Tomorrow morning I am leaving for two weeks to go to Uganda and Kenya. I am going to be working in a refugee IDP camp with former child soldiers and orphans who lost their parents to AIDS.
For those who don’t know about the war going on in Uganda here is some background history:
During the British colonial period in Uganda, the country was separated into a predominantly well educated and elite south and a poor north. This socio-economic division between the north and the south has been the cause of recurrent ethnic violence in Uganda. In early 1986 Ugandan Presidents Milton Obote and Tito Lutwa Okello, ethnic Acholi, were overthrown by the National Resistance Army (NRA) and replaced by Yoweri Museveni. (In later years the NRA would change its name to Uganda People's Defense Force, UPDF). This sparked fear among the people of Uganda as they worried Museveni would seek revenge for events that took place during the Luwero war (also known as the ‘bush war’) by previous regimes. By early 1987 Joseph Kony, a self-proclaimed messiah who created his own religion that mirrors Christianity, Islam and traditional Acholi, had formed the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) also referred to as Kony’s Rebels or the Rebels. The LRA is “renowned, or rather infamous, for being made up almost exclusively of child soldiers”. Kony, a relative to an Acholi tribal shaman, claimed to be committed to overthrowing the Ugandan government and implementing a state system based on the Ten Commandments and felt it his duty to purify the Acholi people. This war between the NRA and the LRA has somehow morphed into a war in which civilian villages are targeted and destroyed leaving thousands dead, millions displaced and thousands of children have been and continue to be abducted by these groups and forced into becoming a soldier. The area in which this war is mainly taking place is the northern region of Uganda commonly called Acholiland that includes the Gulu, Pader and Kitgum districts.
For around 22 years now the LRA and/or the NRA have been slowly attacking villages in Acholiland one at a time. Schools and medical facilities have also found themselves the target of these ambushes. During these raids the children are usually sent in first with guns and are orders to kill anyone who comes into their path. They are also told to recruit more children to join their army. Houses are looted and then set on fire. Women in the villages are raped; many are mutilated and then left for dead. While attacking a village the armies often have a goal, sometimes they are looking to loot items for the bases, sometimes they are looking to recruit more soldiers and sometimes the soldiers believe that the particular village they are attacking has done something in their opposition.
In response to this war millions (according to The UN over 1.8 million) of Acholi people have fled to Internally Displaced Person camps (IDP Camps) in hopes to keep their children from being abducted. Many people have been forced into these camps because they no longer have homes because their entire village had been destroyed. These camps have been set up by Ugandan government in order to help protect the Acholi people. Illness and disease are rampant in these camps because of overcrowding, lack of medical care and unsafe water. People in these camps also suffer from inadequate nutrition as the Acholi are no longer able to use their farming land. Even though the IDP camps have been set up to protect the Acholi people the camps are still often raided by the LRA. Because of this many parents send their children to the nearest safe town each night, these children have become known as the night commuters.
CURRENT UPDATE OF SITUATION:
*There are currently no more night commuters in Gulu.
*The LRA has signed a cease fire agreement (they just signed it Feb. 24th 2008) but a peace agreement has not been signed as there are LRA leaders are wanted for international war crimes. The LRA will not sign any peace agreements or release any more children (its estimated that they have more than 30,000) until the International Criminal Court drops all charges.
*The LRA also has ties to the Sudanese government and the Darfur conflict.
