Never the Same

Former child soldiers describe the horrors of war as activists urge the U.N. to adopt sanctions against relentless violators.
By L. Lamor Williams, World Ark contributor

THE NIGHTMARES COME less frequently now for former Ugandan child soldier Kassim Ouma, but they still come. Sometimes the tormented faces of his victims haunt him even while he’s awake.

He was 8 years old the first time he killed, 6 when the National Resistance Army abducted him from his boarding school classroom in Kampala, Uganda.

Ouma recalls the story in Kassim the Dream, a haunting documentary on his life that was recently screened at the Little Rock Film Festival in Arkansas and at similar events around the country.

“I never finished the film the first time. It was so emotional, I couldn’t watch it,” Ouma said. “I’ve watched it so many times now. Still, sometimes it breaks me down.”

With a thick accent that’s sometimes difficult to understand, Ouma tells a cameraman that after being kidnapped, he and the other children were terrified. They were taken by truck to the rebel training facility. As the journey began, they were given chilling instructions.

“They said ‘Right here there is no mommy. There is no daddy. If you cry, you’re dead,’” he said. “From that day, I haven’t been the same.” Today, Ouma, 30, is a professional middleweight boxer living in Florida with his mother and his two sons, half a world away from where he was kidnapped and forced to fight, maim and murder.

Seeking U.N. Sanctions

UNICEF estimates that there are currently 300,000 child soldiers fighting in conflicts around the world. In March, Radhika Coomaraswamy, the United Nations’ special representative of the secretary-general for children and armed conflict, called for the U.N. Security Council to establish a system of sanctions for persistent violators who continue to forcibly recruit child soldiers.

“Advocacy must be reinforced by real action. Perpetrators of grave violations against children have to be held accountable, and impunity must end,” Coomaraswamy said at a symposium in Rome on children and war. “We must let the world know [the] children’s stories, and we must take effective protective, legal and political actions to ensure that as many children as possible are spared the brutalities of war.”

While the forced recruitment of child soldiers remains a problem, Coomaraswamy said progress has been made.

“Since 1998 to now, more than 100,000 children have been demobilized and reintegrated into society,” she said.

The U.N. reports that child soldiers are fighting in at least 15 countries and territories: Afghanistan, Myanmar (Burma), the Central African Republic, Chad, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Iraq, Israel, the Philippines, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Thailand and Uganda.

Fleeing the Front Line

Yoweri Museveni, who led the National Resistance Army that kidnapped Ouma, overthrew then-president Milton Obote and assumed power in Uganda in 1986. But Ouma was not released from military service, fighting in the bush until age 12. He was one of the boys used to keep other boys in line, to toughen them up, he said. Not following orders or trying to escape meant severe punishment or death, likely at the hands of a young comrade who feared for his own life.

Ouma was trained as a boxer and put on the country’s national team. By 15, he’d won an amateur championship. In 1998, at 19, he defected to the U.S. while visiting to compete in the World Military Boxing Championship with the Ugandan boxing team, he said.

In the film, he describes for viewers how, with no English skills, he went from one boxing gym to the next seeking training. The Alexandria Boxing Club in Alexandria, Va., was the first to take him in. He eventually settled in Florida where he would father his second son.

Barely holding back tears, his mother, Rose Nakagwa, recalls seeing him in 2002 for the first time since his kidnapping. Nakagwa was the first of Ouma’s family to be granted a visa to come to the U.S., followed by Ouma’s older son Umar Ogambo.

“My first time to hug him and even talk to him was in 2002 when I came to America and really see that, okay, this is my son who was kidnapped,” Nakagwa said.

The boxer’s father was killed soon after Ouma defected, and Ouma blames himself for his father’s death. Soldiers searching for Ouma tortured his father and forced Nakagwa to watch. The boxer’s American-born son, Oundo Rahim Ouma, bears his late grandfather’s name.

“That boy looks just like my daddy,” Ouma says in the film. “I call him daddy, and he calls me daddy.”

In 2007, Ouma was allowed to return to Uganda. Museveni granted him a presidential pardon for his desertion, which Ouma received during the visit. He returned again this year to visit his ailing grandmother. She had been taking care of Ouma’s son Umar until the boy was granted a visa to come live with Ouma in the U.S.

“My grandmother is going blind,” Ouma said. “I had to go over there to help take care of her eyes. I’ve been trying to get her a visa but she’s been denied.”

Ouma calls boxing his therapy. He said he agreed to be filmed because he wants to raise awareness about children who are forced into military service.

“I want to send a message to people using child soldiers to please stop,” he said. “They ruin people’s lives. They should not use children to fi ght. They should let them study and be children.”

Never the Same

Boxer Kassim Ouma traveled to the United States at age 19, where he defected to flee the National Resistance Army. The NRA kidnapped him at age 6 from his Ugandan classroom.

Sent to Fight in Sudan

The Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, has been fighting to depose Museveni for the past two decades. By some estimates, the LRA alone has abducted more than 30,000 children, forcing them to fight, serve as sex slaves or die. Grace Akallo was one of those children, kidnapped by the LRA from her high school in Aboke, in northern Uganda.

Akallo shared her story in Rome during the symposium on children and war. She had dreams of being the first person from her village to go to college. That dream was seemingly dashed when she was taken from her dormitory on Oct. 9, 1996, along with 138 other girls.

“I was among the first five who were tied and pushed to move out. We were forced by the LRA soldiers to form four straight lines and were marched out into the woods. I knew at that moment that there was no surviving. My spirit died,” she said.

The headmistress on duty at the school followed the rebels, pleading with them to release the girls.

“The rebels threatened to kill or rape her in front of us. She was asked to leave, but she refused to leave without her children. She stood her ground and, in the end, she was released with 109 girls. I was not one of the lucky ones though, as I was among the 30 that were forced to remain,” Akallo said.

After a month of wandering in the northern Uganda forest, they were marched to southern Sudan.

“On the way, many children who could not walk were killed and their bodies abandoned in the forest. The rebels would use sticks, axes, bayonets or machetes,” she said.

“When we arrived in Sudan, I and my friends were given [an] AK-47. We were taught to dismantle, clean and assemble the gun. My group was not taught to shoot or to fight; we were told hunger would eventually teach us, and indeed it did. I and my friends were sent to battles with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army [SPLA] several times. Hunger and thirst was the order of the day. During the long march back from battle against the SPLA I fainted from thirst and hunger and the LRA actually buried me in a shallow grave, thinking that I was dead.

“In addition to being forced to fight, I and my friends were distributed to the rebel commanders. We were forced to kill those girls who tried to escape or refused their husbands. I was repeatedly raped by an LRA commander on countless occasions. I was an innocent young girl…. Yet, I had to survive.”

On April 9, 1997, after seven months in captivity, Akallo finally saw her chance to escape from the rebels.

“I walked for two weeks without food in this place I did not know, surviving only on wild leaves, soil and dew in the morning. I was rescued by villagers from Southern Sudan and handed back to the Ugandan government soldiers who then handed me over to my parents. I was happy to be back, but my heart was saddened by the ongoing torture my friends were still going through. I left too many of them behind.

“After a month at home, I went back to St. Mary’s College and later graduated. I was lucky to go to university level. But many of the girls who managed to escape are not able to return to school or have dreams for their future because they were not helped to deal with their horrible experiences, or because they now have babies born of their abuse.”

Today, Akallo, 29, is a graduate student at Clark University near Boston studying international development. She hasn’t been back to Uganda since 2006.

School and her advocacy work aren’t the only reasons, she said. “All my family is back in Uganda, but I’ve been talking around about child soldiers, so I need to be careful,” Akallo said. “My government doesn’t want it talked about.”

She plans to become a lawyer. “I’m hoping to advocate for justice,” she said. “These kids deserve justice.” Sharing her story helps her as much as she hopes it helps current and former child soldiers, Akallo said.

“That’s what makes me go on because I left so many behind,” she said. “I left so many friends behind. Some were killed, some came back with children and they don’t have a voice. I survived and I have a voice.”

In addition to working closely with the U.N., she is a cofounder— with fi ve other former child soldiers—of the Network of Young People Affected by War.

“We want to encourage people, government, nongovernment and even the rebels themselves to be accountable for what they do with children,” Akallo said of the group. “We are advocating for more education and more psychosocial therapy to help these children heal and at the same time have a future.”

Akallo applauds U.N. special representative Coomaraswamy’s recommendation to have sexual violence against children set as a trigger for sanctions because sex crimes are mostly committed against girl soldiers.

“Because girls are often taken as child wives, they are not always considered child soldiers,” Akallo said. “But it is a crime against humanity for a girl to be taken and raped; to have to fi ght with their children strapped on their backs. And when they come back they live with that the rest of their lives. Their children born in captivity will remind them of their fates for the rest of their lives. If sexual violence is not recognized, not just recognized but prosecuted, it’s not justice at all.”

Never the Same

Reintegration into mainstream society remains a challenge, as child soldiers are both victims and perpetrators. The process begins with negotiating the release of child soldiers and tracking down family members, tasks that can take months.

“The question remains whether children should generally be exempt from having to account for human rights abuses committed in their capacity as members of an armed force or group,” Coomaraswamy said in the report. “Recognizing that child soldiers are first and foremost victims of grave abuses of human rights, and prioritizing the prosecution of those who unlawfully recruited and used them, is essential.”

Coomaraswamy also notes that victims of crimes committed by child soldiers have a right to justice and reparations.

“Moreover, it is reasonable to ask whether absolving children of responsibility for crimes they have committed is necessarily in the best interests of the child,” she said in her report. “In at least some cases, where the individual was clearly in control of their actions, and not coerced, drugged, or forced into committing atrocities, acknowledgment and atonement, including in some instances prosecution, might be an important part of personal recovery. It may also contribute to their acceptance by families, communities and society at large.”

Ouma knows well the fear of returning home to the places where he tortured and killed people. Despite the hero’s welcome he received in Uganda for being an internationally known boxer, he said his heart was heavy with trepidation and feelings of guilt.

“I feel blessed,” he said. “I pray to God every day to forgive me.”