Mennonite
Central
Committee

Bringing Healing to a War Zone

Doug Hostetter
January 17, 2007

Sara (not her real name) was 12 in 1995 when her village, near the town of Lira in Northern Uganda, was attacked by rebels of The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Her father and older brother were killed and she and 5 other children were taken at gunpoint and forced to march all night into the bush. One of her friends who had been abducted with her tried to escape during the march. He was shot, killed and cut open by the LRA guerillas. Sara and the 4 remaining abductees were forced to dip their hands in his bloody body and cover themselves with his blood as a symbol of what would happen to them if they tried to escape. They finally were allowed to sleep and then marched for 2 more days until they reached the LRA camp deep in the bush. At the beginning she was simply a helper in the home of one of the LRA commanders, gathering wood, getting water and cooking. Later she was trained as a soldier. To make sure she could never go back to her village, she was forced to do unmentionable things to people from her own tribe. After her first kill, Joseph Kony, the head of the LRA gave her magic oil which would protect her from bullets; but if you turned to run, the divine oil would lose its power and bullets could kill you. Sara stayed with the LRA for 10 years, rising to become a commander in the army. At the age of 17 she was forced to "marry" to another commander and subsequently had three children. A year ago, Mercy, her 3 month-old girl became deathly sick with malaria. Sara realized if they stayed in the bush, Mercy would die. When her "husband" left for a mission, in the middle of the night, she strapped Mercy to her back, grabbed her AK 47 assault rifle in one hand and her other two children in the other and headed for Gulu, a 4-days walk. When she first encountered Ugandan army soldiers, they ordered her to drop her rifle and come toward them. As a commander, she responded, no you lower your rifles. They saw she had three children, one nearly dead, and they complied. Sara came over, gave up her weapon and was taken to a clinic where they were able to save Mercy's life. For the past year, Sara has been learning tailoring at St. Monica's school for girls and her children are in the St Monica's nursery while their mother learns a profession so she can support them on her own.

LRA has been fighting the Ugandan army, the Ugandan Peoples Defense Force (UPDF), in northern Uganda since 1987. The LRA is a paramilitary "Christian" cult started by Joseph Kony who has declared himself as a spirit medium who wants to establish a society based on the 10 Commandments. The LRA has supported its army through pillage of northern Ugandan villages and the abduction of an estimated 20,000 children to serve as his soldiers and "wives" for his commanders. As the result of the attacks by the LRA and the counter attacks and security measures by the UPDF, more than 1.5 million Ugandan civilians, most of the population in Northern Uganda, now live in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. This conflict, which has been going on for almost 20 years, has largely been ignored by American media and the world community. When Jan Egland, the UN Undersecretary-General of Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordination first visited northern Uganda three years ago, he proclaimed it as "the world's worst and most forgotten humanitarian crisis."

Since July of this year, the Government of South Sudan has been mediating peace talks in Juba, Sudan, between the Government of Uganda/UPDF and the LRA. These talks have resulted in a fragile ceasefire with most of the LRA withdrawing from northern Uganda into assembly areas in southern Sudan or deep into nearly impassable jungle of the Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Due to the peace negotiations, an October MCC Learning/Advocacy delegation of staff from Akron and advocacy offices in Washington, Ottawa and New York was able to visit MCC partner organizations in IDP camps which only weeks earlier had been accessed only by military convoy.

MCC is active in many ways in relation to Uganda. We have given direct support to the peace negotiations through providing a consultant to work with the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative, an interfaith group of religious leaders from northern Uganda who have brought a powerful civil-society voice into the peace negotiations in Juba and also in direct meetings with LRA leaders in Garamba National Park. As one might expect in an area that has been at war for 20 years, where tens of thousands of children have been abducted and a million and a half people have been displaced from their homes, there is an enormous amount of trauma in Northern Uganda. MCC has organized training for Ugandan staff and organizers who work with formerly abducted children or survivors in IDP camps. We also provide training and funding to the Concerned Parents Association for psycho/social drama and music groups which work in the IDP camps. The dramatization shown in the photo wasn't directly funded by MCC, but some of the Concerned Parents Association staff who organized the drama group were trained in MCC funded psycho/social training. In Ottawa, Washington and New York MCC staff has worked hard to place "the world's worst and most forgotten humanitarian crisis" on the agendas of Canada, United States and the United Nations. At the UN we have worked with other NGOs to call the abuses of the Lord's Resistance Army and the Government of Uganda to the attention of the Human Rights Commission, the UN High Commission on Refugees and the Security Council and to urge all parties to cooperate to return peace to the people of northern Uganda.

 

Dramatic re-enactment

Dramatic re-enactment of a Lord's Resistance Army kidnapping of children by a psycho-social drama group of the Concerned Parents Association, of Gulu, Uganda.

 

Doug Hostetter, Director, MCC UN Liaison Office in New York participated in a MCC Learning/Advocacy trip to Sudan, Uganda & the Democratic Republic of Congo in October/November, 2006