Ambush
“
… At risk from being abducted from their homes, snatched from
a schoolroom, or ambushed on the road and taken into captivity.”
Is this what “at risk” says to you ?
If you
have any knowledge of what has been happening over the last ten or
so years in Northern Uganda (East Africa). you will know all too well
that this is most certainly what “children at risk” means
to them there. In that area along the border with Southern Sudan and
even in the main towns of Gulu, Kitgum and Lira in Northern Uganda,
families have been terrorised by “Kony rebels” abducting
children, ambushing travellers and torching homes and crops.
The rebels
aim to capture twelve and thirteen year olds, who are old enough to
work and yet young enough to be brainwashed. It only takes a few armed
thugs to round up defenceless villagers, and even those who have a
guard at home, or two at school, are powerless against a gang, who
frequently get past government and army defences, round up children
at school, and often raid at night-time also.
Brain-washing
The boys
are trained up immediately as child soldiers to use guns and are ordered
to kill: if they don’t kill, then they themselves are killed.
The girls are made to work in the daytime fetching water, cooking
and looking after rebel “soldiers”. At night, they are
forced into the horrors of prostitution with their rebel captors.
Tens of thousands of children, without exaggeration, have suffered
these atrocities and the destruction of their childhood and young
lives in this way, over the past decade.
Why?
It is
very unclear what Kony’s aims and objectives are in this long-running
terrorisation of his own people. At one time he joined up with the
SPLF (Sudan People’s Liberation Front) and most of the abducted
children were taken across the border into Sudan, but this had wider
implications for their respective heads of state and recently the
Sudanese government has pushed the rebels out of Sudan, back into
Uganda.
The general
illogicality of it all is underlined at times when the rebels have
been persuaded to, or have suddenly returned, a group of children,
and yet they continue to abduct children. There have been, and still
are, many individuals working hard to get the children freed, including
Roman Catholic priests, local senior clergy, as well as international
mission agencies and other NGOs (non-governmental organisations).
Escape
It is
distressing to realise that if the children were to try to escape,
there would have to be a group of them if they were going to survive,
if only because of the terrain. It is very arid and therefore so sparsely
populated that they could go for miles without finding any signs of
human habitation. The isolated villages are by now usually deserted
because of the rebel activity.
The courage
and resourcefulness of those children who have escaped is doubled
when one realises that they had also been brainwashed by their captors,
and Ugandan children, the girls particularly, are extraordinarily
obedient to anyone older than themselves anyway, which further reduces
the likelihood of their running away.
Rehabilitation
What
of those children who do escape, however, and return or are returned
to their communities ? This phenomenon of child soldiers and their
repatriation, literally, and rehabilitation into their families and
society is not of course confined to Uganda, by any means, and much
has been written on the subject from experience in many countries
and continents.
At the
simplest level it is a complex problem which has to be addressed from
many angles, for example the length of time of separation, the present
situation and attitudes of the family, the extended family, and the
local leaders.
From
the point of view of the adults receiving them back, these - possibly
unrecognisable - children have been quite literally “sleeping
with the enemy” and this has proved one of the major problems
for re-integration upon their return.
From
the child’s point of view, the extent of the brainwashing, physical
injury, brutalisation and emotional trauma needs careful assessment,
understanding and treatment. This is what many agencies and individuals
are trying their best to deal with, in spite of the acute shortage
of personnel, not least because of the real and physical danger in
such places.
Intertribal
Conflict
Moving
further eastwards, where one of the last pockets of intertribal conflict
has smouldered on between the Karimojong and the Iteso tribes since
the 1980s a more diffuse group of “children at risk” exist.
Many
of the orphaned boys, as young as 8 and 9 years, were conscripted
into the Ugandan Army by the soldiers who had killed their adult family
members, while other children escaped and often travelled long and
tortuous journeys, hiding in the bush to seek security with relatives
across the large area of Teso. The young Karimojong herdsboys, from
6 years to puberty, are at constant risk of danger from raiders of
another clan or reprisals from the Army or the Iteso.
The Need
for Reconciliation
However,
the unseen, insidious risk to children orphaned by the violence is
for the hate and desire for revenge to be passed on, for them to grow
up hating or despising those “on the other side” and to
fail to see how similar they are to themselves.
Helping
the children of both communities to understand their common humanity
with all tribes and groups, learning their own culture and unbiased
history, followed by that of the “other side” is an urgent
necessity as part of the slow process towards the diminution and removal
of hatred and prejudice, respect for each other and both sides, peaceful
coexistence, positive interaction and real reconciliation.
AIDS
Orphans
Perhaps
the most well-known group of children at risk in Uganda (as in many
other countries in Africa and across the world) is the hundreds of
children orphaned through AIDS. Many of the unlucky children who have
not been taken in by their extended families have become street children
in the capital and larger towns, which has prompted a lot of agencies
from the early 1990s on, to set up programmes and facilities, Aids
awareness for youth and adults and provision of all sorts for the
children so at risk.
As a
result of facing the problem with honesty and energetic action, the
dire predications of disaster on apocalyptic scale have to a large
extent been averted, and the next generations of Ugandan children
are more likely to have a future.
Action
Still Needed
I would
conclude by reflecting that it is the effects on the children of the
various risks to which they are exposed which must also be dealt with,
if the saddest times in the history of this beautiful country of Uganda
are not to be repeated.
