To Stop a Warlord

by Shannon Sedgwick Davis

  When I picked up the phone, I could barely make out what Laren was saying. He was whispering, the connection faint.

  “You’ve got to speak up,” I said.

  “Come now.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “I can’t talk. You need to be here. Fast.”

  There was only one reason I could think of that would require this kind of urgency. I felt my heart quicken. “You got him?” There was only one him I could mean. “You really got him?”

  “Just come,” Laren said. “I’ve got to go.”

  * * *

  —

  Earlier that day Laren had been resting in a hammock at the base in Djemah, trying to nap through the hottest part of the day, when the radio started blowing up. “Contact, contact, contact!” the messages burst in. “We need helicopter support immediately!”

  Lieutenant Colonel Jackson, the tall, wiry Ugandan commander Bridgeway worked most closely with in Djemah, ran up. He had a gravelly voice and could pivot on a dime from a steely stare to a huge smile, from delivering a thundering reprimand to celebrating a triumph with a joyful side hug. He liked to seal every discussion by going for a walk, finishing the dialogue with a low five that transformed into a handclasp, holding your hand warmly between both of his. Now, he was yelling. “Get in the helo! They’ve got a samaki-makuvwa.” A big fish.

  “Who is it?” Laren asked, rushing after Lieutenant Colonel Jackson to where our pilot, John, was already powering up the helo. “Is it Ongwen?”

  Lieutenant Colonel Jackson shook his head.

  “Kony?”

  “It’s a big fish, that’s all we know,” Lieutenant Colonel Jackson said as the chopper lifted off.

  Tracking any LRA group was important for the release of the women and children who’d been taken hostage and for gathering intelligence, but to capture a high-value target could turn the tide of the entire mission. The LRA systematically protected their most crucial members. If a top commander’s group was being pursued, the leader would splinter away from the main element, lying low while the rest of the group fled and led their pursuers away from the big fish. Getting the abductees home was a crucial part of our mission, but no matter how many hostages or combatants were freed, the LRA could regenerate itself again and again as long as the hard-core elements remained in the bush, able to abduct new hostages.

  But their strategy had one flaw: the LRA only put Acholi Ugandans in the highest echelons of the organization. Because the LRA was no longer operating in Uganda, they weren’t able to recruit or kidnap new Acholis into their ranks, so they had a finite number of top leaders. If the commanders in the field could be reduced even by one, we might see a domino effect that would ultimately cause the whole organization to topple.

  Of course, Kony was the highest-value target by far, and ever since the previous year’s September contact with the LRA, when the Ugandan pseudo group had penetrated the camp where the LRA’s top commanders were meeting, we’d put all of our attention and efforts north where we believed Kony to be hiding. But when, at the end of April 2012, the operation to find the LRA camp in South Sudan had been called off, the Ugandan military decided to reorient the mission south where at least two LRA groups had run after the September firefight, and where recent reports had shown an uptick in LRA attacks happening in northeastern Congo and movements of the LRA back and forth across the river that formed the border between Congo and the Central African Republic. Ugandan military leadership had recently decided to throw all operational efforts and assets toward tracking the LRA group or groups that kept crossing the border.

  With the new helo they’d dropped a SOG squad into the area, and after tracking for just a few days the group had found an LRA trail. They’d flown another SOG squad in and begun using the two groups in tandem, one tracking the LRA’s movements, the other trying to anticipate where the LRA was headed so they could cut them off. They repeated the tactic again and again. But after nearly two weeks, despite regular signs of the LRA’s presence, there’d been no actual sightings or contact. The air hours and fuel we were spending on the Congo/Central African Republic border weren’t getting the mission anywhere. With no concrete evidence to support the hunch that an important LRA leader was in the area, we all worried that it had been a mistake to pivot the assets away from South Sudan.

  Now the helo flew due south over endless jungle, nothing visible below except the thick green canopy.

  “We can see you right above,” the ground soldiers finally radioed up. “You’re ninety degrees, turn right, roll out.”

  But they were completely obscured from the air by the triple-canopy jungle. And there was no place to land the helo. John made a few small loops, looking for a way in.

  “I see a little hole,” he finally said. “I’m going to try to set the bird down right there.”

  The helo descended into the jungle, vertically falling through trees. The dense green of the jungle surrounded them, reaching within feet of the blades.

  “Are you going to be able to get out of here?” Laren asked.

  “I got it, don’t worry about it,” John grunted as they set down in the jungle. When he cut the engine the only sound was the incessant birdsong of the forest. There wasn’t a soldier in sight.

  Just as Laren began to fear they were in the wrong place, SOG soldiers emerged from the trees, materializing out of the green like a mirage. Laren tried to read their faces for information. They looked exhausted as they beckoned for Lieutenant Colonel Jackson and the air team to follow them back into the trees. Laren hurried after, retraining his feet to move fast over roots and tangled vines and uneven ground, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim. As they turned right down a small slope, Laren saw three figures sitting on the ground, two women and a young child. The women wore baggy T-shirts and long wrap skirts made from bright African fabric, their heads bound in scarves. The ground was littered in the brass of spent cartridges. There’d been a firefight, but all was quiet now, the women’s faces calm and steady. Even the young child was silent, her eyes the only active part of her body as she observed Laren with a reserved attention. Bundles of their belongings wrapped in large pieces of fabric lay tucked at the base of nearby trees.

  As sedate as the scene appeared, Laren was witnessing a profound and pivotal moment: when captivity and life on the run turned to freedom. Despite the relief, it was a fraught time, full of uncertainty. As horrific as the months and years in the bush had been, the captives had learned to adapt. For the young child, it was the only life she’d ever known. Now the ordeal was finally over. But no one knew what awaited them. Kony had barraged them with false information, warned them that even if they managed to escape the LRA alive, the Ugandan military would murder them if they tried to leave the bush. And if they somehow survived and managed to find their way home, they would never be accepted back into their families and communities, he told them, if their villages still existed at all. Likely, he said, everyone they’d known and loved was already dead. The relentless propaganda had imprisoned the hostages as inescapably as the armed men standing guard around the camp each night. Now they had miraculously survived captivity and were free at last. The Ugandan military would help them return home. But it was hard for them to trust that they were really safe after having been on the run for so long. And in one respect Kony’s lies were accurate: there was no old life to return to, not after what they had been through. To survive freedom they would have to find a way to make up for the lost years and education and opportunities; to grieve, to live with scars. Laren was struck again by how calm the women and child were as they met their freedom.

  But where—and who—was the high-value target? Just then Laren saw him: tall, thin, sitting on the ground in the shadows, long arms loosely draped around his knees. He was dressed in a Sudanese army uniform, a red beret angled over his close-cropped graying hair, a regal tilt to his h
ead. Laren recognized him at once from a photo of the failed Juba peace talks six years earlier, when the commander’s still-black hair had been in dreads. He had aged considerably since then, but Laren identified him instantly: Major General Caesar Acellam, one of Kony’s right hands, and the head of the LRA’s intelligence apparatus.

  “Itye nining?” Laren said in Acholi. Hello, how are you?

  “A tye ma ber,” Major General Acellam replied. I’m good.

  Acellam would later recount that he’d voluntarily joined the LRA as a young man—one of the few remaining commanders who had joined by choice, not through forced abduction—and had risen in rank, eventually stationed in Khartoum to maintain the relationship between the Sudan Armed Forces and the LRA. Over the years he had negotiated trainings of LRA soldiers by the Sudanese military, brokered Sudanese military contributions of weapons and ammunition to the LRA, and led a deadly attack against civilians in Djemah in 2009. He wasn’t an International Criminal Court indictee, but he could and should have been. And now he’d been apprehended. He’d been rendered powerless. And he was alive, an intelligence gold mine.

  Lieutenant Colonel Jackson congratulated his men, and then led an abbreviated debrief right there in the bush before flying Acellam and the others back to the base in Djemah. An on-site debrief was important because the people coming out of the LRA were often terrified, and the Ugandan military wanted to allay their fears while also gathering information during the hours when the old life and the fear of escape were still fresh. Later, when they knew they were safe, a sense of guilt or shame often made defectors more reticent to expose details about the LRA. This vulnerable time of transition between the old life and the new was a moment of truth before distance might alter what someone was willing or able to say.

  Lieutenant Colonel Jackson began asking Major General Acellam basic information: Which group were you traveling with? Who was there with you? Acellam gave succinct, measured answers. Then, to everyone’s surprise, he began volunteering information, such as the locations of Ongwen and Odhiambo and other top LRA commanders. His responses helped arrange the fragments and speculations about the LRA into a clearer, more cohesive picture.

  Caught up in the heat of Acellam’s confidences, Lieutenant Colonel Jackson asked the most important question. “Where is Joseph Kony?”

  “I haven’t seen Joseph Kony in some years.”

  “But do you know where he is now?”

  Laren thought Acellam might draw a line at exposing Kony’s whereabouts, or at least hesitate before answering, but he didn’t miss a beat. “Darfur.”

  The region where the Ugandan military informants had seen simsim seed for sale.

  “Ask him if Sudan is still involved in supplying the LRA,” Laren said to the translator.

  But before the translator could pose the question to Acellam in Acholi, Acellam answered in English. “They supply medicine,” he said. “Ammunition.” He pointed to his dirty fatigues. “Uniforms.” Then he revealed the name of his point of contact within the Sudanese intelligence, a low-level major at the nearby Sudanese Armed Forces base who traded with the LRA.

  Acellam had been surrounded and then surrendered. He wasn’t initially a willing defector, and this threw Lieutenant Colonel Jackson off. “Is there a reason you are being so forthcoming?” he asked.

  “I believe I have fallen from Kony’s favor,” the general explained. “I am afraid if I stay with the LRA he might kill me.” He said he would cooperate with the mission fully in helping more soldiers and captives out of the bush.

  “Major General, are there many within the LRA who want to come out?” Laren asked.

  “Oh yes.”

  “How many? What percentage?”

  “I would say…” The general tipped his head from side to side as though balancing a scale. “Seventy-five to eighty percent.”

  “Want to come home?”

  “Want to come home.”

  “They’re tired?”

  He nodded solemnly. “They’re very, very tired.”

  When Acellam stood to board the helo, he leaned on a carved wooden staff. “My knees,” he explained, wincing slightly as he stepped out into the tiny clearing.

  On the helo, Acellam and the child, his young daughter, were very quiet, but the two women, Acellam’s forced brides, pointed at the ground excitedly, especially when they had passed over the jungle and were flying above little villages and narrow roads. Laren wondered what it was like for them to have a bird’s-eye view of the world, to be up in the open sky after all those years in the tangle of jungle. Through the translator, they asked Laren to name the places they passed over, to tell where each of the roads led.

  40

  PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY SANDWICH

  BACK AT THE base, word had spread that a high-value target was coming in from the bush, and when the helo landed in Djemah it seemed as if every single one of the two hundred Ugandan soldiers stationed there—from cooks to mechanics to gunfighters—was waiting on the airfield, eager to see the infamous LRA commander they’d heard so much about. It was eerily quiet as Acellam and his family came down from the helo. Not a single person spoke as the LRA general walked the five hundred feet to the command tent. No one outside the mission was to know of his presence in Djemah. The secrecy was to protect any operations that might follow from his intelligence—but also for Acellam’s safety. He’d been part of a brutal attack on Djemah a few years ago and it was possible survivors might seek retribution.

  Despite his high-level status as one of the top five LRA commanders, and the fact that he had been an early volunteer recruit in the organization, not an abducted victim-perpetrator, Acellam had not been indicted by the International Criminal Court. He had not only committed atrocities, but he was one of the masterminds of the violence, and had negotiated the relationship with Sudan that enabled the LRA to source weapons and training from Khartoum. And yet, for some reason, he was never indicted alongside Kony and the other top commanders. And Uganda’s ability to prosecute Acellam was complicated by competing domestic laws, including an Amnesty Act that allowed any nonindictees to receive legal amnesty, never facing prosecution for any crime they might have committed during their time with the LRA. Laren warned me that the Amnesty Act would likely apply. Acellam wouldn’t be sent to The Hague, or any domestic court. He wouldn’t face prosecution for his many brutal crimes. It didn’t feel right or just. But it wasn’t the first time in this conflict that a serial murderer had gone free. The same thing happened when Sam Kolo, Kony’s former spokesperson, came out. And Kenneth Banya, the main military and technical brain behind the rebellion, had also received amnesty. The list goes on and on.

  I’d ask Acholi men in the Ugandan army who had been personally affected by LRA violence, whose losses had motivated them to join the army, “Doesn’t it upset you that the Amnesty Act applies to someone like Acellam? After they’ve committed so many crimes, after they’ve killed your loved ones, why welcome them back?” The answer was always some version of this: “We must choose peace. It is the only way to walk forward without war.”

  * * *

  —

  Acellam would stay in Djemah for further questioning and then return to Uganda where, at age forty-nine, he would begin his life again. The women and child would be repatriated right away, as soon as their families could be traced. This might be a lengthier process for the younger woman, who was only fifteen and from Cameroon, abducted while she was visiting relatives in the Central African Republic. She spoke fluent Acholi, testament to the five years she had spent in captivity.

  For the next few hours the only agenda was to reassure and welcome Acellam and his family and help them relax. Colonel Joseph, the head of the counter-LRA mission, flew to Djemah to oversee Acellam’s formal debriefing. While he went into the operations tent to send the news of Acellam’s surrender up the chain of command, Acellam and his
wives were served cups of tea, and basins of hot water were brought so they could bathe. They were each given a defector kit, a bundle of supplies that anyone leaving the LRA would need right away: a mattress, blankets, toiletries, civilian clothes. A meal was served: rice, beans, cabbage, a freshly slaughtered chicken.

  “Is there anything else you need?” Laren asked each in turn.

  Acellam sat quietly in front of his tent in his new checked button-up shirt and dark jeans and shook his head. The young woman from Cameroon asked if she could have a haircut and a soldier brought out a pair of clippers and gave her a short buzz cut. When she saw her new hairstyle in the mirror she grinned. The woman from Uganda had put her child down for a nap in their tent and now sat in a camp chair awaiting word that she could talk to her family. She spoke a little English that she’d learned in school in Uganda, but seemed hesitant to say much.

  Late in the afternoon, Acellam asked if he could take a walk to work out the kink in his sore knee. He stood slowly and stepped a loose, wide circle around the ops tent, his expression reserved and meditative, leaning on his cane like a village elder making his rounds. Laren joined him for part of the stroll, chatting about different towns they both knew in Uganda, discussing the news from Acellam’s native country, where he hadn’t been in some years.

  After their walk, Laren went to gather more supplies for the visitors’ tents and in his hurry he tripped, nearly falling with his armload.

  “Mot, mot ocero munu opoto,” Laren said in Acholi. Slowly, slowly and the white man will fall. He was making a joke, his one Acholi party trick, reciting an old anticolonial Acholi saying that essentially meant, Slowly, slowly we’ll build ourselves up and overthrow the white man’s yoke. But when Laren, a white man, said the phrase in Acholi, at his own expense, it was too much for Acellam, who broke into an enormous smile and laughed out loud.