Burdens of War

Newly freed children bear both babies of their captors and wounds that will never heal.

(Note: Names and locations have been changed to protect the privacy of these children.)

NORTHERN UGANDA - The story of Michael's captivity can be seen in his face -- and his leg. He pulls up his pants to show me a baseball-sized lump on his right shin.

"The UPDF [Uganda People's Defense Force] helicopters were dropping bombs on us," he says. "Some of the metal got into my leg."

Although he says the wound is months old, it still looks fresh, red and puffy. The circumspect 15-year-old says it hurts when he walks.

The other injury was also caused by a helicopter bomb. This one healed long ago -- at least on the outside.

It is a divot on his upper lip, and looks as if someone had pushed a finger into hot bread dough. A ridge of whitish scar tissue also runs from the top of his upper lip to the base of his left nostril.

The wounds are constant reminders of the three years he spent with the brutal and cult-like Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) insurgent group.

The LRA took him from his home in September 2002 and turned him into one of its many child soldiers in a war waged ostensibly against the Ugandan government.

In reality, the LRA runs a campaign of terror against the civilian population.

"I didn't want to. It was very difficult, but I had no other option. I had to accept the gun and fight," Michael says.

Ironically, Michael got his freedom, as many LRA abductees do, by being captured by UPDF forces. They turned him over to a northern Uganda reception center called the Concerned Women's Association, which through support from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) helps to demobilize the children and reintegrate them into their families and communities.

Christopher Arwai, the center's manager, has plenty of credibility with the children who come here. He was also abducted by the LRA back in 1988, when he was just a 16-year-old seminary student.

"I tell them I was a victim too," says Arwai, "and then we are like one."

He says he met Joseph Kony, the cruel and charismatic founder of the LRA who considers himself to be a spirit medium.

Kony has stated he wants to create a Christian government in Uganda based on the Ten Commandments. But the LRA's actions have been the opposite of christianly -- an epic of mutilations, murder and kidnapping.

The LRA is estimated to have abducted 25,000 children in its 20-year insurgency, turning them into soldiers, servants and sex slaves.

Kony is "very good with children," says Arwai. "He knows their minds are more malleable. They will do what he wants."

Sometimes that means blind obedience tests, with Kony ordering his new "recruits" to kill their own families.

Arwai was able to escape after two months, but he knows the hold Kony and LRA have over the children.

Children have "a special fear" of Kony, he says. "He tells you that once you've been captured, once you're part of the LRA, you always will be."

Arwai says it takes a while for the children to let go and rejoin the communities they were taught to despise.

When they first arrive, they are given medical checkups. They're bathed and treated for lice, scabies and other afflictions from lives spent living in the bush. They get clean clothes and a clean place to sleep, something Arwai says they probably haven't had through their entire captivity. Counseling sessions begin immediately, as well as efforts to locate the children's families.

And when they do finally go home, some carry more than just the mental and physical scars of their ordeal -- they carry the children of their captors.

Regina, 20, bounces her seven-month-old son on her knee. She has named him Innocent. She was just 12 years old when she was abducted. Most of her village had fled from the LRA to a refugee camp, but she stayed behind to cook for her father who was still working in the area.

The rebels took her to their camps in southern Sudan, where she says they taught her to shoot a gun and to farm. After two years she was given to one of the LRA commanders as a house servant.

"I never accepted my life in captivity," she says. "I always thought about my parents and my home, all of the time."

Eventually, the commander gave her to another rebel soldier as a "wife." She bore him a daughter, now four years old -- and later, she gave birth to Innocent.

Her freedom came at a high price. She says UPDF forces attacked their camps in Sudan. Her daughter was wounded by a bullet and her rebel "husband" wanted to leave the girl behind and flee, which he did.

Regina refused and tried to carry both her wounded daughter and newborn son to safety. She was shot in the leg and captured by the UPDF.

She is happy to finally be home after eight years, she says, and grateful that her family and village have accepted her without hesitation.

That's not always the case with formerly abducted children.

The LRA held 15-year-old Deo for only two months. It was a hard time -- and it shows.

He says in that time he was beaten almost constantly. He is a like a Swiss Army knife of nervous tics. His face, hands and feet are all constantly moving, shifting, rearranging invisible air molecules.

He feels more peaceful when he has something in his hands. A smile spreads across his face as he beats the drums outside one of the center's grass huts.

Deo says a bullet was the key to his freedom as well. The UPDF's elite Mobile Forces -- tasked with nothing but stalking, hunting and attacking the LRA -- started firing at his camp. A round struck him above his right hip.

"That shot saved me," Deo says. "I thought the Mobile Forces were going to kill me, but instead they carried me off the field and treated me."

Some NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have questioned the Ugandan military's use of helicopters and "less-precise" tactics in attacking the LRA. They say that children, already traumatized by their abductions, are endangered both physically and mentally by indiscriminate violent assaults.

But the UPDF has countered, understandably, that with the LRA it's almost impossible to tell who's a combatant and who's not, since many who are shooting back are indeed children.

Anne was abducted by the LRA in 2002 when she was just 12. She says that the LRA forces that snatched her came under attack right away.

"Immediately I saw people being killed," she says. "I was very frightened. I thought we'd all die right there."

After the battle she says the LRA asked the children they had captured if they wanted to go home.

"Everyone that said 'yes' got beaten with a cane," she says, "100 strokes."

She stares off into the distance as she tells me the next part, wrapping her hands in the hem of her oversized polo shirt, stretching it out beyond her swollen belly.

Anne says she was a servant first, but within two years was made the "wife" of one of the unit commanders. She says she refused him, but he began raping her -- and continued to do so until she became pregnant.

In July this year, she says, the LRA unit commander was killed by a bomb dropped from a UPDF helicopter. She used it to her advantage, telling the senior commander that now that she was pregnant and had no one to take care of her, she would be a burden to everyone in the bush. He agreed, she says, and allowed her to walk away.

When I ask Anne if that bomb set her free, she says nothing. But I see, just the hint of an imperceptible smile.

"Will you be able to love this child when you have it," I ask her, "even though you didn't want it, even though it was forced on you?"

She pauses for a second before answering, continuing to look into the distance.

"It's difficult to tell," Anne says. "I'll have to accept this baby, but ... I still don't know."

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