Source: The New York Times: ‘All People Are the Same to God’: An Insider’s Portrait of Joseph Kony

Among the men at large in the world who have been credibly accused of war crimes, Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, occupies an almost otherworldly place. The document that is the subject of Friday’s post, “LRA Religious Beliefs,” shows many of the reasons why.

Mr. Kony, who has been wanted by the International Criminal Court since 2005, has engaged since the late 1980s in the mass abductions of children from villages and government-run camps in the Ugandan countryside. His hostages, seized in ambushes along roads and in raids on settlements, became the living fuel for a grim, millennial war.

Mr. Kony did not ransom his captives. He had another design. He indoctrinated the boys as foot soldiers in a guerrilla campaign against the Ugandan government and, when directed by his sponsors in Sudan, against villages and rebel groups in Southern Sudan. Abducted girls were put to work, too — as labor, as soldiers, and, once they reached puberty, as sexual chattel for Mr. Kony and his coterie of commanders, who called them their wives.

The document presented Friday is a stitched together file of 12 images I made while doing book research on vacation in Uganda in 2007. Its journey into my possession was nothing but chance. One day, as I was interviewing repatriated child soldiers from Mr. Kony’s brigades, a former senior member of the L.R.A. showed up for an interview holding a wad of soiled, crumbled papers. The papers contained a brief but lush insiders’ view of one of the world’s most elusive — and bizarre — wanted men.

It is difficult to overstate Mr. Kony’s exaggerated style of public weirdness and calculated ferocity. The offshoot of a failed rebel movement led by Alice Lakwena, who said she was possessed by a troupe of spirits who urged her to war, Mr. Kony has presented himself over the years as the channel through which these lingering voices communicate from the beyond.

His guerrilla dossier smacks of a peculiar brand of bush opportunism. Ms. Lakwena, after her forces were routed in the 1980s, said the spirits had abandoned her, and she fled to Kenya, where she passed her final years in a rambling, alcoholic daze. Mr. Kony promptly took her place, insisting he was the spirits’ new vehicle.

How exactly did these possessions manifest themselves? The document the source brought to the interview sketched the dozen or more different spirits that were parts of Mr. Kony’s performances. Some of the descriptions of these spirits’ visits are extraordinary. His ghosts had many names: Juma Oris, Who Are You, Malia Mackay, the list runs on.

We’ll leave it to you to decide whether Mr. Kony truly believes he was possessed, or simply acted out each character for his own purposes. Let’s turn to the document, in which members of his inner circle claimed the L.R.A.’S Leader:

…started having possession episodes in 1987. In the beginning he was possessed sometimes two or three times a day. Over time frequency of possession declined. Prophesized by Juma Oris in Kony in 1995 that there will come a time that the spirit would no longer visit. Kony would always be alerted by “Who Are You” that a spirit would come at a certain time to speak for a certain time (for example at 1400 hours for three or four minutes). Kony’s secretary (Chief to Lakwena) would make the preparations, and Kony would dress in a white robe. A glass of water, a bible, and a rosary were placed on a table. To start the possession Kony would dip his fingers into a clear glass of water. Multiple spirits would pass through Kony in a single session. On average at least three spirits would talk in a session. Junior spirits always talked first. After the session the LRA Army Commander would address the crowd. No one corrected what the spirits said, nor did people dare question the spirits.

When Kony dipped his finger in glass of water he slumped forward for a few seconds, then sat up. Each spirit had a separate personality. His voice changed to a woman’s tone of voice when possessed by Malia. Some spirits spoke faster than others. Who Are You was rude – quarreling – and he complained a lot. Chairman Juma Oris talked slow and calm with a flat tone like an “important person.” Malia gave morale and hope after operations, and would say that those injured would recover with help from Dr. Salan. Go to Document »

With this ephemeral but bossy gang, Mr. Kony delineated rules for his army’s behavior, a sort of L.R.A. code of conduct that mixed derivatives of Christianity, Islam, animism and what would seem a free association on guerrilla tactics, social justice, diet, marriage and capital punishment. The author of the document wrote down many of these practices and rules, which Mr. Kony said would help lead Uganda on a path to purification:

On eating meat: “The LRA do not eat pigs,” one rule stated. “However, they will eat warthogs.” Go to Document »

As for fish: “Mudfish (barbells of catfish) are not eaten because they are lazy and if you eat them you will become lazy as well.” Go to Document »

Another passage discussed the lives of L.R.A. “wives:”

Mature abducted women could be made wives almost immediately. Kony would be informed of the abduction and would give direction for some to be brought to him and others distributed among the group that captured them. The most beautiful women went to Kony. He would screen the women for sometimes up to six months, and if he found a detestable trait in her he would refuse to have her as a wife. They would be given to the Operation Room which would determine who she would go to. Go to Document »

And a different section described the fates of “widows:”

When a man dies the woman stays alone for 90 days to grieve, after which she is washed, all her hair shaved and taken to the yard. A controller or technician then prays on her so that she will not lose another husband. (The spirit of the deceased husband lingers around and the prayers remove the spirit of the husband . Otherwise the deceased spirit will kill anyone sleeping with that woman. Violation of this rule has resulted in the majority of LRA deaths.) After this ceremony she can be given to another LRA soldier as a wife. Go to Document »

Yet another detailed Mr. Kony’s supposed healing powers, in this case applied as freshly kidnapped victims were brought into the ranks.

Newly abducted people were taken to the yard. The controllers would pray for them, sprinkle water on them mixed with shea butter oil, and also “camouflaged” them with signs of the cross all over the body using a white powder crushed from “rotten rocks” and mixed with shea oil. The new recruits could not wash for three days, after which the spirit of the Lord descended upon them. This would protect them in battle. If a person was HIV positive the crosses would fall off of his or her body in a day or less. HIV infected persons had to go to the river and wash themselves in a stream or river three times. Kony personally prayed for the person and sometimes poured water over them. When the person left the water they were instructed not to look back and they left the area cured of HIV. Go to Document »

So what is this record? The papers summarized a series of intensive interviews conducted in late 2005 by an American defense attaché in Uganda with former members of the L.R.A. As a courtesy, the attaché, Lt. Col. Richard W. Skow, provided to two of the interviewees an unclassified summary of some of his work. One of these men allowed me to photograph the pages, albeit quickly, before he stuffed them away.

The images sat on a hard drive for two years, until I referred to them again when writing a book, in which they played a role in one chapter. Upon rereading the pages and sharing them with the editor of this blog, we agreed that Colonel Skow’s pamphlet had a larger value, and should be shared as another resource for those interested in understanding the L.R.A.

This week I tracked down Colonel Skow, now retired from the Army and working as the director of the Segera Mission in Kenya, which his father-in-law founded in 2002. Reached by e-mail and on Facebook, Colonel Skow shared recollections.

The document, he wrote from Kenya, “came straight from L.R.A. upper echelon guys that I interviewed normally around 3 hours a day for a couple of weeks.”

“I wrote those pages as a reminder to the community I worked for about what was going on, and in the hopes it would shed more light on the crimes,” Colonel Skow wrote. “I’ll never forget the children I debriefed and what they went through, or the day I brought a child back to his family (permission from the Ugandan Army) and the reactions they all had.”

Colonel Skow’s work provides a layered insight into Mr. Kony and his movement, which to many people are known more by deeds than by close-up views. The rougher sketch is widely known: The L.R.A., according to the International Criminal Court, “has engaged in a cycle of violence and established a pattern of ‘brutalization of civilians’ by acts including murder, abduction, sexual enslavement, mutilation, as well as mass burning of houses and camp settlements.” This internal sketch shows how the movement can feel to its members.

For the last few years, Mr. Kony and his guerrillas have operated from bases in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He has remained at large in the face of calls for his arrest. Acholiland, the area of Uganda where he fought for years, remains economically depressed. Villages lie in ruin, much of the population lives in camps, and the sight of victims of his squads’ chilling tactics — including people with their noses and lips sliced away — can imbue Acholiland with a haunted feel.

Colonel Skow’s portrait is in itself an unstated indictment. With its straight-forward account of the Kony spirit show and its passing descriptions of L.R.A. practices, it’s something simple and useful: an unusual glimpse a long-lasting guerrilla leader accused of war crimes.

Colonel Skow provided me an original Word document of this report, confirming that the record my source brought to the interview was complete and unedited. Five years after he compiled it, Colonel  Skow was happy to share for readers of this blog.

“After all I learned about the L.R.A., the more exposure they get the better,” he wrote. “They need to cease to exist.”