c. 1996 Religion News Service
GULU, Uganda _ Smoldering under the midday sun are the ashes of the thatch-and-mud huts that once was the village of Apec, home to over 20 families. The whole village, soldiers said, had been set afire just a few hours before.”We heard the rebels coming down the road early this morning,”said Bruno Adeem, an Apec resident.”They started kicking down the doors of the houses and we heard them shouting. I took my family and we ran into the bush. When we returned this is what we found,”he said, gesturing to the smoking remains of his home.
Before Adeem can say any more, a platoon commander of the Ugandan Army whistles loudly. His men, knowing the signal means the rebels have been spotted nearby, quickly jostle a handful of passengers into two Toyota pick-ups mounted with 50-caliber machine guns, and packed with 14 soldiers armed with AK-47s and rocket propelled grenades, and flee the area.
The trucks thunder along the rutted, washed-out road at close to 90 miles an hour _ a dangerous and uncomfortable ride. But it is not nearly as dangerous as what lurks in the brush just outside Apec and all along this highway leading to Gulu.
The area, just north of the Victoria Nile river, is the territory of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a guerrilla group that has waged war against the Ugandan government for almost 10 years. Although they actually hold little territory, the LRA is capable of striking at anytime over a large area of the northern Uganda countryside.
Their insurgency is steeped in the complicated ethnic politics that have long plagued Uganda and its neighbors Rwanda, Burundi and Zaire. But the LRA relies heavily on its use of a blend of Christianity, Islam and animist beliefs that plays upon the ignorance of the very people it claims to serve.
Most people in northern Uganda who support the LRA are members of the Acholi ethnic group. Throughout the period of British rule in Uganda and after independence in 1962, the Acholi dominated the ranks of the military. But in 1986, when Uganda’s current president, Yoweri Museveni, came to power after defeating a corrupt Acholi-backed military government, the Acholi were marginalized. While the army was once the main avenue of improvement for Acholi youth, after 1986, military service was an opportunity denied.
Today, the poverty of this region of Uganda is extreme. Formal education is low and health care is almost non-existent. It is this underdevelopment that the LRA claims is at the heart of their struggle.”Reports out of Kampala (Uganda’s capital) distort what we are all about,”said the LRA North American spokesman, Ben Otunu, from his home in New York.”We are not trying to install a theocracy in Uganda, we are not trying to replace the Ugandan constitution with the Ten Commandments, as the Ugandan government is claiming. We simply want an end to one-party rule in the country and to the disenfranchisement of the north.” The LRA’s Manifesto, written by Otunu, calls for more development aid to be directed toward the north and for greater access to the political system, currently stifled by the Museveni regime.
The Manifesto’s moderation is echoed by Otunu’s counterpart in Nairobi, Dominic Wyanyama.”Honestly, this stuff about the LRA being religious fanatics is utter rubbish,”said Wyanyama.”We are just ordinary Christians, the government is trying to paint us as crazies. The people of Uganda are under threat by the government, they are losing their freedom every day. We are here to fight for their freedom, to fight against this oppressive regime.” But while intellectuals and spokesmen argue rationally about the underdevelopment of the north, the frustration of the people in northern Uganda has been manifest quite differently during the past 10 years.
From their hopelessness in the late 1980s arose a series of movements that claimed to have the full backing of God. In 1987, faith healer Alice Lekwena led the Holy Spirit Movement, convincing her followers that smearing themselves with oil would protect them from the bullets of government soldiers. Lekwena scored a number of military victories and was marching on Kampala when her movement was crushed by the Ugandan Army.
As Lekwena fled to Kenya, two other movements claiming to be armies of God cropped up in northern Uganda. Lekwena’s father, Severino Lukoya, raised a short-lived rebellion that laid siege to the northern town of Kitgum, before his movement was absorbed by the LRA. Lukoya was captured and held prisoner by the LRA leader, the shadowy Joseph Kony, who is also the cousin of Lekwena, the nephew of Lukoya.
Little is known about Kony. Only one of his speeches and a few photos exist of him. But Major Gen. Salim Saleh, military coordinator of the Ugandan armed forces in northern Uganda, believes he’s a dangerous man.”We might be able to negotiate with him if only we understood what he wanted,”said Saleh.”He has no stated political positions, he seems only interested in terrorizing the population. It makes it even harder to figure him out when half of his ideology seems to be about some kind of bizarre Christianity combined with Islam, traditional beliefs and juju that allows a person to slaughter others.” In recent years the LRA has taken to raiding isolated villages to kidnap youths to stock their movement. Some of those who have managed to escape or have been captured by government troops give a glimpse of Kony and his beliefs.
Wilson Olongo, a 28-year-old policeman, had just finished his training and returned to his home village when he was kidnapped by LRA guerrillas. Because he could read and write, Olongo said he was given more responsibility and soon found himself working as a secretary for Kony. His main job was to record every word Kony uttered. But Olongo soon found out that most of what he was recording was, according to Kony, the words of the Holy Spirit.”Kony is a clever man, and he knows how to influence ignorant people,”said Olongo.”He is very convincing to stupid people. He tells them, `… Engage the army … Do not hide from them. You just run straight toward the enemy. You will be protected by God, you needn’t worry about the bullets.’
But when people die he just says, `Well these people were not true believers, they were sinners.'” Olongo, who spent over 10 months with the rebels before he managed to escape, describes regular religious ceremonies that take place in the bush. All the ceremonies are conducted by a man named Abong, known as the”the pope”to all in the LRA. Friday and Sunday are devoted to Abong’s teachings. Religious services are vaguely Christian, says Olongo, except”everyone kneels down like a Muslim most of the time.” Abong, Olongo said, would also walk among the guerrillas conducting a ceremony before battle. “He sprinkles holy water on them with a palm frond and smears oil on their chest with the sign of the cross,”said Olongo.”This is suppose to make them immune to the bullets.” BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM
Similar tales are related by 13-year-old Samuel Wokorach, who was kidnapped from his home near Gulu last August. “We had long church services,”said the lanky teen.”This one man named Daktar was the only one to conduct the services. He was always preaching about the war and saying that our army would win in the end, that the angels were helping us and that we would fight well when we went into battle.” Cruelty and terror appear to be an integral part of Joseph Kony’s arsenal. Villagers residing too close to the highway risk having their homes burned. People riding bicycles risk being killed or having their legs broken because the rebels want to stop commerce and travel between government-controlled towns. And any captured person attempting to escape risks death.
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According to several escapees, Kony’s messages are peppered with Islamic teachings. In the only speech he ever gave to an outside audience (a failed government peace delegation in 1993), Kony began by saying”praise Mohammed.””There is no doubt Kony is a great admirer of Islam, but he knows he can’t force that on predominantly Christian peoples like the Acholi. He seems to have created a kind of hyper-charismatic movement, I would actually call it closer to a cult,”Olongo said.
The Islamic teachings are most likely influenced by the Islamic government of the Sudan, which allegedly provides Kony with bases in southern Sudan as well as weapons.
Gulu itself provides startling evidence of the toll the Lord’s Resistance Army has taken on peoples lives. In the daytime, they farm small plots of land around the outskirts, but at night, fearing attacks by LRA guerrillas, they seek the safety of the garrisoned city.
Almost every available bit of shelter is taken up. Whole families sleep under store awnings; hundreds cram into the hallways of the city’s hospital. Thousands seek shelter in churches.
At the Holy Rosary Catholic Cathedral in the center of the city, families sleep in classrooms, the nursery and storage buildings. At first light they pack their few belongings and walk back to their homes to farm their plots.”I don’t know how many we have here, over 1,000 that’s for sure,”said Father Vittorine Marzowe of the Comboni Fathers order.”One month ago there was no one here at all, now just look around,”he said.”This Kony is causing a lot of problems. They say he is a religious man, but I find that hard to believe. The Lord’s Resistance Army is forcing people to seek shelter from them in the house of God.”
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