To Stop a Warlord

by Shannon Sedgwick Davis

  7

  TRAINING AND COMMUNICATIONS

  “BREAK IT DOWN for me, Greg. Why can’t a private foundation do this?”

  US Army Lieutenant Colonel Greg Joachim sat across from me at a little table in a quiet bakery near the State Department, the comforting smell of coffee and fresh scones wafting around us. During his near twenty-year career in the army, Greg had implemented US security, stabilization, and assistance operations across Africa, even serving as a military adviser to the assistant secretary of state for African affairs. Now his role at State was comprised mostly of counter-LRA work and work in Somalia. He didn’t have the stereotypically stoic look of a career military man. He was friendly and broad-shouldered, with a little star at the bridge of his nose that crinkled every time he smiled. And he smiled refreshingly often.

  On the surface, there’d been progress on the counter-LRA front in the two months since I’d met with Ida and learned of the Makombo massacres. The LRA Disarmament and Northern Ugandan Recovery Act that Laren and Invisible Children had been working so hard on had unanimously passed the Senate in early March, and then in May passed the House with the support of 202 representatives—making it the most widely supported Africa-specific piece of legislation in US history. Laren had just told me that he’d been invited to be in the Oval Office when Obama signed the bill.

  Despite the positive updates, I’d been sobered by the fact that policy alone wasn’t going to stop the LRA. I’d initiated conversations with the US State Department, which was already supporting the Ugandan military by providing helicopters and fuel to the tune of approximately one million dollars a month. Despite the commitment and creativity Greg and his colleagues were showing in getting resources to the field, it hadn’t been enough to stop the conflict or prevent the recent massacre. “What do you see as the gaps?” I’d asked Greg and other State officials. “What’s needed to stop the LRA?”

  In meeting after meeting, the answer was the same, and it was what I’d heard from Ida and other advocacy organizations close to the issue. There were two major counter-LRA priorities: training for the Ugandan military to be more effective at tracking and hostage release, and improving communications among villages vulnerable to attack—military training and communications.

  “If we know what to do, why aren’t we doing it?” I’d asked.

  Funding, they told me. Despite Greg’s many efforts to steer resources toward counter-LRA operations, and the then imminent passage of the LRA bill, allocating more money to fund training and communications in a region that was not a direct national security threat to the United States wasn’t a government priority.

  I’d suggested beforehand that maybe financial support from Bridgeway could supplement Greg’s work. He’d been intrigued by the idea and had agreed to check if it was possible for Bridgeway to make a direct monetary contribution to the State Department’s counter-LRA operations.

  But this morning he delivered the news. He’d pushed my offer for financial assistance higher and higher up the chain, but the answer hadn’t changed: while the State Department supported the cause, they were not willing to accept Bridgeway’s money and use it to pay for training and communications operations in the field.

  “So you’re saying that training and communications could stop the LRA, and State’s telling us their resources are already stretched and they can’t commit to more funding. But State can’t accept outside support to do the work they know needs to be done?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The bell on the door jingled and several men and women wearing suits came in, briefcases and stacks of binders under their arms, cellphones pressed to their ears. Greg smiled. “If you find a way to pursue funding a communications network or military training, I’ll be right here in the wings, supporting you every step of the way. We just can’t accept a check.”

  8

  THE ONES WE WERE WAITING FOR

  “WHERE’S YOUR WHITE fedora?” I asked Laren over lunch in Los Angeles in May. He’d driven up from San Diego, where he and his wife, Courtney, lived, to see me before my afternoon meetings.

  “How many times do I have to tell you?” he protested. “It’s a Panama hat.”

  He was still glowing from his moment with the president, his happiness infectious.

  “I’m in the Roosevelt Room, looking at everything. The door kicks open, and Obama comes in, like, ‘What’s up?’ I shake the hell out of his hand. We go into the Oval Office and I’m in the front row, throwing elbows. I’m right there next to him when he signs the bill. They’ve told us that no one gets to talk, that the president will say some words and that’s it, but I totally cut him off. I say, ‘Mr. President, I’m here on behalf of hundreds of thousands of young people in America and Central Africa. I made a promise to a kid named Jacob in northern Uganda who was abducted and his family killed by the LRA. I promised him we wouldn’t stop until the LRA is a thing of the past. Today is a huge opportunity to fulfill that oath.’ And Obama says, ‘You tell that boy Jacob that the president of the United States knows about this, and we’re gonna get this done.’ I’m like, ‘Yes, sir.’ And he picked up one of his gold pens.”

  “That’s awesome,” I said. It was a validation of what he’d always told me: change doesn’t happen if you just take your seat. “You stood up,” I told him.

  “Me and a hell of a lot of other people. But—” His big brown eyes narrowed and his voice flattened. “It was a cool moment, I’m not gonna lie. But I don’t think it’s going to work. Until there’s clear strategy, the bill is just a piece of paper. It’s not going to change things for the people trying to survive.”

  I hadn’t told him yet about my conversation with Greg Joachim at the State Department. About my growing certainty that if the world was going to stop the LRA, it would require taking a step beyond traditional advocacy. I had no idea yet how far beyond traditional advocacy we would go. I just knew that more direct action was necessary.

  I had been trained in the power of direct intervention early in my humanitarian career. After law school I’d accepted a job as a defense attorney at a downtown Dallas firm, planning to work just long enough to pay off my school loans, and then make the switch to the work I really felt called to do. But when a friend who understood my desire to work in international human rights gave me a copy of The Good News About Injustice, by Gary Haugen, the founder of International Justice Mission, I realized I couldn’t delay aligning my life with my deeper purpose. I put my hundred thousand dollars in law school loans on deferment and moved to Washington, DC, to work for Haugen’s small nonprofit. International Justice Mission’s efforts were focused in part on ending child slavery around the world. IJM was founded on the principle that we don’t have to stand by and watch our fellow humans suffer. Its work showed me that we can, and must, act.

  While I was working with IJM in 2003, we collaborated with local authorities in Cambodia to free young girls from brothels where they were raped for profit. Despite intense international pressure against the Cambodian government for the documented abuses—including the threat of losing aid from the United States—the status quo had continued undisturbed. The entrenched economy of sex slavery, and the corruption that enabled it, seemed impossible to overthrow. After years of research and outreach, our team of eleven went to Svay Pak, a dusty village on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, a place infamous for entrapping children in sexual slavery, and worked with local authorities to conduct brothel raids, bringing thirteen perpetrators to justice and helping thirty-seven victims start new lives. This work would be documented in an Emmy Award–winning Dateline piece, Children for Sale.

  After one of the operations with the police, I’d held a little girl in my arms. She wore flowered cotton pajamas. I remember her long dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, her tiny gold earrings, her small hands holding on to my neck. At the safe house, she was quiet and withdrawn, afraid to trust anyone. I
did my best to comfort and reassure her and the other girls, to let them be children again—we sang songs and blew bubbles. Before we left them to sleep in peace through their first night of freedom, I noticed that one of the girls had a number of small, pale crescents that ran up and down the length of each arm. I realized they were the scars of her old life—the places where the perpetrators had extinguished cigarettes on her bare skin.

  In one night, several dozen young girls had seized their freedom, and the power of tangible, direct action was life-changing. But there was also a lot to wrestle with. A single brothel raid didn’t upend an entire system of exploitation and injustice. Without justice for the perpetrators, girls leaving brothels just created space for new girls to be forced in. Lasting change needs to tackle the system itself. IJM taught me that if we also focus on bringing perpetrators to justice and building a justice system that citizens can rely on, then the change can be wide, deep, and sustainable. This movement to enforce laws and make people safe must be owned and led by national government and citizen leaders working together to protect their people from violence.

  The night of the brothel raid in Svay Pak, some brothel owners had been tipped off, and had hidden their captives away where they couldn’t be brought to safety. And even for the young girls who were able to leave a life of sex slavery, the danger didn’t end when they were transported to a safe house. There was the constant threat of recapture. A number of the girls were Vietnamese and had been smuggled across the border. Even though they had crossed into Cambodia unwillingly and had been held hostage, they could now face prosecution for immigration violations. On top of the physical and legal threats, they had experienced significant trauma and needed careful attention and support for years to come as they healed and built new lives. An effective intervention required careful partnerships in government, law enforcement, and the courts, and close work with local medical and mental health providers, social workers, and educators to ensure top quality, long-term care and opportunities for the girls coming out of the brothels. It takes years for this kind of effective intervention to build lasting change.

  Direct intervention is often difficult and dangerous, but with patience and perseverance it bears fruit. When I first went to Cambodia with International Justice Mission, the Cambodian government estimated that the prevalence of minors being exploited in Phnom Penh’s sex industry was between fifteen and thirty percent. The children being exploited were as young as six years old. Now, fifteen years since that initial operation, studies show the exploitation of children in the sex industry has dropped to two percent, with hardly any minors under fifteen years old being sold for sex. This is the result of more than a decade of collaboration between the government, police, courts, social services, NGOs, and the public.

  In contemplating what role Bridgeway could or would play in trying to stop the LRA conflict, I was thinking deeply about what we could accomplish, and how. And I was assessing the risks, the ways in which our involvement could endanger the very people we hoped to help protect. I wanted to make sure, if we took a step beyond traditional philanthropy, that other committed people I trusted would go there with me.

  “Maybe we’re thinking about this backward,” I said to Laren now. “All this time we’ve been trying to figure out how to convince people to take action, or how to get resources to the people who are taking action. But what if it’s not about waiting for the right people to show up? What if we’re the ones we’ve been waiting for?”

  I had his attention. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying come with me to Congo in June. We’ll talk to the UN presence in northeastern Congo. We’ll talk to survivors of recent LRA attacks. And we’ll find out if there’s anything we can do to help make the violence stop.”

  PANGA

  David Ocitti

  DAVID’S GROUP REJOINED Odhiambo for a few days. One afternoon they stopped their endless march for a short rest. David sat shoulder to shoulder with Maxwell, a boy near his age with whom he sometimes exchanged glances, even a few quiet words when the commander’s back was turned.

  “Hey,” Maxwell said.

  Odhiambo, who was sitting near them, turned their way. “You!” he yelled, pointing at Maxwell. “No talking allowed.” Odhiambo stood and walked toward David, shoving a panga—a machete—into his hand. “Those who talk must die. Your friend talked. You must kill him.”

  Maxwell stiffened beside him. The handle of the panga was still warm from Odhiambo’s hand. David stared at the rust and silver of the blade.

  “No,” he heard himself say.

  “What did you say?” Odhiambo loomed over him.

  “No. I’m not going to do that.”

  “What gives you the right to refuse?”

  “I won’t do it.”

  “It’s not a choice. You have to do it.”

  “Then take my life. I’m not taking his.”

  Odhiambo grabbed the machete from David’s hands, raised it over his head. David closed his eyes. Blood pounded in his head, a river of sound. He imagined his father in his mind. You’re here for a purpose, his father used to say. You’re not here just by chance. When the blow came it was with the blunt edge of the handle, not with the blade. He felt the pain grow big around his skull like ripples forming in the water where a rock lands. Then the pain narrowed and sharpened, a fierce prick of light. He waited for the next blow. When it didn’t come he opened his eyes.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” Odhiambo said. “Not yet. I’m going to make you pay first.” He gave the machete to David’s friend. “Beat him, don’t kill him,” he said.

  When the beating was over it was time to march again. Odhiambo commanded David to carry a heavy pack filled with salt. It weighed forty pounds at least, a significant weight for David’s rail-thin frame. He staggered on the steep trails grown muddy from rain.

  “If you drop the load, you will have dropped your last breath,” Odhiambo told him.

  David had to carry the pack of salt for three days. His head still ached, his back ached, his whole body ached. Again and again he stumbled. If he were already dead he’d be beyond pain and fear. It was what Odhiambo and the other commanders wanted him to think: Next time, just kill me. They were more useful, more lethal, when they had nothing left to lose.

  * * *

  —

  A few nights later, David’s group arrived in a village where everyone was asleep in their huts. Odhiambo was still traveling with them. He ordered them to go into every home, to kill all the adults—no exceptions—to leave only the children age twelve and under alive, then burn the huts. It was an attack similar to the one they had survived in Pabbo. But now they were forced to be the perpetrators.

  Odhiambo led the attack. He wielded a panga. “You better call out, ‘Save me!’ ” he taunted his victim as he raised his weapon above an innocent’s head. “I’m your god now. You better cry to me.” He didn’t wait for a reply before smashing the panga down.

  When they marched away afterward with the new abductees, David felt numb. He was glad for the dark. He couldn’t see the fear in the new captives’ eyes. He was afraid to see himself as they saw him. He was just like them. Terrified. Scarred by loss. Left with nothing, with no one.

  9

  ZEBRAS

  A FEW WEEKS later, the blinds in my room were still drawn tight against the morning light when the door sprang open. Connor pitter-pattered over the wood floor and pounced onto the bed.

  “Is it today?” he asked. “Today you go to Africa?”

  “Today, baby.” Sweet boy with his hair all a mess.

  He sat with his knees tucked into his chest and rubbed his bare feet back and forth across the blue flowered bedspread. “But I want you to stay.”

  “I wish I could stay right here with you,” I said, lifting back the covers so he could squirm under. “I wish I could stay right here.
” I pulled him close for a snuggle. He wrapped his lanky arms around me but was too wiggly to rest in our perfect hug. He scooted away from me and moved his arms and legs up and down, out and in, like he was making a snow angel under the blankets.

  “Bare toes are for tickling,” I warned. He shrieked and flailed as I reached under the covers and grabbed for his feet.

  His screams of laughter brought Brody toddling to the bedroom door, bib still on over his pajamas, Sam chasing after him. “Hold you, hold you!” he cried, and I lifted him onto the bed, where both boys wriggled and yelled as I tickled them. “More, more!” they begged. I tickled Brody’s perfect chubby tummy. I nuzzled Connor’s rosy cheeks. I caught Sam’s eye in the doorway, and he smiled at me. But under the smile I could see tightness at the corners of his eyes. He looked tired.

  “We wanted to let you sleep,” he said.

  Sam had finished his law degree and now did some legal charity work a few hours a week, but he was primarily home with the boys. It was a choice we’d made together—but one that had surprised me at the time. We’d been taking a walk in our neighborhood one afternoon when Connor was a baby, following the trails that wound through the greenbelt behind our house. We were trying to figure out how to manage our lives, how we could be the parents we wanted to be and also do the work we felt called to do in the world. At that time, Sam was a college admissions director, and I was vice president at Geneva Global, a philanthropic consulting company based in Philadelphia. I didn’t know how to reconcile the extensive travel my job required with our desire that one of us always be present to hold down the fort. Sam had listened as I sketched out different scenarios, and then said, “There’s no conflict, babe. It’s simple. I’ll step away from my job for a while and stay home.”