-butter oil mixed with red substance obtained from the stream. Once they place the mixture on you, you would be abducted as a matter of course. One of them said, ‘The child’s leg will heal within three days.’ The man then came and rubbed the oily mixture on my leg. ‘We will come back to check on how the child is doing, tomorrow we will return to check on her.’ The following day, they returned and checked on me.

  The wiiro kom ritual also bestowed privileges that came with membership in the LRM/A. The abductees could now undergo military training, eat communally with the general LRM/A population, go to the battlefront, get married, and, generally, be better treated than those who had just been abducted and had not undergone the purification process.

  Purification also heightens the gender differences for further control of abductees. Based on traditional Acholi belief that kwe coo (purifying the male) is different from kwee mon (purifying the female), the controller yard circles boys three times while girls are circled four times. As well, during their menstrual cycles, LRM/A regulations forbid females from participating in any communal life including fetching water, cooking food, or touching anything that a man might later touch. There is a similarity between this practice and the edict in the Book of Leviticus (15: 19–22) restricting the activities of any woman experiencing a discharge: ‘And if a woman have an issue and her issue in her flesh be blood, she shall be put apart seven days: and whosoever toucheth her shall be unclean until the even.’ Such gendered restrictions on girl abductees served to remind them that they are still expected to serve and remain subservient to the commands of men. At the same time, restrictions on female abductees also reminded the boy abductees of their role as young men (bulu), appealing to their sense of masculinity as protectors and fighters who must step forward bravely into battle. Moreover, gender restrictions enabled the LRM/A to maintain in the abductees’ residential home in the bush the same paternalistic structure found in Acholi ancestral homes. It allowed abductees to feel at home away from home.

  Joseph Kony with young ‘wives,’ Jabuleini (Jabelein), southern Sudan, 1997. The two girls immediately flanking him were abducted from St Mary’s Secondary School in Aboke on 9 October 1996.

  Bare-chested Joseph Kony in his otogo (male house), Juba, southern Sudan, 1998.

  Betty Ayero (Apaco), an abductee pregnant with Kony’s child, Juba, southern Sudan, 1998. It is not known what happened to her.

  Kony’s sons by his wife Fatuma, Juba, 1998 – both died in a wild bush fire in 2000.

  Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Okodi, personal secretary to Joseph Kony, welcoming Kony (in gray short-sleeved suit), Jabuleini (Jabelein), southern Sudan, 1998. Seated in white shirt is Brigadier Banya.

  Kony’s son (by his wife Paska), Nisitu, southern Sudan, 1998.

  Kony’s personal bodyguard Lieutenant Ogila with one of Kony’s sons, Nisitu, 1998.

  Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Okodi, with ‘wives’ Grace, Abu, and Ajok in Aru, southern Sudan, 1997. Okodi was reported killed by a Uganda army helicopter gunship on 5 January 2004 at Lacek-Ocot in northern Uganda.

  Christmas Day, 2000, LRM/A soldiers in camp at Lubangatek, southern Sudan.

  Kony’s young ‘wives’ (left to right) Catherine, Doreen (deceased), and Paska Apaco (deceased) in Jabuleini (Jabelein), southern Sudan, 1997.

  LRM/A deputy commander Vincent Otti, working camera, Aru, southern Sudan, 1997. Indicted by the ICC in The Hague on 8 July 2005, he was reported executed on Kony’s orders on 2 October 2007.

  LRM/A senior officers after meal in Jabuleini (Jabelein), 2000. Clockwise, starting with the heavy-set man seated beside the young unidentified LRM/A soldier drinking from cup, are: Sururu Abdalla, Owor Lakati, Sisto Oringa, Mickman Oryang Opuk, Patrick Lumumba, Ceasar Acellam, Livingstone Opiro, and Onen Kamdulu.

  The wiiro kom ritual is also instructive during this period of transformation in that it allows child combatants to see themselves, not as ‘victims’ within a violent society, but rather as participants in a new cultural landscape replete with violence and uncertainty, in which they can no longer insist on life as it once was. After purification, they are forced to look at the LRM/A as their new family. They can now take the step of donyo ii gang (entering the residential homestead).

  Wiiro kom ritual also acts as a form of control over abductees, and eventually over the child combatants as they move into the field. After the purification rituals are completed, according to my informants, abductees are told that escape is futile because the magical qualities of the moo yaa would ensure that would-be escapees falter in their resolve, turn around, and return back to the rebel camp to a certain death. Moreover, as a symbolic crossing over from civilian life to a soldier’s life, the ritual comes with many responsibilities in the form of cik (prohibitions). Smoking, unsanctioned sex (only a most senior commander, usually Kony himself, decides when a girl or boy is ready for living together), alcohol, and other vices are strictly prohibited. So is the eating of pork, honey, certain fruits, and eggs (also see Dolan, 2009, 81). Speaking to a dako ot (married wife) is strictly forbidden. Tuku kwele, playing of a sexual nature or touching between a boy and a girl, is also not allowed. While these sanctions are part of the Acholi culture and belief system (for example, an adulterous person dies at the battlefront or alcohol indulgence attracts enemy bullets), they can also be found in other modern armies where professional standards forbid fraternization between the sexes in order to ensure discipline and self-control within the ranks.12

  My informants stated that the penalty for breaking an interdiction after being purified with moo yaa was severe, usually taking the form of corporal punishment. As well, abductees were made to believe that a bigger misfortune awaited them in the future, say, during combat. Even after Can Kwo Obato had left the LRM/A behind, he still believed that breaking the rules against casual sex brought bad luck: ‘As soon as you have had casual sex, and do not confess, you will get hit by a bullet. However, if you confess, you must be beaten to clear away your sin. If you are not beaten, you die. I saw that with my own eyes, many died because of it.’

  Donyo ii Gang (Entering a Homestead)

  Donyo ii gang is a critical phase in the liminal repurposing of Acholi culture in order to control abductees and ensure that they remain active combatants for a long time. With this in mind, over the last twenty years of the war, the LRM/A has painstakingly recreated Acholi villages in various camps, including those in Aruu, Owiny ki Bul, Jabelein, Palotaka, Nisitu, and Garamba forest. The homes in the villages are modelled after those found in an Acholi ancestral homestead. Ot lum atota, a circular-shaped home with grass-thatched roof, is built along the edges of a clean-swept circular compound. The roof of each house in the compound is carefully thatched with lum raa, elephant grass of varying lengths that form ridges running around the building. A low doorway is constructed facing the open space of the compound, and a functional door made of wood, corrugated iron, or combination of wood and grass is put in place.

  The jokon (female house) doubles as the cooking place as well as the sleeping place for little children and women. Meanwhile, ot otogo (male house), used by the patrilineal head o
f the household, is set slightly apart from the circle of jokon. Boy recruits stay in their own otogo, which may not be as elaborately built as the otogo where the head of the homestead lives, and is usually set farther away from the main compound. The open space in the middle of the yard is dyekal, which serves as a communal space for all members whose homes face it. Often, there is a spot in the middle of the space with burned-out remains of logs and ashes – this is the wang-oyo (the place of the log fire), which traditionally is used by the Acholi as a gathering spot in the evening.

  Each homestead has several deero, small round buildings on raised stilts used as granaries for storing dried foodstuff harvested from the fields. Traditional Acholi food items such as bel (millet), nyim (sesame) lapena (peas), kabir (sorghum), pul (groundnuts), and layata mutere (dried sweet potato peels) are stored in the granaries. Following Acholi cultural requirements, only the owner of a deero has the right to open and remove food from it. Anyone caught opening a deero belonging to a neighbour has committed theft, and is severely punished. In time of plentiful harvest, food is stored in the granary. Miya Aparo recalled such a period: ‘Our harvest, we had thirteen granaries full of food and a big enclosed hut filled with sorghum and dried sweet potato peels.’