Stop the abuse, stop the fury By Carolyn Davis DEPUTY EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR That's it. I've had it. I'm fed up with seeing children around the world treated as though they were little more than empty cans to be kicked or crushed. It was a photograph in yesterday's Inquirer, amplified by a series of photos on the New York Times front page, that pushed me beyond fury. A 16-year-old Palestinian boy approaches an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank with something bulky underneath his sweater. It's a suicide bombers' vest. Israeli soldiers help him to take it off via a robot, then make him strip to his skivvies to be sure he doesn't have another weapon. He doesn't look like a militant. He looks like a bewildered boy. Afterward, his mother, Tamam Abdo, was quoted as saying, "Hussam left home this morning to school, and this was the first we heard of what happened . . . . To use a child like this is irresponsible, forbidden." Thank you. But if such acts are so irresponsible and so forbidden, why do adults around the world so often and so purposely put children in dangerous circumstances? Why did idiots from two gangs have a shoot-out near a North Philadelphia school when children were walking to class? Do gang members so lose their humanity, do their brains get so drunk with the feel of a finger on a trigger that they forget they once were innocents themselves? What about the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services cases, in which youngsters died of neglect and abuse? What about all the children who die in the dark, or who continue to live quiet lives of suffering because the public learns only of the worst incidents? Why, 7,100 miles away in northern Uganda, has a vicious crackpot named Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army been able to operate for 17 years, fighting the Ugandan government? Kony is no brilliant military strategist, no charismatic figure. The man gets most of his "recruits" by snatching boys from nearby villages. He kidnaps girls to be domestic and sex slaves. He's said to have taken well more than 10,000 children during his futile, 17-year fight to run Uganda according to his twisted version of Christianity. President Bush seems sincere when he talks about the plight of children in the United States and abroad who face the misfortunes of a lifetime before they get to their teens. Bush says he admires the Ugandan government for its anti-AIDS campaign. Uganda is an international darling now for its economic reforms. Uganda has some 50,000 soldiers and Kony is thought to have only 2,000 or fewer. So why hasn't he and his top aides been caught? Let Bush lead the charge against Kony. It needn't cost great sums or take battalions of soldiers. Moral and financial pressure could be enough. Two themes bind all these troubles: 1. No matter the locale, childhood as a stage of innocence is nearing extinction for far too many children. Adults should not accept that as a reality. Yet almost always, other causes grab the headlines, the money, the expertise, the attention span, until a child tragedy occurs. 2. Enormous problems surround endangered children - but that doesn't mean no progress can be made. It can. Break down the problems to manageable bits. Get active in a group. Tell state and federal legislators to make children's issues a high priority. Demand more of yourself, more of your government, as responsible custodians for those too young to care for themselves. This will mean dropping cynicism. It will mean dropping the easy outs of saying, "Oh, it's only an inner-city problem," or "Let those foreigners take care of their own problems."
	All Join Hands An Editorial Board series on violence against children Ending Uganda's tragedy As U.N. envoy, John Bolton could play a key role in stopping a war that targets children, and that is spreading. He speaks in Phila. today. By Carolyn Davis Inquirer Editorial Board Dear Ambassador Bolton: Welcome to Philadelphia. I know your time is valuable, so let me get into business right away. It's about a matter that has waited and waited and waited. It should linger no longer. The U.N. Security Council has a very real chance to end the 20-year war between a rebel group known as the Lord's Resistance Army and the government of President Yoweri Museveni in northern Uganda. As wars too often do, it has killed thousands, emptied communities, sundered families. But this conflict has an added quality: More than any other in the world, this war is aimed directly at children. Here's the BlackBerry-brief recap: The Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA, began fighting the government in the 1980s when Museveni seized power in a military coup. The Acholi people dominate the north and have legitimate grievances against Museveni, who is not Acholi. Acholis, though, reject the extremist Joseph Kony as their messenger. His way of punishing them - he thinks of it as cleansing them - for their disloyalty is to kidnap their children. He has abducted about 30,000 children so far and forced them to become soldiers and sex slaves. These atrocities have earned Kony and his crew a spot on the U.S. terrorist list, and indictments from the International Criminal Court on war crimes and crimes against humanity. Twenty years. Think about it, Ambassador Bolton. You were born in 1948 in Baltimore, right? You graduated from the McDonogh School in Owings Mill, Md., in 1966. In 1968, when you were about 20, you were midway through earning your bachelor's degree in political science from Yale. That's a lot to accomplish in your first 20 years. And those decades prepared you for your many achievements to come. As the U.S. representative to the United Nations and the Security Council, you have the chance to give the kids of northern Uganda some opportunities in their lives - other than rape and abduction. That's the moral and spiritual case for leading this charge. Set Christmas as the goal for when the violence will end for these mainly Christian children. A national security case also demands U.S. leadership on this. We should be seeking to avert the instability the LRA is stoking in eastern and central Africa. The LRA has long operated in northern Uganda and southern Sudan, where it has gotten support from the same Sudanese government that stalks civilians in the Darfur region. Recently, LRA fighters have spread their mayhem to the Democratic Republic of Congo, which itself is trying to come out from a long war. Unconfirmed reports suggest the group also has been in the Central African Republic. Chaos is exactly what al-Qaeda looks for when shopping for hideouts. That's the appeal of Somalia, where al-Qaeda is thought to be setting up shop. As with Darfur, the humanitarian catastrophe in northern Uganda cannot be resolved without sustained attention and pressure from the United States and the United Nations. Here is what you, Mr. Ambassador, can do to be a leader on this issue among your Security Council colleagues. Propose a resolution that includes these provisions (some of which come from civil society groups working in northern Uganda): Name an expert panel to track the LRA and identify its financial and materiel supporters. Devise a process, with benchmarks for action, to place sanctions on those people identified as supporting the LRA. Urge combatants to establish an immediate cease-fire. Call on U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to appoint a special envoy to the region in which the LRA operates. Press Museveni to use his troops to protect his own civilians, and to address more aggressively, in tandem with aid groups, the north's sour humanitarian situation. The next point may be cynical, but so be it. This war, according to experts within Uganda and outside of it, can be resolved. There may be other challenges, but there is no oil in Uganda to gum up Security Council action as has been the case with the genocide in Darfur. "Never again" could actually be achieved in Uganda with enough effort from the United States and the Security Council. President Bush has been having a tough political time lately. Wouldn't it be satisfying if he could help the children of northern Uganda grow in peace for the first time in their lives? Wouldn't that be a wondrous Christmas gift?
	Lessons that could end Uganda war Carolyn Davis is a member of The Inquirer Editorial Board It is time to close the deal, to end the war, to give the children of northern Uganda the most miraculous gift they could get: peace, for the first time in their lives. After sporadic attempts to negotiate an end to the 20-year war in Uganda, leaders of neighboring southern Sudan are brokering peace talks between Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and the Lord's Resistance Army, led by Joseph Kony. Talks could work this time thanks to a new political calculus in Sudan. The national government used to be Kony's biggest patron. Its assistance included giving him a safe haven in the south. Now south Sudan has its own regional government that wants Kony gone to end the instability he causes there. Kony's new zeal for talks could be a ploy for gaining time to regroup so he can terrorize more innocents in more countries: LRA attacks have spread to Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But it just could be that this moment - with south Sudan's new political arrangement, military pressure from Uganda, and pending criminal charges against Kony - is the best chance ever to end a conflict in which the LRA has abducted 30,000 children and forced them to be soldiers and sex slaves. An unlikely group of young people is interested in this war: South Philadelphia High School students. For a project last year, these kids studied the northern Uganda conflict. P> They learned that their lives had something in common with those of the children in that war zone: violence that kills and cripples everything around them. "The children of northern Uganda, like in Philadelphia, face murder, rape, and... abuse," said 16-year-old Clara Myers. I spoke with Clara last week. She remains curious about northern Uganda. So I offer these updated lessons on the war and how it could end. Lesson One: Sometimes you have to go backward to go forward. Last year, the International Criminal Court indicted Kony and top aides for crimes against humanity and war crimes. They deeply deserve the charges. But since Kony and the government are talking, court officials should be silent for now about seeking Kony's arrest to give talks a chance to bear peace. Lesson Two:Public attention and pressure help. For several years now, more and more people in the United States, Canada and elsewhere have asked their governments and the United Nations to end the conflict. Their efforts have had an effect. A year ago, the United Nations called the war one of the world's most ignored humanitarian crises. This year it has been discussed by members of the U.N. Security Council. In June, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sent her assistant secretary for African affairs, Jendayi Frazer, to northern Uganda to recommend how the United States could help to end the war. Frazer said doing so is now an administration priority. That's great news, but it means that the United States can't be on the sidelines. President Bush could help by pressing his ally Museveni to stick with the talks, and by appointing a high-profile envoy to advise south Sudanese officials on the most productive strategy for the negotiations. Lesson Three:Ending a war requires multiple plans for multiple scenarios. If the peace talks fail, it is justice's turn. The United States should prod Museveni to let U.S. surveillance capabilities locate Kony and his aides and send in Special Forces to nab them. Then it's time to stamp the address for the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands on their sorry behinds and send them to trial. Lesson Four: The absence of fighting does not automatically erase the causes of war. Whether it's after talks or through catching Kony, foreign donors must insist that the Ugandan government step up its development plans for the north, which has not received the national resources it deserves. And I don't mean Museveni's plan to set up smaller, less congested displacement camps. I mean giving northerners paid jobs and resources to rebuild their villages. That's the best way to avoid another Kony from rising up to sow more turmoil. As you said, Clara, adults - in Uganda or Philadelphia - talk a lot about wanting to help kids, but don't listen to your ideas and dreams. The dearest dream of children surrounded by violence is peace. In Philadelphia, that dream so often seems elusive. In northern Uganda, it could come true this year if the United States and others close the deal.
	Until there is peace in Uganda ... ... a school serves as an oasis of hope, with roots reaching all the way to Phila. By Carolyn Davis Inquirer Editorial Board First of four parts GULU, NORTHERN UGANDA - Give Abitimo Rebecca Odongkara a shade tree on her fertile African homeland, and she will grow a dream. Give her pebbles and sticks, and she will teach love, learning, and faith in a peaceful future. In a region of civil war, Abitimo, 71, has improbably built a haven for children. Drawing on friendships and philosophies formed in Philadelphia, she gives stability to children trapped amid a war that targets them directly. Her achievement holds meaning far beyond Uganda; it shines a light wherever violence stalks children. If youngsters across the world, from Africa to Philadelphia, are to be protected from harm, there must be legions of Abitimos. Like her, adults must let no obstacle stop them from improving the lives of children. Abitimo operates in a region of Uganda that's defined by obstacles. During 19 years of civil war in the north, at least 28,000 children have been abducted and forced to become soldiers and sex slaves. An estimated 9,000 people have been killed. The fate of thousands of children is unknown. As many as 1.6 million people - more than 80 percent of the population in Gulu, Kitgum and Pader Districts - have been uprooted from their homes. The displaced are threatened by illness and malnutrition in the crowded camps where they live. Residents still face rebel attacks, despite promises of government protection. Against the backdrop of this upheaval - and with the scarcest of resources - Abitimo has built a school that now educates 1,500 children, including 250 orphans whose parents died in the war or from HIV/AIDS. "She is such a model of someone who believes the children of the world are her children," said Chuck Esser, a close friend who runs a family center in Philadelphia. The school also has been her own salvation: Helping children has enabled her to overcome a craving for revenge that almost consumed her. Such temptations are strong here. "I consider northern Uganda to be one of the worst human emergencies in the world today," said Carol Bellamy, whose term just ended as executive director of UNICEF, the United Nations children's agency. Until there is peace, there is Abitimo. War is not the only hardship besetting northern Ugandans. Even in the calmest areas of the country, people face daunting challenges that the war exacerbates. The national rate of HIV/AIDS infection dropped from 30 percent in the early 1990s to 6.2 percent last year, the government says; the rate in northern Uganda is still 17 percent. Though President Yoweri Museveni has presided over a growing economy, the country remains one of the world's poorest, with a per capita annual income of $250, according to the World Bank. The civil war has cost the national economy $1.33 billion - about $100 million annually, according to a 2002 report commissioned by the Civil Society Organizations for Peace in Northern Uganda. The war's history is not solely about tribal rivalries, though that has been a constant theme. Abitimo's Acholi tribe once dominated the military after the country gained independence from Britain in 1962. The first Acholi president took charge in 1985, but his reign was short. The following year, he was overthrown by Museveni, whose father comes from the Banyankole tribe and his mother from the Banyarwanda. Museveni served as minister of defense in an earlier government. Angry at their president's ouster, and fearing retribution for past military abuses against other tribal groups, some Acholis launched a rebellion. One of those rebels, a self-proclaimed prophet named Joseph Kony, continues the fight today. Kony's war, though, no longer is aimed at the government. Almost all of the victims in this war are Acholi civilians. And since they long ago rejected him as a messenger of their grievances, the only way Kony can increase his numbers is to kidnap children. He calls this band of abducted youngsters the Lord's Resistance Army. Kony foments fear among them by claiming mystical powers. He sends raiding parties throughout the north, killing adults, torching and looting villages, and stealing children. The war between Kony and Museveni caused Abitimo to postpone establishing her school after returning to Uganda in 1983. It took five years until she was able to realize the dream she first envisioned in Philadelphia. Her initial class had about 10 children, either orphans of war or from displaced families. The classroom was a dirt-and-grass courtyard in the Gulu compound where Abitimo and other displaced families were living. A large, leafy tree formed the school's ceiling. Acholis revere that type of tree, locally called a kituba, because once planted, it rarely dies. One of the first teachers was a woman named Angelina Ochola, whom the fighting had displaced. Ochola asked to teach at Abitimo's school, where she works to this day. They taught with what they found - those sticks and pebbles for counting - and, Abitimo said, "what we had in our minds." Margaret Alerotek Aloyo, now a communications officer in Uganda with World Vision, was one of the first students. She found Abitimo after her parents had disappeared. "They went, according to what I heard, to buy cattle. They never came back." Neighbors told her Kony's rebels had killed them. Margaret was about 6 when Abitimo welcomed her. She instantly felt safe and "so much at home. Abitimo replaced my mother." War has buffeted Abitimo's school even as its good works have grown. Teachers led students in games and songs as gunfire sounded in the distance. If shooting came too close, everyone ran into a house. Ochola remembers one day, in particular, when gunmen went into a nearby house and took away a boy and a girl. The students were scared, Ochola said. "They were crying for their mummies to come and pick them up." But children everywhere adapt to the violence around them, and Abitimo's students became accustomed to war's intrusions. When a bomb fell next door, killing one person and injuring others, "the children were good," Abitimo recalled. "We said, 'Be quiet,' and they were just quiet." Abitimo could not have foreseen that the war would worsen, that tens of thousands of children would be kidnapped, raped, murdered and forced to kill. Yet she believed that God had blessed her mission. It was like the kituba tree. Firmly planted, it would not die. Abitimo's mother was the first of her father's eight wives. Abitimo, the eldest daughter, had three full brothers and, she believes, 44 half-siblings. When she was a teenager in boarding school, her father decided she'd had enough schooling for a girl. She disagreed. "I told my parents I would go back." She grabbed a mattress and returned to complete her studies. She didn't reconcile with her father for a year. When Abitimo was about 18, she married a man who became violent. After four years and three children, she left him. Two years later, in 1960, she married John Odongkara, a policeman with four daughters. John was kind. They blended their children into a new family and together had five more. All the children are adults now; most live around Philadelphia. One lives in Uganda. John's integrity and professionalism helped him become one of Uganda's highest-ranking police officers. "He was one of the community leaders in the region. He was highly respected," said George Omona, the Gulu-based country director for the nonprofit Agency for Cooperation and Research in Development. In the early 1960s, Abitimo began working with the YWCA. In 1964, she participated in a four-month leadership course in the United States, including six weeks of training in Bucks County. Even though the Philadelphia region's bustle and wealth overwhelmed her, she made deep friendships with Esser, his wife, Pamela Haines, and others. In 1971, Idi Amin overthrew President Milton Obote. Amin slaughtered 300,000 people during his eight years of dictatorship. His massacres especially targeted the Acholi - and John was one of the most influential. Amin's soldiers came after John, but he escaped to Uganda's capital city, Kampala. Abitimo, seven months pregnant, was put under house arrest for several days. "You get so afraid," she says of that time, "and you fear death." But God, she believed, "wanted me to have some strength." To protect her children, she moved them to boarding schools around the country. Money was tight, and life precarious. In 1972, she heard that John had gone to Tanzania to join Obote's exile group, but when differences arose over the group's plans, he was jailed. Abitimo rushed to help. She worked the bureaucracy and appealed directly to Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere. After six weeks, John was free. Fearing for their safety in Uganda or any nearby country, they sought a U.S. visa. The State Department had to confirm that John "was definitely among the top 10 people Amin wanted to extinguish," said Crane Miller, a Washington lawyer John knew. With the help of Miller and a friend Abitimo had made during her YWCA workshop in Bucks County, the Odongkaras were allowed to enter the United States as refugees. "I have this wonderful picture of him coming through the gate in Philadelphia," Miller said. "They looked happy as hell. All of them. Great big wonderful grins on their faces." Abitimo later brought over twin nieces, but immigration authorities in Philadelphia balked when it came time to extend their visas: Who would support them? Abitimo turned to Miller and new friend Barbara Jordan, who introduced her to her pastor, the Rev. Bill Murphey, who was at Jenkintown's Grace Presbyterian Church. Abitimo so charmed him with her persistence, friendly flirting and unerring goodness that he sponsored the twins. "She had me at the end of a string around her finger in about four hours," Murphey said with a laugh. "She would call and say, 'Reverend Murphey,' and I would think, 'Oh, no, what am I in for this time?' " She and her family slowly settled down in Philadelphia, with friends helping the Odongkaras make a down payment on a Germantown twin home. A year or two after Abitimo arrived in Philadelphia, news came that Amin had killed three prominent Ugandans, including an archbishop she had admired. Bitterness welled up in her. "I decided," she said, "I would buy a gun and fight Amin." She would just work more jobs to earn the money. But Abitimo, a Seventh Day Adventist, was saved from violence by her religious belief and by a peer counseling method she was learning with her friend Chuck Esser. In one session, Abitimo "revealed tremendous grief," Esser said. "He was making me talk about why I came to the U.S.," Abitimo recalled. She recalled the persecution of Ugandans under Amin and broke down. Overwhelmed by memories of what Amin's brutality had done to her family and her country, she realized she could not add to the violence. She surrendered her plan of revenge and decided instead to start a school. "The child's mind is not polluted," she reasoned. John had not adjusted well to working as a mere security guard. In 1979, with Amin out of power, he returned home. Abitimo stayed to care for her children, and to learn how to teach youngsters herself. In her 50s, Abitimo got her GED after studying long hours at the Chestnut Hill branch of the Free Library. She earned an associate's degree, then a bachelor's degree in human services and a master's in education. In 1983, Abitimo felt ready to rejoin John in Uganda. She wanted her school to teach what she had learned: Her students would have faith in God, do good deeds, listen, learn and love. The children of the north, she believed, would forgo fighting only if their minds, hearts and souls were nourished. Increased fighting and massive abductions in 1992 created a new influx of people to Gulu town. With more children, municipal officials asked Abitimo to add higher grades. In 1993, her school, the Upper Nile Institute for Appropriate Technology, or UNIFAT, surprised the country with its strong test scores. "Nobody failed," Abitimo said modestly. The next year, more students did well. As the school's reputation grew, so did its student body, now with 1,500 in nursery school to middle grades. Local authorities routinely send their children there. About 1996, the town clerk gave Abitimo some land for a small sum and a monthly rent. With help from friends and U.S. donations, UNIFAT finally has a permanent, if unfinished, home. "I'm very proud of that school," said Gulu schools inspector Hellen Nyeko. "They perform well in academics and in extracurricular activities." The school has 14 classrooms in a brick-and-concrete complex. A cement veranda sometimes shelters "night commuters," children who travel from the villages and camps to sleep in greater safety from abductions. On a hot day last November, more than 60 children sat elbow to elbow at desks listening to their teacher. They were lucky to have such a small class - higher grades have a higher teacher-to-pupil ratio. The children have their own exercise books and pencils. Charts hang on a hook by the library: a map of Uganda's rivers; an addition table; a poster depicting the composition of blood. More than anywhere else in the school, the library shows the continuing connections between Abitimo and her second home: Most of the books bear stamps from schools and churches around the Philadelphia region. But not every child has a textbook, and the school has many needs. Teachers make their own materials and use real-life objects - just as in the school's first days. Two hundred and fifty students are orphans who pay no tuition. Orphans or displaced youngsters often behave aggressively at first, says Abitimo, because they are used to having to take things by force. But they lack the self-confidence to do well. "We want them to think beyond just following orders," Abitimo said. Abitimo instructs her faculty to be patient with these children. Her understanding and desire to help her pupils distinguish her school, said the Gulu school inspector. Fred Wokorach, 14, is one of the school's orphans. His parents died around 1999; Lord's Resistance Army rebels took his oldest brother, who hasn't been heard from since 1996. Fred doesn't know what he would be doing if it weren't for Abitimo's school. Here he plays soccer and enjoys English and social studies, which "reminds us about the things that happened long ago." He also likes the moral lessons. The school "teaches us to be responsible and to be good pupils, to listen to what our parents tell us," he said. "What I can say is this: With God, everything is possible." Abitimo traded teaching for being an administrator years ago. She spends her days talking with teachers, visiting municipal officials, assessing the school's needs, getting supplies, and soliciting donations. She still teaches moral lessons to students. She still helps them with their problems. Any given day finds her with an arm around a girl's shoulder or talking gently to an energetic boy. Child by child, Abitimo is building a new generation of northern Ugandans. With graying hair and a kindly face, she is her region's grandmother, a sage counsel and refuge. John died in April 2000 at age 82 after suffering from Alzheimer's disease. He is buried in the yard of the family home outside of Gulu. The war makes it safe to visit there only during daylight. She misses her husband and his support. "I get frustrated when things are not going well. Before I would talk to John about problems. Now, everything is on me," she concedes. Only lately does she think about retiring. The fighting has worsened again and has moved closer to Gulu, which now has a curfew. Her youngest child, 30-year-old Anna-Mona Angwec Christian, would be delighted if her mother did slow down. "If I could take my mom away and just go with her to where no one would ever find her, even for a weekend and pamper her, I would. "She's like Wonder Woman to me." But Abitimo seems reluctant to relax until she expands to high school classes. Then, she claims, she will find someone to carry on for her, a better fund-raiser who can give the school a stable future. She will visit Philadelphia to dote on her children and grandchildren, and to sing and dance and cry with her friends. Without those friends, she said, there would be no school in Gulu. The friends will be glad to see her, too. Says Rev. Murphey, "When I stand before the Lord God my maker with his sentries at the gate, and they say, 'Murph, I don't think you're going to make it,' I'm going to say, 'Where's my friend? She'll get me in.' "
	How Uganda's anguish evolved - and why it endures By Carolyn Davis Carolyn Davis is a member of The Inquirer Editorial Board These are the moments children and young adults in the war zone of northern Uganda mark as milestones. Alex Ocen was abducted in 1997, the same day rebels from a group called the Lord's Resistance Army attacked his village and slaughtered his sister. The next year, at age 17, he killed for the first time. "I prayed from my heart that God forgive me," he said. Susan Innocent Ejang was 14 when the Lord's Resistance Army, also known as the LRA, took her eight years ago. Now 22, she is at last free, though she gave birth after commanders raped her. And she finally has confirmed the rumor she heard in captivity: Her beloved father died while searching for her. A 19-year civil war has pitted government forces against the rebel LRA, which is known for its ghoulish tactics, aimless marching and vague goals. The war has displaced up to 1.6 million people, more than 80 percent of the population of Gulu, Kitgum and Pader districts. They live in camps with too little food and bad sanitation. Attacks against them continue, even though the government promised northerners it would protect them there. The United Nations estimates that at least 28,000 children have been abducted during the war by the LRA, led by a mystic named Joseph Kony. Two of the north's largest reception centers for abducted children have registered 18,000 children who have returned, according to UNICEF. That leaves a minimum of 10,000 others who are unaccounted for. The fighting is not a simple case of one tribe against another, though that is how it began. The Acholis, who live in the north, had dominated the Ugandan military since independence in 1962. Tito Okello became the first Acholi president in 1985, but Yoweri Museveni overthrew him the following year. Museveni's family is from western Uganda; his father was from the Banyankole tribe and his mother from the Banyarwanda. Besides resenting the loss of power, Acholis feared Museveni would take revenge for atrocities they had committed in the military. So a number of Acholi rebel groups emerged to challenge Museveni after his guerrilla forces won Kampala. Kony's is the last one fighting. At first, Kony targeted government soldiers. But when Acholis rejected him, Kony turned on his own people. He would purify them through violence, according to the Refugee Law Project in Uganda. Kony, believed to be in his 40s, fills his ranks by kidnapping boys and forcing them to become killers. They loot and burn villages and abduct more children. He teaches his troops to show no mercy to those he suspects of working with the government: Cutting off children's lips is common. Abducted girls usually become soldiers, porters and sex slaves for Kony and his commanders. Children who have been stolen from their homes, repeatedly raped or forced to kill return with deep psychological wounds. Michael D. Oruni is the codirector of World Vision's Children of War Rehabilitation Project in Gulu. The project's center helps children who have come back from the bush. First, they get medical treatment, then counseling. They barely talk when they arrive. They give phony names; rebels have told them that anyone outside the LRA is an enemy. Some kids are withdrawn, moody and aggressive. Others act as if nothing is wrong. But their drawings reveal what they've been through. After a few weeks, Oruni says, "They begin to break down. They say, 'I did A, B, C.' Then they can begin to heal." About 30 parents daily visit the center, for information about missing children or to reunite with their own. Counselors help them cope with seeing a son with an amputated limb or a daughter cradling a baby. Accepting these grandchildren can be hard. "I think girls have more problems" when they come back, said Edward Sembidde program coordinator of Save the Children's Children Affected by Conflict Disaster in northern Uganda. "They are victimized twice, by being defiled and raped in the bush and then suffering that stigma when they return. That's where you find a lot more issues of coping," Sembidde said. The war has created multiple layers of suffering. When the children finally are sent home, it is often to squalid, insecure camps where their families now live. The government does not provide food to the camps, relying instead upon the World Food Program, which does not provide all of the minimum human dietary requirement of 2,100 kilocalories per person per day. But growing vegetables and fruits outside the camps to augment that ration is dangerous, and malnutrition is a leading cause of death in the north. Why has this war - seemingly so solvable compared with other global conflicts - gone on for nearly two decades? What keeps it from being resolved? One theory holds that the conflict is really three wars, not one: between Kony's LRA and the Ugandan Army; between the Acholis and the rest of the country; and among the Acholis themselves. "If one war ends, the others are still there," UNICEF's Martin Mogwanja said. "So it hasn't been the same war all along." Until 2002, Sudan played a huge role in fueling the violence. Angry that Museveni had supported a Sudanese rebel group, it gave Kony supplies and a safe haven in its south. Since March 2002, Sudan has allowed the Ugandan military into its territory to chase the LRA. Other explanations blame the war's longevity on Museveni. The president, who can claim success in Uganda's growing economy, presides over a country that has never had a peaceful transition of power. He undercuts multiparty politics and wants to change the constitution so he can run for a third term. Critics believe Museveni doesn't mind instability in a part of the country that opposes him. "Nobody in his right mind would think that's a serious statement," says Nsaba Buturo, Ugandan minister of state for information and broadcasting. "He wants to see peace under his leadership." Certainly, Kony is adept at mixing Acholi political grievances, his people's belief in spirits, and a strategy of unrepentant violence to sustain his rebellion, even though he cannot win. It is the senselessness of his cause - along with his brutality - that lead many people to claim he is insane. Mediator Joyce Neu, who met him in 2000, disagrees. Instead of a wild-eyed rebel, she met a soft-spoken, subdued man. He was dressed in a crisp, baby-blue shirt and gray slacks, she recalled, and "looked like anybody off the street."
	A Ugandan child helps restore faith By Carolyn Davis Carolyn Davis is a member of The Inquirer Editorial Board I didn't expect to feel healed when I came to Uganda to see firsthand a situation I have followed for more than a decade: a civil war in which about 30,000 children have been abducted to serve as soldiers or sex slaves. I didn't expect to have my cracked faith spackled while spending a night watching the fitful sleep of children, whom I consider to be the most victimized in the world - and the most ignored. But I did and it was. A lot of thoughts careened around my mind as I walked after nightfall with 12-year-old Johnson Tokadi from a camp where he and his family temporarily live to the courtyard of St. Joseph's Hospital, about two miles away. A town always seems different at night - a little meaner, a little more threatening. That's why most parents in America keep their children, especially the youngest ones, off the street after dark. And that is why - it occurred to me as I strode to keep up without stepping in puddles - the moonlit silhouettes of so many kids walking along a road looked so sad. It is this 19-year civil war, and the threat of abduction by a group called the Lord's Resistance Army, that caused these children to journey from their rural homes to sleep in towns where rebels don't go. This routine has earned them the label of "night commuters. " So Johnson walked, carrying the blanket he wraps himself in before resting his head on the cold cement floor. I instantly liked Johnson. He is a shy boy who made good on his promise 24 hours before to meet me so I could accompany him on a night commute. He looks, too, like a street boy named Maurice, whom I befriended when I worked in Rwanda for UNICEF in 1998. It now seems ironic to me that Rwanda borders Uganda, since Rwanda was where my crisis of faith began and Uganda was where it ended. Rwanda is home to the 1994 genocide in which extremist Hutus triggered a massacre against the minority ethnic group, the Tutsis. Extremists were joined in the frenzied slaughter, which saw as many as 1 million people killed in 100 days, by ordinary Hutus who were mesmerized by the hate propaganda all around them. Try to understand a Hutu mother killing her part-Tutsi child, a Hutu son slaying his Tutsi father by the intimacy of a machete chop. I could not. What happens to a person about to commit an atrocity at that moment when his hand is lowering a blade to cut the throat of a loved one? How does the decency I believe is in every person snap in that instant? I have struggled with these questions, even as I gave birth to a w ondrous daughter, joined synagogues, attended services, and asked for travelers' blessings before going to dangerous locales overseas. I have struggled, even as I felt an internal spark of faith that urged doing more to protect children. I still believed, but not as much as before Rwanda. One of my aims in Uganda was to describe a night commuter's walk to a safe haven and back home. Little would come, I thought, from staying up all night and watching a bunch of kids sleep. Wrong. By midnight, I was the only one awake. I looked out over the 50 or so kids and could not believe that in 19 years, the world has not come to these children's rescue. At about 2 a.m., I heard rainfall and felt the cold and hunger that squeezes so many in northern Uganda. At 4:35 a.m., I felt deep in my bones the vulnerability of living in a war zone when I heard what sounded like gunshots. In this supposedly safer setting, what really was there to protect these kids from an attack? The flimsy fence? The old, haggard watchman with a cane? The sick and dying in the hospital? It was early in the night, when I began to feel different, when I realized the cracks that had appeared in Rwanda were gone. My crisis of faith was replaced by a stronger-still belief in God. I tried to rationalize why and how that moment had happened amid a human tragedy. Maybe it was seeing the children laugh, play and share their possessions with others despite their situation. Maybe it was an inexpressibly satisfying feeling that at least for one night, I could help protect them, that I was acting on my concern for these kids. Maybe it was all that and other reasons, too. But after my night commute, I don't care anymore about dissecting what happened. Now, having faith that it did is enough.
	A disfigured Ugandan girl copes Beneath the scars is the will to go on By Carolyn Davis Carolyn Davis is a member of The Inquirer Editorial Board. Jennifer Anyango's voice is soft and sweet. When the 14-year-old speaks, her words sound like a song. Her voice, in fact, is the only evidence of her age, since the war has burned away just about everything else. In one way Jennifer was lucky: The Lord's Resistance Army of Joseph Kony did not abduct her. She was not forced to be anyone's sex slave or to carry heavy loads over countless, pointless miles. But the rebels did take something precious from her. They robbed her of her childhood. Jennifer was alone in her family's hut in a northern Ugandan village on the day the rebels came. Her mother has told her she was 9 years old then. "They found me grinding millet," Jennifer says. "They closed the door and told me not to go outside. " The rebels, who were probably abducted children themselves, set the hut ablaze. "I was afraid. The hut was burning, but I was inside. I didn't try to get outside because I was fearing that the rebels were still outside. " She had good reason to be afraid: Jennifer heard them making noise beyond the door. Jennifer describes the long-ago scene while sitting in a small, dim hut in a displaced person's camp where she now lives with her mother. Her father was killed during the attack that injured her. She shifts back and forth in a homemade wooden chair. Then she crosses and uncrosses her feet at the ankles. The movements betray the agitation of memory. "After setting the fire, the rebels stayed a bit. I was screaming from inside, and they were laughing from outside. So I could not do anything other than scream. " Because neighbors had fled the attack, strangers from another village r escued Jennifer and helped her to a hospital. The injuries have left her face badly disfigured. Burns were so deep on her forehead that she lost pigment there. When her face healed, skin on her forehead and cheeks contracted, stretching the area around her eyes and exposing the sockets. Her chest and left arm have scars. Her left hand had to be amputated. Surgery could help Jennifer, but her family is too poor and medical facilities are too scarce. Jennifer's family treats her with kindness. "But others are mean to me. Sometimes if my mom is not around, people say I'm ugly. " Her eyes sting terribly during the dry season when hard winds blow. "It's like my eyes are cracking," she says. The poor of northern Uganda don't have many economic opportunities, and someone like Jennifer, the victim now of fear and ridicule, has even fewer choices. But she doesn't know that. Even with her injuries, Jennifer sees a future for herself. She would like to learn to use a sewing machine. That would help the family income, and give her the semblance of a normal life. Maybe now and again as she sews, she could forget her screams, and just sing a soft, sweet song.
	... children flee their own homes to escape predators in the night By Carolyn Davis Inquirer Editorial Board Kitgum, northern Uganda - It is 6 p.m. At this time of day, many children around the world are eating dinner, playing or being told stories. Here in Uganda, an estimated 35,000 youngsters are trying to elude rebels who want to abduct them for soldiering and sexual slavery. These children are the night commuters of northern Uganda. The Lord's Resistance Army, led by Joseph Kony, has kidnapped at least 28,000 children during a 19-year war between rebels and the government forces of President Yoweri Museveni. Johnson Tokadi's family wants to make sure that doesn't happen to him. Johnson is 12, a serious boy with a slow smile and a love of math. He and his family have lived in the nearby Labuje displaced person's camp since August 2003. Eleven relatives share his hut. "The hut is small, and if the rebels come, it will be difficult for all of us to escape," his mother says. So every night she and her husband send Johnson to the courtyard of St. Joseph's Hospital about two miles away. This is what happens: 6 p.m. The commute Johnson bathes, and the family eats - corn mush and beans. Heavy rain has turned the ground to mud. Even though lightning still flashes, Johnson must leave. Carrying a blanket in a woven sack, he joins 100 or so other children on the sloppy dirt road. The downpour has slowed to a persistent drizzle. Most of them walk barefoot. Reckless bicycle riders and large ruts in the road pose a nightly hazard. It is dark; garbage is everywhere. Even the most agile children cannot avoid cutting their feet on nails or glass on the ground. A few roadside stands sell cookies and sweets to this odd customer niche. Some children stop. Others just readjust the weight of their sacks and move on. After Johnson has walked for 40 minutes, he sees dots of light marking the fenced-in hospital grounds. After the cool and wet walk, those lights beckon like angels. 7:45 p.m. Getting settled Johnson has a dilemma. He usually sleeps on a sidewalk, under an overhang. But tonight children who normally sleep on the uncovered ground have moved to a drier place - Johnson's place. He does not want to ask them to move, out of fear that they will yell or hit him. Finally, with the drizzle gaining force and cold air moving in, he heads toward the hospital chapel, a round open-air building, where night commuters are allowed to sleep only when it rains. About 50 children, mostly boys, are in the chapel. The sound of rain competes with the cries of children being treated for malaria in the building next door. After a few minutes, a young preacher steps behind the pulpit and asks whether the children would prefer a short prayer before bed or to hear him preach. "Preach," they yell. He tells the story of the two men nailed on crosses at Calvary with Jesus. The moral: Learn to accept your troubles. Believe in Jesus, he says, to gain life everlasting. Johnson sits in the middle of the chapel, still wearing his day clothes: blue shirt and dark, dusty pants. He listens intently to the preacher. Some children lay out their bedding. The luckiest ones have a straw mat and wool blanket. Most have only a thin blanket or cotton cloth. One child complains that a grown man is sleeping off his drunkenness under a pew. A watchman comes in but fails to rouse the man. He tells the children to call for help if the drunk causes trouble. At 8:30, Johnson and some others kneel and clasp hands. They recite the Lord's Prayer, sweet and high. As the air becomes chilled, some of the most vulnerable children in the world cocoon themselves in whatever cover they have and close their eyes. 11 p.m. Noises of the night Children cough all around the hospital compound. A baby wails in the nearby children's ward, where adults talk somberly. A fluorescent light hums in the chapel. A motorcycle leaves the hospital grounds. Children snore. A cricket sings. An adult cries out in pain. There are a few seconds of silence, then a child lets out a raspy, haunting cough and a baby starts wailing again. Midnight. They sleep In their sleep the children shift, wriggle and squirm in the cold. They lie in all directions, head-to-head and feet-to-head. As the night goes on, they huddle together to keep warm. A stranger puts a blanket on one child with no bedding at all, and his sleep becomes more peaceful. The rain continues to fall, and nothing protects them from the wind. The smell of disease wafts from the hospital wards and mixes with body odors and the stench of urine. Children rise to relieve themselves in the grass outside the chapel, then return to their patch of floor. Some talk in their sleep. 3 a.m. More sniffles; an arrival A girl enters silently, stepping over the others to find a spot. She stops before the altar, then wraps herself, with polished grace, in a dirty cloth, swirling it around until she is fully swaddled from waist to head. She lies down and does not move the rest of the night. More cries and coughs come from the sleepers. One wakes up and sniffles. He sees another person awake and smiles. Then he pulls his blanket over his head. Johnson is sleeping deeply, close to other children for warmth. Suddenly, several pops ring out. In Abington or West Chester, Cherry Hill or Havertown, such noise would be rain pounding on a metal trash can or a car backfiring. But in northern Uganda, noises that sound like gunshots probably are gunshots. The uneasy night emphasizes just how vulnerable the children trapped in this war are. 5:30 a.m. Awakening Ten children are up and chatting. A child across the room shouts for them to be quiet. One boy has brought a radio with him and turns on church music. The drunk is gone. By 6, most of the children are awake. As the sky becomes light, the night commuters roll up their bedding and prepare for the trek home. Johnson is awake and has neatly folded his blanket. He has slept well, he says. The church bell sounds, and the children leave the compound. Some laugh and poke their friends; some sing a church song. The sacks they carry can't hold all the burdens that weigh them down. 7:15 a.m. Home again More than 12 hours after he left his hut, Johnson is back home. He sets down his sack and goes to wash. His father leaves to help slaughter a pig. His mother feeds the baby. Johnson likes his school near the camp better than his old village school. More subjects are taught, and he is not so afraid of rebel attacks. In the village, that was not the case. His nightly trip to the hospital is tiresome, but he sleeps best there because he feels safer. Sometimes a teacher comes to instruct the children, which he likes. He has gotten hurt only once while night commuting. "I was beaten at the hospital by another night commuter because I stepped on his leg," he says. When he grows up, Johnson wants to be a doctor. He also wants a wife and children, but he doesn't want his kids to go through what he endures. They will eat breakfast, go to school, do chores. After supper, they will stay up for awhile with the grown-ups. Most of all, he hopes, "the children will sleep at home."
	Child abductees forced to kill by Ugandan rebels Posted on Sun, May. 08, 2005 Lira, northern Uganda - After his kidnapping, Alex Acire quickly learned a core teaching of the Lord's Resistance Army: Children who try to escape may die a ghastly death. Soon after his abduction in May 2002, rebels struck him again and again with a machete. It felt like a hundred blows. But the rebels' lessons lodged deeper in his bones the day the 15-year-old was made to kill a man who was caught after trying to flee. Alex's face turns to stone as he sits in the Rachele Rehabilitation Center, remembering the scene in heart-stopping detail: The 20-year-old escapee was brought back naked, hands tied behind his back. He was made to lie down on the ground on his belly. Commanders ordered several boys, including Alex, to hit the man with a club as hard as possible. If they balked or tried to escape themselves, they were told, the same beating could happen to them. "If you didn't hit hard enough, you got hit as well," Alex recalls. So he hit hard. At that moment - when the boy became a beast, through no choice of his own - Alex did not think of his old village life before the rebels snatched him. He did not yearn for the comfort of his mother or father: "There was not time to think of any relative or other person." He could only think of survival - his. So when Alex feared his first blow wasn't forceful enough, he hit the man on the head three more times. Alex listened for his cries as others took their turns, but heard none. When it was over, Alex was terrified. "I thought the spirits would come and harm me," he says. "I thought I would be killed the same way." When he was made a lookout while others went to dig up cassava, Alex escaped. "I didn't care what would happen to me. I just wanted to get away," he says. He made it to a camp, whose residents then took him to the local Ugandan army unit. He has been at the Rachele Center for three weeks and has yet to see his family. When he rejoins them, it will be in a camp for the displaced. "I am even more scared to go and live in the camp. The rebels always attack the camps and do a lot of bad things," he says. If his former commanders or others from his unit recognize him, they will kill him. He has other worries, too. What will his parents think about what he did as a rebel? "They will be very sad about all that," he says. But he thinks they will not love him less.
	How captivity ended for one abductee Posted on Sun, May. 08, 2005 Kitgum, northern Uganda - This is how 15-year-old Christine Alum's captivity ends: dazed and dirty and sitting in the back of an old pickup truck next to a muddy spare tire. Christine got away from the Lord's Resistance Army when she ran during a gun battle with government soldiers. The soldiers have brought her to this center for former abductees run by the Concerned Parents Association, a Ugandan advocacy group. Blisters and open sores cover her ankles, toes and feet. Her eyes are red and sunken, and small circles dot her neck - marks, she explains in a flat voice, where the rebels poked her with sticks when she did not walk fast enough. She was held in captivity for two months.
	One girl tells of life with rebels Posted on Sun, May. 08, 2005 Lira, northern Uganda - It's hard to find anyone who will even try to protect the children of northern Uganda against marauders of the night. Rebels took Sarah and about 40 other girls in June 2003 as they lay sleeping in a school dormitory. "The watchman ran away and left us alone," she recalled while sitting at a table at the Rachele Rehabilitation Center. The Ugandan Army took the 18-year-old to the center after she escaped captivity from the Lord's Resistance Army. As she talks, Sarah fiddles with the binding of a book called Children's Stories from Uganda. Her story includes how on the same night that the watchman probably saved his own life, Sarah's became a hell of carrying heavy loads, walking from there to nowhere, being threatened - and learning to survive. Sarah's most important lesson came early in her servitude. After several days of marching, Sarah and the other girls were taken to the haven of rebel leader Joseph Kony in southern Sudan. There, she recalls, the captives found many females Kony had taken as his "wives," that is, sex slaves. The young women "welcomed the new girls, but at night they took us up to a certain house and told us to rest there. When we were asleep, eight of these women told me to come out. "One lady slapped me and I was told to follow them. They took me an hour away to a river where some young boys who were Kony's bodyguards started talking in Acholi because they thought I didn't know it. "They were saying, 'Today we are going to kill her.' " They had weapons, a knife, a machete and a rope to carry out their plan. One rebel, an abductee himself, overheard this plan and showed the courage and grace that the watchman had not: The boy took Sarah away, back to Kony's house. Kony ordered that she not be killed. At that moment, "these people started fearing me." Sarah says she began to believe she would survive. Of Kony she says, "He's also a human being like me. But there are some changes in him like when you are visited by evil." Sarah escaped during a gun battle with government soldiers. As rebels fled, she hid in the bush, then came out holding her AK-47 high above her head. Sarah has been reunited with her mother, father and four siblings: "When I saw them coming, I jumped up and ran to where they were. I cried and my dad carried me away."
	Parents' group spreads the word on missing children Posted on Sun, May. 08, 2005 Lira, northern Uganda - Angelina Atyam knows how it feels to create a life, and how it feels to have that life stolen. Atyam is the chairperson of the Concerned Parents Association. She helped establish that group after the Lord's Resistance Army in 1996 abducted her daughter Charlotte Awino from a highly regarded Roman Catholic boarding school in northern Uganda. Charlotte, then 14, was sleeping in the dormitory of St. Mary's College in the village of Aboke when rebels burst in, tied up the hands of 139 girls ages 13 to 17 and led them away to captivity. (The story of the abducted Aboke students is told in the book, Aboke Girls: Children Abducted in Northern Uganda by Els De Timmerman. The ISBN is 9970022563.) Like all of the children who are abducted, Charlotte and the other Aboke girls spent many of their days carrying heavy supplies while marching through the countryside. They were raped and made to kill. Not long after the abduction, Atyam and others began the parents' association to lobby for their daughters' release. Atyam has become the most visible Ugandan spokesperson on behalf of the abducted children of her region. She has traveled around the world, describing the plight of these children and pressing every donor nation and United Nations official she meets to press for the unconditional release of the abducted children. She is sitting at a table on the veranda of the White House Hotel in the northern town of Lira. It's a cool night, with the strong odor of old buses noisily idling at a service station across the street. Atyam describes the reunion of a just-returned Aboke girl named Susan with her parents in Lira. "It was something special. We sang, we thanked the Lord. It was wonderful," Atyam said. Atyam had her own reunion in July 2004, when Charlotte escaped from a town in Pader District after eight years of being an LRA captive. She vividly recalls those events. Some members of the Concerned Parents group called her with the news that her daughter had escaped and was in the custody of the Army. "I knew she was being guarded very heavily," Atyam said. "It was getting late. I grabbed some things and drove to Pader, even though it was risky." The next day, a military escprt took her to the barracks where Charlotte was being housed temporarily. There she saw that her little 14-year-old was a woman - and a mother. "The moment she saw me," Atyam recalled, "she put the baby down. She ran toward me and she shouted. For a long time, we could just cling to one another and say nothing. The tears were just flowing and it was hers to say, 'Mama, don't cry, I am here.'" Then Atyam heard the baby cry. A social worker from the parents association had prepared Atyam to meet her 3-year-old grandchild. Still, Atyam couldn't help but notice that the baby didn't look like Charlotte. She also couldn't help but bring the child some clothes and something to drink. Atyam is hoping that efforts to negotiate an end to this 19-year civil war will be successful. "Civil society wants peace. The government seems to want to give a peaceful resolution a chance," she said. As a midwife, Atyam used to spend her time helping children enter the world, rather than advocating for those who disappear. "I was very comfortable with my job as a midwife in a private practice. It was a joyous thing to see births. "The day the rebels took my daughter, I no longer have concentration. I have been on the move trying to be the voice of the voiceless." She spends a lot of time with the CPA. The advocacy calls for her presence at any time. Even though her daughter has been free, she says the issue "is still very personal. Concerned Parents is a family that came together out of suffering." She makes clear that her life will not return to the way as it was before her daughter's abduction: "It's very difficult to say, 'I've got mine.' "
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