“Hand ball.” A teenaged boy on the sideline looks up from playing cards to make the call. The players, their faces sweaty in the hot sun, stop the game and lean on each other’s shoulders, laughing.
They laugh at each mistake, at each wild kick of the ball, at each tangle of legs that ends up with someone on the ground. They laugh because this is a welcome break in their long days of working with counselors and waiting to go home. And they laugh because it’s been too long since these hands were free to hold a ball instead of a gun.
There are 61 young people at the Kitgum Concerned Parents Association (CPA) reception center in northern Uganda this week. It was one of two reception and reintegration centers to receive a shipment of new soccer balls from the U.S.-based Harrington Family Foundation in early October.
In the middle of Kitgum Town, one of two main population centers in the region, CPA is a transition place for children of the bush, the scores of young people forced to take up arms and fight in a long-running insurgency led by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).
The LRA has abducted at least 8,000 children in the past year alone; and an estimated 25,000 have been taken since the beginning of rebel activity in the late 1980s. Today, around 90 percent of LRA “soldiers” are abducted children. Compelled to fight, the newly abducted children are desensitized by commanders who often force them to murder their own family members or friends.
The rebel captives are guarded closely, and a soldier who tries to hide or run away is often killed as a public example. Nonetheless, some do succeed and find their way back home or to Ugandan military barracks. From there they are sent to centers like CPA or KICWA, the Kitgum Concerned Women’s Association, where they begin a long process of rehabilitation and reintegration.
After taking care of immediate medical needs, the reception centers use art, music, dance and group counseling to help the young people begin a long process of recovery. Former soldiers tell stories of murdering children younger than themselves or participating in attacks on their home villages, all crimes that make them fearful to return to the community. Young girls, who are given as “wives” to rebel commanders, often return with a baby born in captivity--an added barrier if the girl’s family does not welcome a rebel’s child.
CPA, which works with former rebels who are 18 years and older, has helped reintegrate more than 800 people since January. KICWA, which takes in children younger than 18, has had around 1,000 residents in the same nine-month period.
Both centers, supported by a handful of non-governmental organizations, were started by local parents in the 1990s. Parents, religious and political leaders speak of a generation lost due to conflict in the Acholi region. CPA and KICWA are, in part, an effort to show rebels that their communities welcome them back if they lay down arms.
The conflict in northern Uganda, one of many forgotten wars around the globe, took a dramatic turn for the worse in June 2002 when a government offensive sparked fierce rebel retaliation. After one year of escalated violence in the north, rebels began to push south and east in June, hitting districts previously untouched by the war. According to the latest figures from the U.N. World Food Program, Uganda’s displaced population now stands at more than 1.2 million people.
The LRA insurgency is linked to a complex history of political and regional divisions in Uganda that can be traced back to the 1970s. Under the erratic and unforgiving rule of Joseph Kony, LRA rebels began attacking their own Acholi people in the early 1990s, punishing the local population for its lack of cooperation.
Kony, who claims connections with spirits and a Biblical cause, rose out of the tradition of another spiritually-based rebel movement. He initially enjoyed some local support among the Acholi, a population that felt disenfranchised by the rule of Yoweri Museveni’s government. But unlike his successors, Kony relied heavily on abductions and brutal massacres as a means of sowing fear.
With voluntary support waning, Kony built up his army by abducting children and forcing them to survive by the rule of the gun. He created large training camps in southern Sudan, where he had safe-haven and weapons supply from the Sudanese government. Escaped captives refer to the camps in southern Sudan the end of the line--the point from which escape no longer seems possible.
Attacked by the LRA and left largely unprotected by the Ugandan government, the Acholi now look for allies abroad.
In late September, the U.N. Office of the Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict warned that the international community is not giving enough prominence to the plight of children here. Groups like the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch are urging the appointment of a U.N. special envoy to seek the release of abducted children; and others have suggested that the matter be taken up by the U.N. Security Council.
But despite its links to Sudan, most observers still consider Uganda’s war an internal issue, making foreign or U.N. intervention a thorny debate. The Ugandan army is adamant that ending the war depends on increased military spending; and the government doesn’t consider the LRA a serious threat to the state.
The government does, however, admit its inability to provide for the country’s 1.2 million strong population of displaced. Civilians in the north are almost entirely dependent on outside agencies for food aid and social support. Social and health services have deteriorated rapidly, with regional hospitals working at double capacity. Securing even basic medical supplies is sometimes impossible; one hospital in Kitgum reports that between 10 and 15 children die each month due to a simple lack of blood for transfusions.
Although non-governmental organizations are scrambling to build shelters, latrines and water points for civilians living in protected camps, their work is impeded by the insecurity. Without a protected humanitarian corridor, most relief agencies are unable to leave population centers. Those that do travel out rely on armed military escorts and must return well before dark, restrictions that limit the type and amount of work that can be done.
At the end of a long day in northern Uganda, the tragedy is not one that is limited to child soldiers, the spread of disease, severe malnutrition and families displaced. It is not limited to the thousands of children who walk miles each night to sleep in hospital grounds, bus parks and on shop verandas. Nor is it limited to the months and years of lost education as schools, looted or burned, close their doors.
Instead, the tragedy here, as conflict stretches into its eighteenth year, is one of generations that have never known peace. While politicians and foreign diplomats debate the steps needed to end the war, while religious leaders urge dialogue and army officers urge more military action, the long-term outlook grows increasingly bleak.
Meanwhile, the Acholi children in their thousands hide by night. And, in the hands of parents determined to take steps that will protect from war and abduction, by day they wait.
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
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