By Charles Ochen Okwir

12^th March 2012:

The ‘Kony2012’ campaign video by US based NGO Invisible Children had hit 26,684,765 views by the time I watched it on youtube – not an insignificant achievement if you can call it that.  But the criticisms of it, probably in the thousands by now, were almost instantaneous.

Perhaps we should flip the coin and focus more on Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony’s victims – including yours truly.  Incidentally, by these, I mean the thousands upon thousands of young men and women abducted by the LRA and conscripted into its rebel ranks over the course of the conflict.

A daring attempt to escape would almost certainly cost them their lives.  “My brother tried to escape…then they killed him using a panga (machete).  They cut his neck,” said Jacob, a young victim of the LRA conflict who featured in the viral video clip.

Unable to escape, or simply too terrified to escape, many stayed put.  With the passage of time – time in which they were subjected to infectious indoctrination, these young abductees became killing machines.  Today, some of these ‘unwilling’ LRA combatants are facing war crimes and crimes against humanity before the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the War Crimes Court in Uganda.

One such combatant is Thomas Kwoyelo, who was wounded in battle and captured by the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) in Democratic Republic of Congo where the LRA had some of its bases.  Before he was conscripted into the LRA, it’s entirely possible that Kwoyelo may have had very different dreams – ambitions to become anything his capabilities could allow him.  But it was never to be – thanks to the LRA.

Indeed, when he was asked what his ambitions were, Jacob, the young boy from northern Uganda featured at the beginning of the Invisible Children video said:  “For me I wanted to be a Lawyer.  But I don’t have money to pay my school fees so that I learn and then become a Lawyer.”  Jacob’s and Kwoyelo’s cases evoke painful memories of my own abduction – by the same LRA.

From Captive to Counsel

January 13, 1989 is a day that is engrained in my memory.  It was approximately 05:00am – quite dark in fact, when we set off by bus from the northern Uganda town of Gulu for Uganda’s capital city Kampala.  Barely 20mins into the journey, at a place called Palenga, the dark interior of the bus suddenly looked like the site of a fireworks display.

We had fallen into an LRA ambush.  The driver was badly injured.  He consequently lost control of the bus and it rolled, God knows how many times!  With their AK-47 assault rifles, the LRA descended on the bus like possessed maniacs – smashing its windows further as they ordered us out of the bus.

We were stripped down to our underpants, and ordered to sit in single file behind each other on the freezing cold tarmac as they looted the contents of the bus.  Just before we were marched off into the swamp across the road and into captivity, one LRA man asked his colleague:  “How many died?  “Only twelve”, his friend answered, before adding that, “they are very lucky”.

The story is too long to tell in a short article like this – perhaps a book someday!  But the whole ordeal of captivity lasted about two weeks – a time when we marched non-stop for hours a day – day after day.  A few of us decided that enough was enough.  We would try to escape at night even though we knew full well that we could be killed if caught.

The first attempt failed – because everyone chickened out.  We watched each other with a mixture of shame and relief when the powerful rays of the sun tore through the misty morning.  “Tonight is the night” – we made a second vow to each other later in the day as we uprooted cassava for the days meal.  After a lot drama at the camp, we escaped that night – with me leaving last!

Like young Jacob, my teenage ambition was to be a Lawyer – and thankfully, I completed my law degree.  But I can’t help wondering what would have become of me if I hadn’t taken the risk to escape from captivity.  As an ‘O’ level graduate among a largely illiterate rebel force, it’s very likely that I would have risen fast to some high rebel rank.

Under duress, I probably would have killed tens, if not hundreds.  I may even have raped some innocent women – and for all that, I could have been an indicted war criminal.  The question I have is this – and at it’s one of both morality and legality.

As someone who would have been forced to commit heinous crimes, how would my liability be judged in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion?  Today, I would have been quaking in my rebel boots upon learning that Invisible Children had launched a campaign to have me, an innocent LRA ambush victim, hunted down and killed at whatever cost.

Make no mistake:  I am no LRA apologist – far from it.  But as a victim of the LRA conflict, I have a very serious problem with many activists and organisations like Invisible Children who are sounding war drums against the LRA.  For more than two decades, the military option has failed to eliminate LRA leader Joseph Kony.

And here is another key issue:  Without addressing the structural issues that produced Joseph Kony in the first place, you could kill or capture him today but another “Kony” will emerge almost instantly – of that there can be little doubt.  And by way of analogy, Obama killed Osama Bin Laden but Al Qaeda is still very much alive.

Speaking in Invisible Children’s video on youtube, a certain Santa Okot Lapolo set the priorities very well:  “…Number one…we want to rescue our children.  Number two…we want justice delivered”.  I couldn’t have put it any better.

Other than aiming to make history by making Kony “famous”, Invisible Children should focus on devising ways in which the innocent children under LRA captivity can be rescued without endangering their lives – not mobilizing global support to kill them.

I fully acknowledge of the difficulties of dealing with both Kony and Museveni.  But in my view, peace talks still offer the best chance of resolving this conflict – and it must start with a brutally honest appraisal of the factors that caused the collapse of the Juba peace talks.  END.  Please login to www.ugandacorrespondent.com every Monday to read our top stories and anytime mid-week for our news updates.

charlesokwir@yahoo.com

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