Opiyo Oloya - Child to Soldier: Stories from Joseph Konys Lords Resistance Army

CHILD TO SOLDIER
Stories from Joseph Konys Lords Resistance Army

How and why are children forced to become soldiers, and what are the long-term implications for individual children and a society? Should former child-inducted soldiers be prosecuted for their past criminal activities and conduct? In Child to Soldier, Opiyo Oloya addresses these questions by exploring how Acholi children in northern Uganda, abducted by infamous warlord Joseph Kony and his Lords Resistance Army (LRA), became soldiers.

Oloya himself an Acholi, a refugee from Idi Amins rule of Uganda challenges conventional thinking by demonstrating how child-inducted soldiers in Uganda developed a form of familial loyalty to their captors and comrades within their new surroundings in the bush. Based on interviews with former child combatants, this book provides a cultural context for understanding the process of socializing children into violence. Oloya details how Kony and the LRA exploited and perverted Acholi heritage and pride to control and direct the children in war.

Child to Soldier highlights the tragic political and personal circumstances surrounding the use of child soldiers. It also emphasizes the reality that child-inducted soldiers do not remain children forever but become adults who remain deeply scarred by their experiences. In this eye-opening book, Oloya offers a rare glimpse into the everyday world of the child soldier and at the same time provides a broader understanding of the roots of modern-day ethnic tension and conflict.

OPIYO OLOYA is the superintendent of education for school leadership with the York Catholic District School Board. He writes a weekly column on social issues for the Ugandan newspaper New Vision, which is read throughout Africa, and has spent the last three summers working in Somalia with the African Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).

Stories from Joseph Konys Lords Resistance Army

OPIYO OLOYA

University of Toronto Press 2013

Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com

Printed in Canada

ISBN 978-1-4426-4604-9 (cloth)

ISBN 978-1-4426-1417-8 (paper)

Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Oloya, Opiyo

Child to soldier: stories from Joseph Konys Lords Resistance Army /

Opiyo Oloya.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4426-4604-9 (bound). ISBN 978-1-4426-1417-8 (pbk.)

1. Children and war Uganda. 2. Child soldiers Uganda Social conditions. 3. Child soldiers Uganda Interviews. 4. Lords Resistance Army. 5. Acholi (African people) Uganda Social conditions. I. Title.

HQ784.W3046 2012 303.6'4083096761 C2012-907226-5

The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge the estate of Okot PBitek for permission to reprint excerpts from Song of Lowino (Nairobi: East African Publishing House 1966).

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

The Acholi have a saying that a child cannot thank his or her mother for the milk she provided when the child was a baby. That is not because the child is ungrateful, but because the mothers sacrifice is immensely priceless. Such is the case with the love and support I received from my wife, Emily, and our sons, Oceng and Ogaba, while writing this book. They gave me enormous space to work, never complaining about the long hours spent away from them.

Still on the family front, I must thank my parents, who inculcated in me a love of learning, a desire to dig beneath the dirt to see what lay down there. My father died two years ago, but he knew about my book and asked often how close it was to being completed.

In a similar vein, I can never be thankful enough for the tremendous support that I received from so many generous people who gave life to this book. I recall the cold morning in March 2000 when I walked into the office of the former director of education for York Catholic District School Board, Susan LaRosa, to ask for time to travel to Uganda to look into the story of children fighting a devastating war. After listening to my pitch, she said, without blinking, You go ahead, Opiyo, this is important. I am deeply grateful Ms LaRosa, without whom this project would not have started, for recognizing and responding to a problem half a world away with compassion and humanity. I also wish to thank my colleagues and friends at the York Catholic District School Board, including current director Patricia Preston, Mary (Maria) Battista, Andy Disebastiano, Robert Lostracco, Sandra Tuzi-DeCaro, Sue Kralik, Dan Ryan, the staff at All Saints, Divine Mercy, and St Vincent de Paul Catholic elementary schools for their encouragement, warmth, and support.

Furthermore, while researching this book at York University, Toronto, professors Warren Crichlow, Deborah Britzman, and Pablo Idahosa did not hesitate to support the project, nurturing it always and helping to give it the form that it eventually acquired. All through it, there were moments when I faltered but they revived my determination to push on. I am grateful also to Erin Baines (University of British Columbia), who challenged me to find a different way to describe children who fight in wars because the term child soldier was inadequate; Onek Adyanga (Millersville University, Pennsylvania), who worked with me on some difficult Acholi concepts during the writing; Aparna Mishra Tarc (York University), who helped with proofreading; and Curtis Fahey, who edited the book thoroughly until it finally shone.

I sincerely thank the family of the late Okot pBitek, especially Jane pBitek Langoya and Julie Okot pBitek, for allowing me the freedom to quote liberally from the various works of their father, a prolific Acholi poet.

Finally and most importantly, this project would not have been possible without the former child inducted soldiers opening up to me about what they experienced in war, the pain that they endured and the struggles they faced on returning home. Their stories stayed with me during cold and lonely nights when all I wanted was to crawl under blankets and forget in sleep the difficulties I was experiencing with the writing. Their serenity in the face of hardship and, above all, their bravery in staring down the worst that fellow human beings threw at them is the everlasting lesson of what it means to be dano adana, a human person.

Opiyo Oloya

Toronto, January 2013

CHILD TO SOLDIER
Stories from Joseph Konys Lords Resistance Army

Everybody in Gulu town in war-ravaged northern Uganda has a story to tell about the war. In the Acholi oral storytelling tradition, every