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The LRA has also honed its ability to forage and loot the supplies it needs, including child soldiers. Few if any similar guerrilla or insurgent groups worldwide have been capturing, brainwashing, and training children for as long as the LRA, and its leaders have refined their brutal techniques to an art form.

Nyakairu covered several ambushes, for example, in which LRA child soldiers posed innocently playing football or bathing naked. As soon as Ugandan forces passed, the children grabbed hidden guns and opened fire. This penchant for abducting children also complicates the possibility of wiping out the LRA in one major stroke, say a tactical airstrike.

Every time people in the north hear about new violence involving the LRA, they think of those they knew who were abducted, explains Reagan Okumu, a Parliament member from northern Uganda: "They know that their children are innocent.

Extremely charismatic, Kony has inspired fear and loyalty with his seemingly charmed ability to avoid capture and his violent demonstrations of wrath against any LRA fighters he suspects of crossing him. The soldiers who did exist were underequipped, underfed, and often unpaid, as the same commanders skimmed money from disbursements meant to buy food and supplies.

Overall, high-ranking Ugandan military leaders profited immensely from the war — and the LRA profited from facing a weakened military.

Even in negotiations, the LRA has been inadvertently aided by its enemies. During talks between and , supporters of the peace process, such as the European Union, gave the LRA a great deal of money and food as incentives to keep it involved in peace discussions. The most recent, U. Operation Lightning Thunder was planned with significant U. Then, Ugandan and Congolese ground units would sweep in to cut off escape routes, capture rebels, free abductees, and protect civilians. Again, however, Kony escaped.

At the last minute, helicopter gunships which can be heard five minutes away were substituted for quiet fighter jets, officially due to bad weather though the revelation last week that Uganda is shopping for new jets suggests faulty equipment could have been the culprit.

To make matters worse, the Ugandan ground forces that were supposed to catch escaping LRA members arrived a full 72 hours late, bizarrely underestimating the time it would take them to move on foot through dense jungle.

And Congolese troops that were supposed to protect nearby villages never showed up. So while some rebels were captured or killed by the helicopter force, the escaping LRA fighters went on a vengeful spree, killing more than civilians as they pillaged virtually every village on their way to the Central African Republic. The U. Senate just passed a bill directing the U.

For these efforts to succeed, however, the elements that have allowed the LRA to survive must be removed. Sudan must be prevented from any further support of the LRA; the Ugandan military must plan better for contingencies like bad weather and difficult terrain; soldiers must actually be paid to make sure they do their part in protecting civilians and keeping the LRA on the run. This can serve to then undermine earlier morals as well as make new recruits feel isolated and bound to a new set of values.

Betancourt et al. Further supporting this finding is evidence from a study with former child soldiers in Uganda, which found that being forced to kill, and witnessing killing were reportedly the two worst kinds of experiences they underwent [ 12 ].

The findings from Betancourt et al and Ertl provide evidence that certain extreme forms of violence do indeed create a lasting break with accepted norms, and may carry consequences far after an individual leaves an armed group. This study explores how different practices associated with indoctrination — particularly isolation, assignment to a new family structure and forced violence — may serve as the most effective way to make new recruits feel that they have been irrevocably dissociated from their civilian identities, and that they would no longer be accepted in their own communities.

The growing recognition of the role youth play in conflict [ 13 — 16 ], and recognition of the trauma they are exposed to [ 3 , 17 — 21 ] has brought increasing efforts to improve reintegration programming.

However, service providers often struggle to address the needs of children associated with armed groups. Systematically understanding the experiences of abductees in this context, and creating programs that specifically address these experiences, could improve programming in this area.

Examining the experiences of children indoctrinated into the LRA, and particularly the psychological dimensions of their experience, can inform context-appropriate services to best address their needs upon return to civilian communities.

We describe LRA indoctrination of abducted children and young adults in northeastern DRC, as reported by former abductees, their family members, and other key informants in LRA-affected communities. The predominant tribe is Zande, who traditionally engage in subsistence agriculture, while the minority nomadic pastoralist tribe, the Mbororo, move across the region seasonally. The towns of Dungu and Faradje were home to over three-quarters of those displaced in Haute Uele [ 22 ].

These communities were chosen because they were among the most affected by the LRA, according to informal interviews with local leaders, non-governmental organization NGO staff and other key-informants.

At each project site, the research team, consisting of a local religious leader, a local translator and two U. In the Dungu site, interviews were also conducted at a nearby displacement camp with roughly residents, to examine the needs of those displaced throughout Haut Uele. Recruitment occurred via snowball sampling. The team began with multilateral organizations and international NGOs working with communities affected by the LRA in the sample area, and obtained referrals to additional key actors who had experience working with LRA-affected communities and individuals: these included international NGOs, local religious organizations and community-based organizations.

The team ceased seeking out new informants when they were no longer receiving new referrals. Since family, community members and service providers are deeply affected by LRA violence, and are closely involved in the reintegration of formerly abducted youth; these individuals were sought for interviews to provide their perspective on the conscription of children and the process of reintegration.

Data was de-identified except for demographic characteristics age, role in the community. The semi-structured interview guide was designed based on informational interviews with NGO staff and community members in affected areas, and refined after pilot interviews in Dungu. Interviews were conducted in Zande the local tribal language , or French, based on participant preference. Following a semi-structured guide, participants were asked to describe their understanding of LRA abduction practices, whether experienced personally or understood through the context of service provision, the impact of the LRA, feelings of vulnerability, any gender differences in experiences with the LRA, reintegration of children and adults formerly abducted by the LRA into communities, and community coping and resilience strategies towards the ongoing insecurity.

Probes were used to elicit details. A translator and one to two researchers were present at each interview. Interviews were transcribed verbatim during the interviews. These notes were combined for completeness, and were reviewed for accuracy and translated into English language for analysis. Procedures aligned with ethical guidance for research with children in war-affected populations [ 23 , 24 ].

Consent procedures emphasized the voluntary nature of participation. Local interviewers were trained in qualitative research techniques and were service providers with local organizations that had experience working with LRA-affected populations.

In accordance with best practices, interviewers were trained to monitor participants for possible distress, and emphasized that respondents could refuse any question. All respondents were interviewed in private locations.

Interviewers were trained using training materials developed from materials provided by a university IRB. The training materials covered core ethical concepts including: privacy and confidentiality, proportionality, risk, consent, beneficence. All IRB materials were translated into French and were printed and reviewed in depth with local research staff during a 2-day training.

Referrals for mental health services were provided to all participants following the interview. Community leaders and service provision organizations reviewed and provided input on procedures, and gave permission to engage with community members.

Inductive coding was undertaken through close reading of all of the transcripts to identify salient themes. Two research team members generated themes independently; those that were agreed upon by both researchers were defined as codes. Themes were refined through an iterative process during the coding of the transcripts to capture emerging themes and subthemes.

Through this process, key unifying themes and relationships among these themes were identified. Coding was undertaken by one team member and cross-checked by another.

Consistently appearing themes within categories were captured as subcategories. Themes are presented in roughly the same order as the process of indoctrination: abduction; steps undertaken by the LRA to establish control through isolation and control of communication; the use of public punishment to intimidate and deter escape; assignment to a unit within the hierarchy; and, finally, markers of the transition into becoming a full LRA soldier.

Table 1 summarizes the mechanisms of control and Table 2 illustrates the gendered similarities and differences throughout the process of indoctrination. In this study area, respondents universally emphasized the violent and coercive nature of abduction by the LRA. Kidnappings often occurred as part of a larger attack on a village.

Interviewees described a preference by the LRA to take children and youth, rather than adults, because children are easier to control. They also noted that both boys and girls were vulnerable to being taken. They don't have a choice to accept or not accept. If you accept to go, you live. If you don't accept they kill you.

Children will be kidnapped. Those who were older, we would kill them. There was consensus among the respondents that boys and girls were equally vulnerable to being abducted by the LRA. However, once within the group, gender roles were rigidly defined. Boys are fighters, porters. Girls are wives and get pregnant. However, once within the group, gender roles were rigidly defined and strictly enforced through a number of mechanisms.

One of the first and most striking aspects of life in the LRA is the strict control of roles and behaviors that those in power exercise over others. Male and female respondents described the forced indoctrination process in similar terms. After being kidnapped, many new abductees reported being forced to march for hours and sometimes days into the forest. During this time forward, abductees were not allowed to speak in their native languages or communicate with others.

Former abductees said that these measures were intended to prevent children from bonding with each other and from forming escape plans. We just sat and slept the three days I was with the LRA. Congolese children describe spending days hiking and transporting looted goods, or sitting in groups to rest in total silence.

And if you do, they will say you are planning to run away and they will beat you. Isolation was focused on ensuring that fellow abductees did not interact or bond with each other. Participants described a number of ways that the LRA has adapted to the challenge of working in a country that does not share a language or common identity with the combatants.

Respondents emphasize that recruits have different backgrounds, language and culture than the majority of the LRA Footnote 1 - adding a layer of complexity to the process of forced indoctrination.

This is a challenge the group has addressed with brutal efficiency, severely beating any new members who talk amongst themselves as well as those who use a language other than Acholi. This compels abductees to quickly learn the language of the LRA in order to communicate. This is most pronounced in those cases where children are assigned new names —effectively stripping them of their identities and rechristening them as members of the LRA.

Community members as well as former abductees closely linked learning the Acholi language with the process of taking on a LRA identity. While not all community members associated the Acholi language with LRA soldiers, there was wide recognition of the fact that abductees who spent enough time in the group learned this language. Service providers working with abductees stated that children often avoided speaking this language once they returned to their communities because it served as a marker of being an outsider and emphasized their previous identity with the LRA.

Abductees, family members and service providers drew the connection between speaking Acholi and being identified with the LRA. Public violence was described as a way to ensure that abducted children were aware of the price of disobedience. Killing and beatings were used to discourage escape in particular. Participants explained how LRA command would bring the transgressor back to the group and kill him or her in front of the other abductees in order to send a public message.

These practices were also used to purposefully deconstruct social ties by forcing children to perpetrate violence against someone similar who shared their tribe or ethnicity. They found two boys from the Zande tribe who tried to escape and they pulled other Zande boys from the group and forced them to beat those who tried to escape with sticks until they died.

The use of public violence not only served to intimidate children into staying in the group and obeying orders; by forcing abductees to kill or beat their peers, commanding officers used displays of violence to break social ties and make children feel complicit in the brutality. Life in the LRA was described as, above all, highly transient. Long periods of living in the forest were punctuated by raids on villages where abducted Congolese children witnessed and participated in violence, which also served to break bonds with their civilian identities.

This existence, characterized by constant movement and punctuated by violence, meant that children had no sense of stability or community beyond those they are traveling with. Keeping abductees on the move ensured their survival became dependent on the LRA commanders. Forced to forage for food in the forest and to undergo spontaneous fasting periods until the next raid, basic survival became linked to obedience to the command structure and to staying with the group.

Respondents described how each raid had the possibility of bringing new recruits who were needed to help carry the supplies from the village that had just been attacked. This influx of new abductees meant that the LRA had to find a more sustainable way beyond silence and isolation to condition new members. So he was responsible for those kids and other LRA members.

Girls are controlled not only by the combatant they are assigned to, but also by other wives and family members in that social unit. They were Ugandan. They were not nice to me — the Ugandan wives. This process involves staying with the LRA for a significant amount of time. Once boys have been with the group for a year or more, participants described how boys were given increasingly difficult tasks to test their loyalty, for instance being sent on an errand to a distant place.

His return was seen as an indication of his loyalty to the group. The process of becoming a soldier can then begin, and is characterized primarily by the use of witchcraft and secretive rituals. Respondents describe the use of witchcraft, or gris gris as it is often called in DRC, as a defining part of the LRA experience.

Although respondents often did not know the purpose of the magical rites they experienced, they placed an emphasis on its importance, and even after escaping from the LRA expressed a fear of its power. It was oil in a small bottle. When they abduct children they put this oil on them. They applied it on me. It was like an oil. Only that first time — it never happened again. This was a form of gris gris.

While some noted that magic was applied immediately after abduction, it was also common to hear of gris gris as a way to signal the transition from an abductee to a true soldier.

The descriptions of witchcraft seem to be a method for describing the process of indoctrination that some children undergo in the LRA, and shorthand for the extent to which children then become part of the group.

A local NGO worker in Limai explained:. This was echoed by family members of abductees and the children themselves, who looked at receiving witchcraft as an indication of the mental changes one undergoes in the group. They have gris gris that torments them. At the time, popular resentment of the government helped to intensify support for her Holy Spirit Movement.

However, soon the government was able to depose of Lakwena and push back the rebel group into the bush. However, the movement did not end with Lakwena. However, Kony quickly began to lose support for his rebel group so he was forced to resort to abducting thousands of children to serve as soldiers.

The LRA has become notorious for utilizing child soldiers. Rebels often disguise themselves as Ugandan military forces and attack villagers. The LRA has slaughtered thousands.