The Dark Continent

An article about the rebel army in Uganda from Canada’s National Post.

At the age of 16, Charles was abducted from his rural village by northern Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and forced into a life of unspeakable fear and violence.

“I was caned 150 strokes,” explained Charles, who escaped from the LRA late last year. “[Later,] there was a shout, ‘Where is the new recruit?’ And I was brought in. ‘We are giving you an order now and if you refuse to obey the order, we will kill you.’ ”

A group of captured civilians were then lined up in front of Charles with their hands bound behind their backs. The quiet, wide-eyed teenager was ordered to beat them to death with a two foot piece of freshly cut timber.

“I was fearful for my life. So I beat them all to death; all seven of them. I was then ordered to lick the blood and brain matter from [the] victims. And I did all that.”

Charles’s story is not unique. Over 30,000 children have been dragged into Uganda’s 19-year civil conflict —a conflict that stands as perhaps the most ignored humanitarian disaster for children in the world. In the dark of night, the LRA regularly terrorizes the country’s northern communities, abducting children and forcing them to join their cause as soldiers and sex slaves.

Joseph Kony, the LRA’s leader, claims to be fighting for a government based loosely on the Ten Commandments. But his group’s methods—abduction, rape, mutilation and murder—make nonsense of his Biblical conceit.

Coming Anarchy indeed.