c. 2008 Religion News Service

GULU, Uganda _ Sometimes in the evenings, Okech Alem watches the war widows as they sing and pull weeds in the peanut fields near his camp.

He is thankful for the new growth, but still remembers the field’s past: Three years ago a band of rebels ripped babies from their mother’s arms, tossed them into fires and hacked off the lips, arms and ears of the adults.

Today, these same rebels are returning peacefully to their communities, and Alem and many of his fellow ethnic Acholi have welcomed them home. Forgiveness has been “very hard,” he says, forcing the Acholi to seek guidance from the ancestors, as well as religious traditions of every stripe.

“We are accepting a lot of problems,” he said. “Some of these returning have evil spirits and they do weird and uncivilized things. But we are trying to reconcile, to move forward.”

Recognizing they must be examples, local religious leaders _ Anglican, Catholic, Muslim and Orthodox _ have taken the lead in the reconciliation process, setting aside past grievances and old rivalries. They have also embraced, with some measure of suspicion and reluctance, a quasi-spiritual traditional reconciliation rite.

“There is a need of very many activities to be done, so that those returning may become like other people,” said the Rev. Alfred Odoch, an Anglican minister based near Gulu. “And we see that as religious leaders we will have a lot of work to do.”

In real terms, reconciliation has meant the reintegration of boy soldiers and female sex slaves. After more than two decades of fighting, the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army has set aside its efforts to topple the government in favor of one based on its bizarre interpretation of the 10 Commandments.

The Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative was formed about a decade ago, when the government began forcing close to 2 million Ugandans into crowded camps for protection. Clergy said they were compelled to speak out about the conditions and issue a call for peace.

That in itself was a major step forward, Odoch said.

“In the past, it was difficult to get an Anglican reverend _ like me _ to stay together with a sister from the Catholic Church, like this,” Odoch said, gesturing to his colleague at the other end of the table. “But right now, the local religious leaders are working together, and that alone is a very big step.”

After peace talks between the government and rebels began in Sudan in mid-2006, religious leaders first formed a diplomatic buffer between the Acholi camps and the returnees _ many of whom had been captured as children and taken to rebel leader Joseph Kony’s camps in Sudan or the lawless jungles of eastern Congo.

“When they came back, the community was trying to isolate them (returnees) from other boys and other girls, by not playing with this person, by saying he cannot participate,” said Christopher Oguce, a paralegal working with the Catholic Church. “So it was our job to sensitize their family, their community. Most of them are being trained, healed _ so that they cannot be disturbed again.

From the pulpit, in town hall meetings and amid the crowded mud homes in the camps, task force members have preached forgiveness, organized peace prayers and mediated large community disputes. In the end, they also embraced a process that has served the Acholi much longer than any of their own religious rituals.

The ceremony is called mato oput, and it is executed when an offender gathers with those he has terrorized. Compensation is paid, an animal is slaughtered and the two parties drink a bitter herb from a common cup to symbolize the renewal of their relationship.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has deemed the rite acceptable justice for the rebellion’s rank-and-file, offering blanket amnesty in return for their participation.

And though the quasi-spiritual nature of the ceremony makes some religious leaders squeamish, they accept that it is the fastest way to peace. So they talk, counsel and pray with the community, but when the ceremony begins, most leaders _ like Karoni Mohammad _ step back and observe.

“In the sight of the Muslim, we don’t do these local things, like maybe slaughtering goats. We only sit together with them, and ask them to prepare to meet each other,” Mohammad said.

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Sister Pauline Silver Acayo, the peace-building project officer for Catholic Relief Services in Uganda, says the same applies for Catholic leaders who use the Acholi tradition to “try and unite the people in different corners.”

“Some people don’t believe in the good of drinking the herb, so after the spiritual and psychological aspect, they stop there,” she said. “But there are others that have the conviction to go deeper and take the herb, and we let them.”

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Some human rights activists say the mato oput ceremony is not sufficient punishment for rebel leader Kony and his top deputies, who have been indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Without proper justice, they say, the conflict will continue.

Okech Alem shakes his head at that idea. The international peace process is fine, but he says it is taking too long. As a local leader, he is pushing instead to reintegrate as many former rebels as possible with the help of the mato oput and the religious leaders.

“As it stands today, I am afraid to walk home, because I might meet the rebel there and be killed,” he said. “So we are putting all our hopes in the peace deal in Sudan, but here in the camps, we must make peace and try to forget.”

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