Ex LRA chiefs harass former wives
Sep 20, 2008
GIRLS who were abducted and forcefully given as wives to LRA commanders are still being pursued by their ‘bush husbands’, a study by two researchers attached to the Feinstein International Centre in the US has revealed.
By Lydia Namubiru
GIRLS who were abducted and forcefully given as wives to LRA commanders are still being pursued by their ‘bush husbands’, a study by two researchers attached to the Feinstein International Centre in the US has revealed.
Reintegration in society is tough for these girls, the study found. Apart from economic hardships, they face social stigma and harassment from the commanders, some of whom continue to force them into the relationship.
They were abducted young and innocent, distributed among rebel commanders and lived a dangerous bush life.
The end of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgence in northern Uganda and their escape from captivity promised a new life. But, alas for them, the reality outside the bush proves harder than they had expected.
Apart from having no income or skill to make a living, forcing some to go into prostitution to feed their children, they face stigmatisation and harassment from the very men they had been forcefully married to in captivity. Some force them to stay in the relationship while others go after them when they try to enter a new relationship.
This and more was revealed by a two-year research by two senior researchers attached to the Feinstein International Centre, a research unit of Tufts University in the US.
The researchers, Khristopher Carlson and Dyan Mazurana, interviewed 210 people in northern Uganda, including 103 formerly abducted girls and discovered that although normalcy is returning to northern Uganda, life for the former returnee girls is far from normal.
The Feinstein study established that one in every six adolescent girls in Acholi land was once abducted and kept captive for sometime by the LRA during their 20-year insurgency. At least a quarter of them were distributed among the male rebels as forced wives and half of those taken as wives bore children in captivity.
Many of these girls have since returned from the bush with their children but life in civil society is very difficult and complex for them.
“They are facing big problems. They get negative reception from some people,†says Martin Ojara, the Gulu district speaker.
Some of the girls told the researchers that their former forced husbands are intimidating them into re-uniting with them. In Lango some girls say that their former bush husbands threaten to beat them up should they get into relationships with other men.
“That report is true,†Ojara confirms. “Their bush husbands are former high ranking LRA rebels, some of whom have been integrated into the UPDF. Some did not even go through the normal rehabilitation process other returnees went through. They do not understand how life in a proper government works. It is very unfortunate that these girls were forced to be their wives in the bush. That is not how a man and woman should get together in the first place.â€
However, Falukas Boroa Enyaga, a social worker with World Vision in Gulu, says some girls are also ‘willing’ to reunite with them.
“Some women want to return to their bush husbands because they have had children with them. They do not want to remarry,†he explains.
Not without problems, though. The report talks of two formerly abducted girls who returned to a captor husband who had resettled in a sub-camp outside of Gulu town.
Each wife received a sewing machine from Gusco (Gulu Support the Children Organisation) reception centre. Their captor husband, who had children with them, stole one of the sewing machines to sell it in Gulu town. Gusco subsequently intervened and repossessed the sewing machines, leaving the women with nothing.
Another returnee girl and mother of two children had returned to the industrial area near Gulu town where her bush husband was living with another wife from captivity.
The man stole the materials she had received as a resettlement package, including a mattress, jerry cans and cooking pots. She reported him to local council officials, who forced the man to give back the items and even provide support for his children. His other wife was infuriated and attacked her with a panga.
These girls are caught in a vicious cycle of sexual exploitation. In the bush, they were used to ‘bolster fighters’ morale’. Now, some find that they can only survive by continuing to sell their bodies.
Some are forced by economic necessity to enter into relationships with men - sometimes more than one- most of whom provide little anyway,†says the 70 page Feinstein study report.
“Others have entered into sexual relationships with Ugandan army troops or with male relatives as a way of finding protection and support.
Enyaga explains the dilemma. “They cannot afford life and they have all these children. Many are not prostitutes; they get one man and if he fails to provide for them, they move to another.â€
Ojara regrets that the skills training the returnees get from humanitarian organisations is not enough to sustain them when they get back home. “Many returnees got a three months tailoring training at rehabilitation centres. They were even given sewing machines. But just a few months down the road, they sold the machines because their short training could not help them compete on the market,†he said.
He calls for a special and comprehensive programme to rehabilitate and follow up the returnees. “When someone has lived in the bush for seven years, three months of rehabilitation is not enough. It should be a process that includes follow-up and comprehensive psycho-social support,†he asserts.
He says that among other things, the returnees suffer from trauma, guilt as well as a dependency syndrome, where they expect the Government or civil society organisations to entirely provide for them.
The district speaker also calls on the Government to change the way it supports former combatants. He cites the integration of ex-LRA into the UPDF without mentally rehabilitating them as particularly problematic.
Enyaga adds that the girls not only need psychological and moral support and economic empowerment, they also need to be accepted by the community.
According to the Gulu deputy speaker, Patrick Oola Lumumba, men shun these girls. “You hear men say amongst themselves: ‘Do you know how many people used this one?’â€
Enyaga adds that men say these girls are still possessed by evil spirits of the LRA and fear to associate with them.
Even those who return to their families find it hard. “I once worked with a woman who had returned from the bush to her home in Pader. She was rejected and her children were not allowed to play with others because they were rebels’ children,†Enyaga narrates.
The woman had to leave the home and now lives anonymously in Gulu where her personal story is not as widely known.
The Feinstein researchers found that it is mostly in areas outside Acholi that families refuse to take the girls back. When they do, some put a condition that they abandon the children who were born to their bush husbands. They call them ‘rebel’ children.
Ojara believes the stigma can and will be alleviated. “We shall continue talking to the people. I am sure this will go down. I can say there is less stigma than there was before the peace talks,†he says.
But the Gulu district RDC denies that the girls are having any trouble assimilating into the community.
GIRLS who were abducted and forcefully given as wives to LRA commanders are still being pursued by their ‘bush husbands’, a study by two researchers attached to the Feinstein International Centre in the US has revealed.
Reintegration in society is tough for these girls, the study found. Apart from economic hardships, they face social stigma and harassment from the commanders, some of whom continue to force them into the relationship.
They were abducted young and innocent, distributed among rebel commanders and lived a dangerous bush life.
The end of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgence in northern Uganda and their escape from captivity promised a new life. But, alas for them, the reality outside the bush proves harder than they had expected.
Apart from having no income or skill to make a living, forcing some to go into prostitution to feed their children, they face stigmatisation and harassment from the very men they had been forcefully married to in captivity. Some force them to stay in the relationship while others go after them when they try to enter a new relationship.
This and more was revealed by a two-year research by two senior researchers attached to the Feinstein International Centre, a research unit of Tufts University in the US.
The researchers, Khristopher Carlson and Dyan Mazurana, interviewed 210 people in northern Uganda, including 103 formerly abducted girls and discovered that although normalcy is returning to northern Uganda, life for the former returnee girls is far from normal.
The Feinstein study established that one in every six adolescent girls in Acholi land was once abducted and kept captive for sometime by the LRA during their 20-year insurgency. At least a quarter of them were distributed among the male rebels as forced wives and half of those taken as wives bore children in captivity.
Many of these girls have since returned from the bush with their children but life in civil society is very difficult and complex for them.
“They are facing big problems. They get negative reception from some people,†says Martin Ojara, the Gulu district speaker.
Some of the girls told the researchers that their former forced husbands are intimidating them into re-uniting with them. In Lango some girls say that their former bush husbands threaten to beat them up should they get into relationships with other men.
“That report is true,†Ojara confirms. “Their bush husbands are former high ranking LRA rebels, some of whom have been integrated into the UPDF. Some did not even go through the normal rehabilitation process other returnees went through. They do not understand how life in a proper government works. It is very unfortunate that these girls were forced to be their wives in the bush. That is not how a man and woman should get together in the first place.â€
However, Falukas Boroa Enyaga, a social worker with World Vision in Gulu, says some girls are also ‘willing’ to reunite with them.
“Some women want to return to their bush husbands because they have had children with them. They do not want to remarry,†he explains.
Not without problems, though. The report talks of two formerly abducted girls who returned to a captor husband who had resettled in a sub-camp outside of Gulu town.
Each wife received a sewing machine from Gusco (Gulu Support the Children Organisation) reception centre. Their captor husband, who had children with them, stole one of the sewing machines to sell it in Gulu town. Gusco subsequently intervened and repossessed the sewing machines, leaving the women with nothing.
Another returnee girl and mother of two children had returned to the industrial area near Gulu town where her bush husband was living with another wife from captivity.
The man stole the materials she had received as a resettlement package, including a mattress, jerry cans and cooking pots. She reported him to local council officials, who forced the man to give back the items and even provide support for his children. His other wife was infuriated and attacked her with a panga.
These girls are caught in a vicious cycle of sexual exploitation. In the bush, they were used to ‘bolster fighters’ morale’. Now, some find that they can only survive by continuing to sell their bodies.
Some are forced by economic necessity to enter into relationships with men - sometimes more than one- most of whom provide little anyway,†says the 70 page Feinstein study report.
“Others have entered into sexual relationships with Ugandan army troops or with male relatives as a way of finding protection and support.
Enyaga explains the dilemma. “They cannot afford life and they have all these children. Many are not prostitutes; they get one man and if he fails to provide for them, they move to another.â€
Ojara regrets that the skills training the returnees get from humanitarian organisations is not enough to sustain them when they get back home. “Many returnees got a three months tailoring training at rehabilitation centres. They were even given sewing machines. But just a few months down the road, they sold the machines because their short training could not help them compete on the market,†he said.
He calls for a special and comprehensive programme to rehabilitate and follow up the returnees. “When someone has lived in the bush for seven years, three months of rehabilitation is not enough. It should be a process that includes follow-up and comprehensive psycho-social support,†he asserts.
He says that among other things, the returnees suffer from trauma, guilt as well as a dependency syndrome, where they expect the Government or civil society organisations to entirely provide for them.
The district speaker also calls on the Government to change the way it supports former combatants. He cites the integration of ex-LRA into the UPDF without mentally rehabilitating them as particularly problematic.
Enyaga adds that the girls not only need psychological and moral support and economic empowerment, they also need to be accepted by the community.
According to the Gulu deputy speaker, Patrick Oola Lumumba, men shun these girls. “You hear men say amongst themselves: ‘Do you know how many people used this one?’â€
Enyaga adds that men say these girls are still possessed by evil spirits of the LRA and fear to associate with them.
Even those who return to their families find it hard. “I once worked with a woman who had returned from the bush to her home in Pader. She was rejected and her children were not allowed to play with others because they were rebels’ children,†Enyaga narrates.
The woman had to leave the home and now lives anonymously in Gulu where her personal story is not as widely known.
The Feinstein researchers found that it is mostly in areas outside Acholi that families refuse to take the girls back. When they do, some put a condition that they abandon the children who were born to their bush husbands. They call them ‘rebel’ children.
Ojara believes the stigma can and will be alleviated. “We shall continue talking to the people. I am sure this will go down. I can say there is less stigma than there was before the peace talks,†he says.
But the Gulu district RDC denies that the girls are having any trouble assimilating into the community.