To Stop a Warlord

by Shannon Sedgwick Davis

  They arrived in Opio Sam’s village under a gunmetal sky, the earth still soft from recent rain. The entire community, about one hundred people, had assembled. As The Tank drove up, they rushed toward the vehicle, encircling it. David slowed The Tank to a crawl as they gathered. Some were barefoot, some in sandals or flip-flops, others in dress shoes, the men wearing collared shirts under sweaters or jackets, the women in brightly printed dresses with high pointed shoulders and long full skirts—turquoise, gold, magenta—some with matching scarves wrapped around their heads. The elders held carved wooden staffs. The community members shook their hands above their heads, ululating joy and reverence, running alongside the car as though pushing it in their current. David cut the engine and Opio Sam opened his door, flashing his gigantic grin. Before he stepped out, David put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Gang dong en,” he said. This is home. Home is here now. Home: a place and a moment in time. This is it, and here we are.

  Opio Sam waved at those gathered, gazing everywhere, as though drinking them in, searching for a familiar face. He would not be allowed to see his mother until the first ceremony was complete. She waited for him now inside her hut. Community members called his name, reaching out to touch him, hug him, bless him as he stood among them for the first time as a man. Their ululations rose into a song of welcome. An elder led them, dancing, to the doorstep of Opio Sam’s mother’s home. The elder signaled that he was ready to begin the ceremony by holding up a small brown egg.

  “When our sons and daughters are taken away by the LRA,” the elder said, “we believe that because of the atrocities they’ve done, their feet became bloodied in the jungle. Opio Sam, you did not choose to be taken away, but now you walk on dirty feet. You are like this egg. Its shell is dirty, we don’t know what it has touched, where it has been. But inside the egg, nothing dirty has touched it. Inside, it is pure.”

  He laid the egg on the ground at the threshold of the hut. “Opio Sam, our brother, our son, you have come home. You will now step on this egg, you will break its shell to show that you have intentionally broken the old path, that you are walking a new path now.”

  Opio Sam lifted his foot and smashed it down on the egg in the doorway of his mother’s house. The bright yolk, the iridescent white spread over the ground, coating the mud, covering his foot.

  “The purity inside of the egg has washed the dirtiness away. You no longer walk a dirty path. This is your new beginning.”

  The celebratory cries took on a heady pitch. The air reverberated. Now Opio Sam was cleansed from everything in the past. Now he could go inside and be welcomed by his mother.

  He stepped through the door. It was dim inside her house. David stood behind him in the doorway, also searching the dark for the mother’s face, her high cheeks and kind eyes. She moved out of the shadows. She cried her son’s name. She drew his body close and he bent to embrace her. She was delicate and small. She gripped him with force.

  David came into the house, followed by the elders. Wooden folding chairs had been gathered in a circle for mato oput, the second ceremony, a communal cleansing. Mato oput was usually performed only when a combatant had committed violence against his own community or family. In this case, the community had requested mato oput because of Opio Sam’s status and duration in the LRA. He had been a high-ranking commander. He hadn’t attacked his own community, but he’d been a man of power in the LRA and they needed a way to forgive him for that. Why hadn’t he chosen to release his captives? Why hadn’t he left a long time ago?

  A woman brought a wooden bowl filled with a brown liquid, a tea made from a bitter root. Opio Sam would drink the tea, and so would any in his community whom the LRA had harmed. They would swallow the bitterness together. Victim or perpetrator, they shared the same pain, and in sharing the harsh bitterness of the tea together they would become free of guilt and blame. They would be cleansed and ready to feast together on the goats killed and cooked for the occasion, and to face each future moment—joyful or bitter—together.

  52

  GRACE’S SUN

  IN SEPTEMBER, ADAM called from Obo. “Laren’s sick again with malaria,” he said, “but I’m going to tell you what I’m seeing right now so you can see it, too.” He was out on the landing zone, about to welcome the single largest return of LRA members since the mission began. As part of a multi-day release of captives, dozens of women and children had been cut loose by their commander and come out of the bush unscathed. It was the first time such a large group of women and children had come out on their own, without any men.

  I could hear the spin of the chopper’s blades in the background. Adam began narrating everything he saw. “The helo doors are opening,” he said. “Women and children are pouring out. There are so many people, over forty I’m counting.” One woman had a one-week-old baby in her arms. She had given birth on the run, eating roots to keep herself and the baby alive during their flight. As the mother’s feet touched the ground, Adam described a piercing ray of sunlight that burst over her and her tiny newborn, over everyone gathered to welcome the group home. I could picture it exactly as he described it, and feel the warmth of that bright sun. It felt like a blessing. The message was getting through to people stuck in captivity that there would be a life for them back in Uganda, that these kids could go to school, that there were opportunities to rejoin their families and get jobs. The combination of pursuit and messaging was wearing down the LRA command and devastating morale. In this case, a large LRA group in Congo had been ordered by Kony to release half of their women and children so they had a better chance of outrunning the UPDF’s pursuit.

  There were so many young ones in the group—babies, kids in fatigues who took off their uniforms and gum boots and put on tennis shoes. We had stockpiled dozens of defector kits in the event of a mass defection like this one. We had nine dome tents at the base chock-full of supplies: new clothes, toys, radios, pots and pans. Adam helped open up the tents and distribute the goods and called David in Gulu so he could begin preparing to welcome the returnees and help them get home.

  One young boy stood out from the others. He was about two years old. He wore a zippered army fatigue vest and fatigue shorts. He was tiny, with a broad forehead and gently sloping eyes. His hair had an orange tint and his belly was distended, signs that he might be malnourished. While the babies and other toddlers his age were safe with their mothers, sitting in laps, held against hips, this boy didn’t appear to have a mother. He wandered the group, receiving brief attention from one mother before being passed to the next. He circled among the women, and then back to Adam, raising his arms in the universal gesture of a child wishing to be picked up and held. He clearly wanted connection and comfort. But he didn’t speak a single word to anybody. His name was Lapeko. He was the only child in the group to have come out of the bush without his biological mother.

  His father, a low-ranking Ugandan LRA fighter, had two captive wives, one Ugandan and one Congolese. Lapeko was the son of the Congolese forced bride. She had not been released with the group of forty-six. Lapeko needed a caregiver.

  And then there was the matter of his silence. It seemed less that he was unwilling and more that he was unable to speak. David promised to do his best to find the child’s father’s family in Uganda, and to see that he received care and treatment in the meantime.

  * * *

  —

  More than a year after Merlin, our change in strategy and its results were coming into focus. We had removed Odhiambo, an International Criminal Court indictee, and Binany, the orchestrator of the Makombo massacres, from the battlefield; convinced Okuti and his entire group to defect; and now we were pressuring the LRA to release its captives en masse. What if Kony did live out the rest of his days commanding a diminishing army from his hiding place in Kafia Kingi? He was scared, in poor health, grasping for control. His fate seemed less significant than surmounting the challen
ges and embracing the possibilities that were now available to so many others: Lapeko; the newborn baby whose mother had given birth on the run; the former combatants, afraid to face their communities after the atrocities they’d committed, being embraced by their families; the mothers reaching to welcome them home. The mission had taken us further than we ever anticipated going. And we were still out here for the compelling reasons that had put us on the ground in the first place.

  Viewed through that prism, we had to measure our success not only by the number of indictees removed from the battlefield—which, so far, was one—but also by the number of children and mothers and combatants we helped out of the bush, and their quality of life once they reached freedom. Since the start of our mission to stop a warlord, more than seven hundred of Kony’s captives had been liberated. Better all of them than one Kony.

  53

  HE CALLS HIMSELF ALI

  ONLY ONE MORE International Criminal Court indictee, besides Kony, remained in the bush: Dominic Ongwen, aka White Ant, who had ordered the attacks in the second Christmas massacres in 2009. We might not apprehend Kony. But there was another opportunity for justice to be served.

  Ongwen eluded capture throughout the rest of 2014, but during this same period of massive defections, intercepted communications between LRA groups revealed that morale was at an all-time low and that there’d been a major disruption of command and control structures within the organization. At least 14 percent of the LRA’s core fighting force had defected or been captured since Operation Merlin, and defections of long-term LRA members had gone up by 81 percent since Odhiambo’s death. With constant pressure from the Ugandan military and fewer fighters in the field, the LRA’s capacity for violence had dropped significantly. We wanted Kony to be captured and brought to justice. But with nearly all of his top commanders gone, he had lost effectiveness.

  * * *

  —

  In January 2015, almost two years after Operation Merlin, a chief in a community near Kafia Kingi contacted the Ugandan army about an LRA defector who was traveling in disguise—he called himself Ali, and was dressed as a nomadic cattle herder. US Special Forces went to pick him up and bring him back to Obo. On the flight back to their base, they realized who was in their custody. The man called Ali was none other than Dominic Ongwen.

  Popular among the rank and file of the LRA for standing up to Kony and his violent brutality, Ongwen had become a threat to Kony and had been marginalized within the organization as Opio Sam had been, stripped of his title and weapon. He had escaped weeks later with the help of LRA members sympathetic to his plight.

  He was the first indictee to come out alive, the first LRA warlord who would face a global court and be held accountable for his crimes, the first time the mission could fulfill the goal of bringing a perpetrator of mass atrocities to The Hague. It had been six years since I’d read Ida Sawyer’s report on the first Christmas massacres—violence that Ongwen himself, as senior commander of the LRA forces in Congo, had led—and convinced John Montgomery and the Bridgeway Foundation board to redefine and narrow our priorities to stopping the LRA. My heart pounded when I called John to tell him the news. I felt joy, an overwhelming sense of victory. I also realized that I was holding my breath. There had been so many close calls and near wins, surprises and betrayals over the years that I couldn’t quite trust that this outcome was real.

  * * *

  —

  We began flying our Cessna Caravan, dropping flyers that pictured Ongwen in an ivory-colored T-shirt, his black hair in a crisp buzz cut, a circle of yellow beads around one wrist. His message read in part:

  I am Dominic Ongwen. You all know me. I spent a very long time in the LRA; I know everything there is to know about the LRA. I have decided to come out from the bush. For those of you who are still there, you should know that Kony now has no plan that can push the LRA higher. He only wants to be the chief and you to work for him and his family like a slave. You are not the one who started the LRA, so why do you want to remain there? All your brave commanders have been killed or defected. Kony is planning to kill all of you. I am Dominic Ongwen, former LRA brigadier commander, but I don’t want to be in the LRA. Thank you.

  The last remaining International Criminal Court indictee other than Kony had left the battlefield. A week later, Ongwen was sent to The Hague.

  His defection was further proof that Kony was grasping for control, demoting and executing senior officers, promoting junior officers, shaking up the command structure in desperate attempts to keep his power. Kony was frustrated and morale throughout the organization was at an all-time low. For all intents and purposes, the snake of the LRA had been cut off its head.

  Bringing Ongwen to justice signaled a clear victory for the mission. His story also embodied the complexities of the war: a child victim could become the world’s worst mass murderer; and the perpetrator who on the surface seemed unredeemable came out with a kernel of humanity intact. Ongwen had left the LRA to protect his own life, but he also took action to help others come home.

  * * *

  —

  Not long after Ongwen’s defection, seven LRA combatants living in Kafia Kingi planned what is believed to be the first-ever assassination attempt of Kony from within the organization. Since Odhiambo’s death, there had been a power struggle within the LRA to see who Kony would choose to fill the number two spot in the command structure. Alex Aliciri, one of Kony’s chief bodyguards, was angry that junior members of the LRA were being promoted to senior positions, and troubled by the wave of beatings and executions Kony was committing against his inner circle. He did the unthinkable. He led the rebels in his direct command in an uprising, attempting to kill Kony in his own hut late at night. Kony’s bodyguards managed to defend Kony in the gunfight, and the would-be assassins fled. It took them a month to trek to Obo, where they surrendered in June. Their defections brought the number of combatants in Kony’s personal group to a new low: sixteen.

  SO IT CAN END

  David Ocitti

  DAVID LAY ON a cot in a military tent in Obo. It was past ten o’clock at night. The generators were off and the camp was dark. Alex Aliciri and some of the others who had attempted the rebellion against Kony rested nearby in the tent. They’d been out of the bush for a few months, had gone home to process their amnesty certificates and perform reunification ceremonies, and then asked what more they could do to stop Kony. David had accompanied them back to the Central African Republic to help them with a defection messaging campaign.

  It was late, but David couldn’t sleep. He could hear the others moving around and chatting in the dark.

  “What do you think Kony’s up to right now?” someone asked.

  “That man was like a dad to me once,” another replied.

  “Yeah, a dad who ruined your life. Now he should pay for all the time he wasted that you won’t ever get back,” Aliciri said.

  Sometimes David found it hard to be around others who had left the LRA. It forced him to relive the past, to remember the fierce look in the commander’s eyes when he’d demanded, “Who do you love the most?” To see the fathers grouped together. To hear the thud of the rebels’ sticks. Sometimes the memories pushed him down the path of rage and desperation, or futility. Sometimes he searched for information about his brothers, trying to uncover any tiny clue that could reveal something about their fate. Always, the fall was steep when he realized there would be no miracle, no surprise reunion, not even a piece of information that could help bring closure to the loss.

  And yet, there was a comfort, too, in trading stories with the only other people on the planet who knew the world he knew. Around him, the other men began sharing stories in the dark, of abductions and beatings and battles. Among these men, nothing was secret. Nothing was too much to share or to hear. They had seen it all, lived through it all. You could speak openly with people whom nothing you said could shock or terrif
y.

  The air in the tent was still. Aliciri spoke. “This one night we got into a heavy gunfight with the UPDF,” he said. “They shot my gun from my hand. I had to leave it there when I ran.”

  A few of the men murmured, acknowledging the gravity of their own stories, of the countless similar attacks they’d been forced to participate in.

  “Where was that?” David asked.

  Aliciri thought a moment. “Pabbo,” he said.

  David’s heart pounded. His whole body tensed. He felt that a door stood before him. He tried to keep his voice from shaking. “I’m from Pabbo,” he said. “It’s where I was abducted.”

  A silence grew between them, thick like smoke.

  “Man,” Aliciri said.

  David stared up into the dark. His chest felt tight. It has already happened, he told himself. It’s not happening now. They were the words he used to repeat to himself. It happened. Now what? Once, he had longed to hold his captors accountable. To stand before the world and name the wrongs that the perpetrators had committed against him and countless others. But that wish had changed form.

  A laugh burst out of him. “Damn,” he said into the night. “Full circle.”