Hard return for Uganda's lost children

The tot rushes around the campsite, getting in everyone's way. He wants to be picked up and twirled around like an airplane. He was found last month during a battle between the Ugandan Army forces and the rebels and brought to this center for ex-combatants. Nameless, and presumed to be an orphan, he was christened "Innocent" by the troops who found him.

There are hundreds like him: children born in captivity to young abducted girls and their "husbands" – commanders of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). It is estimated that some 15,000 boys and girls have been abducted by the LRA during the 16 years of on again-off again civil war here.

They are hauled off from classrooms, pounced upon at a drinking well, even dragged out of bed at night – then forced to carry the rebels' equipment, prepare food, serve as concubines, and, eventually, carry guns, abduct others, and fight for the rebel cause. Many have been released or escaped over the years, but thousands remain with the rebels and more are kidnapped every day. They are at once both the children and the enemies of this community.

Uganda's operation "Iron Fist," launched five months ago, was intended to flush the rebels out of their southern Sudanese bases once and for all – and allow safe passage back home to the abducted child troops. It has not worked out that way.

"Yesterday's abductees are today's brainwashed fighters," says Geoffrey Kalebbo of World Vision, a Christian aid organization which runs the ex-combatant rehabilitation camp in Gulu. "Perhaps they are unable to escape. But maybe they don't want to leave anymore. They feel they belong there."

These abducted children are part of a bizarre guerrilla outfit led by a former altar boy turned self-proclaimed prophet named Joseph Kony. Their mission is to overthrow the government of President Yoweri Museveni, install a new leadership which will rule by the Ten Commandments, and restore honor to the marginalized Acholi people of the north – the very same group they come from, and now prey upon.

Splashing themselves with "holy water" before battle in order to become invisible to the enemy, and armed for years – by the Sudanese government in Khartoum – with the most modern equipment, these youngsters have wreaked havoc on northern Uganda, burning homes, looting, and hacking off lips and ears of suspected government collaborators. Close to half a million people have been displaced during this long war and the economy here is paralyzed.

"Sometimes three people could rape one little girl," says a former LRA fighter with wild eyes. "Sometimes we could burn down a whole village, and sometimes we could stomp on someone to death."

Abducted at age nine, this teenager fought with the LRA for two years before he ran away. At home he found his family had been killed, and then, en route to look for his uncles in another district, he was re-abducted and kept for another two years before escaping again. He does not know his real name and has called himself "Bush," after the US president. He is waiting at the World Vision camp for word of family. "But I know already," he says. "There is nowhere for me."

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