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Sadly, reports of LRA savagery are not isolated incidents. The children I interviewed in Uganda and southern Sudan who escaped LRA captivity, along with thousands of documented cases, demonstrate that these monstrosities are standard operating procedure. Nearly 90 percent of LRA fighters are enslaved children, kidnapped from their families. [Editor's warning: The rest of this section contains graphic descriptions of brutality.]

Under threat of death, LRA child soldiers attack villages, shooting and cutting off people's lips, ears, hands, feet, or breasts, at times force-feeding the severed body parts to victims' families. Some cut open the bellies of pregnant women and tear their babies out. Men and women are gang-raped. As a warning to those who might report them to Ugandan authorities, they bore holes in the lips of victims and padlock them shut. Victims are burned alive or beaten to death with machetes and clubs. The murderous task is considered properly executed only when the victim is mutilated beyond recognition and his or her blood spatters the killer's clothing.

At St. Joseph's Hospital in Kitgum, I listened as relatives of four adult LRA victims recounted recent assaults. Many surviving victims cannot speak for themselves, because their lips have been sliced off. With their mouths reduced to gaping holes, they gazed at me with what combat veterans call the thousand-yard stare.

Many don't survive an attack. In one case, the LRA attacked a 14-year-old boy who suffered compound fractures in both legs when beaten with pangas (large machetes). He crawled for a week to reach the hospital. But, despite the efforts of surgeons from Doctors Without Borders, the teen died the next day. He is buried outside the hospital in a grave marked with two sticks, his name unknown. Since 1986, the LRA is estimated to have abducted as many as 50,000 children. Many more Ugandans have been maimed and traumatized. About 1.6 million have been driven from their homes. The death toll from the conflict is estimated at more than 30,000 children.

During attacks, LRA fighters, themselves traumatized captives, abduct more children and embark on a trek through the African bush that mimics the Bataan Death March in barbarity. Adult commanders force children to carry supplies for up to a week, marching from dawn to dusk on bare feet, without food or water in the equatorial heat. Potable water is reserved for commanders. Children have been forced to drink urine or drink from muddy ditches to survive. Their feet become infected and swollen. Any child who cannot keep pace is killed. Any child caught in an attempted escape is killed. Children may be murdered for crying or failing to obey commands quickly enough. Moreover, it is the other children who must execute the transgressors, which is done by hacking them to pieces with machetes or burning them alive.

Commanders frequently compel children to kill their own siblings, lest family bonds supersede those to the LRA. Leaders demand every abducted child kill another child within a week of capture. Afterward, they're told they'll never be accepted by society because of their criminal acts, so they must stay with the LRA to survive. They coerce the children into identifying with their captors by emotionally blackmailing them with their own guilt.

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January 2006, Vol. 50, No. 1