One of the most wanted fugitives from the Rwandan genocide is arrested in Uganda. Idelphonse Nizeyimana, the former Rwandan intelligence chief, directly ordered and organized massacres during the genocide, and more recently was top commander of a rebel group causing terror in eastern Congo.

More that 250 people are killed and at least 25 villages destroyed in monsoon flooding in the southern Indian states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

Turkish police use tear gas and water cannons against demonstrators protesting IMF and World Bank meetings in Istanbul. At least 50 people are arrested.

The United Nations closes all of its offices throughout Pakistan for an indefinite period following yesterday’s bombing of the U.N. World Food Program compound in Islamabad.

An Italian court begins reviewing a law passed in July 2008 that gives Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi immunity from prosecution. If the law is overturned, Berlusconi could face prosecution in a number of cases, including one for corruption.

“It’s an honor to be nominated for an Emmy, especially in such fantastic company, with our colleagues over at Now, Worldfocus, Frontline, P.O.V, and Independent Lens,” said Pamela Hogan, Executive Producer of both films.

Lord’s Children, by Oliver Stoltz and Ali Samadi Ahadi, tells the story of three former child soldiers who fought in Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army, escaped from the bush, and have since taken refuge in a rehabilitation center.

Birth of a Surgeon, by Karin Falk and Loui Bernal, travels to Mozambique where, for the first time, midwives are being trained to perform Cesarean sections and other life-saving surgery, significantly reducing the country’s maternal mortality rate.

“It’s really exciting to participate in a film about a subject that’s so important — maternal mortality, an unnecessary loss of life that effects generations — and to be able to find a hopeful story,” said Hogan. “It’s a great example of an African solution to an African problem.”

Coincidentally, Birth of a Surgeon is scheduled to be re-broadcast this week (check your local listings for airtimes). For the encore presentation, host Aaron Brown travels to Mozambique to check in with the film’s main character, Emilia Cumbane, one of the first midwives to go through the training program. She is now the head of the maternity ward at a rural hospital.

The Emmy Awards will be presented on September 21st. Both Lord’s Children and Birth of a Surgeon will compete in the category of Outstanding Coverage of a News Story — Long Form.

Here, Mamdani reflects on how President Robert Mugabe has stayed in power for close to three decades, the land reform program Mugabe launched in 2000 to both maintain popularity and redress racial inequalities in farm ownership, and the subsequent collapse of Zimbabwe’s agricultural system. Mamdani also explains why he believes that the new power-sharing agreement between President Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is the best way forward.

But over the weekend LRA spokesman David Matsanga delivered a letter to U.N. mediator Joachim Chissano calling for a truce.

After 20 years of conflict during which time the people of Northern Uganda were brutally terrorized by the LRA, the rebel group was finally pushed out of Uganda but continues to operate in Congo, Sudan, and the Central African Republic. Peace talks were initiated in Juba, Southern Sudan in 2006, but have failed and been restarted repeatedly because LRA leader Joseph Kony consistently refuses to sign a peace agreement until a 2005 indictment against him from the International Criminal Court is lifted.

The most recent breakdown in talks, this past December, prompted the creation of a joint campaign among the Southern Sudanese, Congolese, and Ugandan forces–Operation Lightning Thunder–whose aim was to defeat and dismantle the LRA. In response, the LRA launched its recent campaign of violence–including targeting churches on Christmas day, killing 254 people in nine villages. But Kony escaped capture and is reportedly headed to the Central African Republic. Operation Lightening Thunder’s forces have already obtained permission to follow him.

After two years of obstructing the peace talks it would seem that Kony is finally willing to cooperate. However, Julia Spiegel, a policy analyst with The Enough Project who works and lives in Uganda, doesn’t hold much stock in the LRA’s call for a ceasefire.

“It’s relatively meaningless. Matsanga’s just trying to turn down the heat on the LRA,” Spiegel said.

And the LRA’s actions seem to confirm this theory. While Matsanga was seeking a truce on behalf of the LRA, 100 members of the LRA raided two towns in northeastern Congo killing twenty-two people.

It’s estimated that there are about 600 members of the LRA roaming around Eastern Congo and Southern Sudan many of whom were abducted as children and haven’t known anything else.

“What needs to happen now is that they need to apprehend the key members of the LRA,” Spiegel said, referring to the rebel leader Joseph Kony and two of his cohorts Okot Odhiambo and Dominic Ongwen who have also been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

An estimated 25,000 children were abducted and taken into the LRA’s ranks during 20 years of conflict in Uganda. In Lord’s Children, WIDE ANGLE meets former child soldiers from the LRA who are trying to put their lives back together.

Our world today is so interconnected that the collapse of the subprime mortgage market in the U.S. has led to a global financial crisis on a scale not seen since the Great Depression. Here’s a round-up of how the countries around the world are dealing with the economic meltdown.

Europe

The 15-country eurozone is officially in recession for the first time since its formation in 1999. From French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s newly announced economic summit to Iceland’s collective sigh of relief over a bailout (the International Monetary Fund’s first loan to Western Europe since Britain got a helping hand in 1976), Europe is struggling with its own brand of turmoil as the financial crisis tears through the continent.

But in the German cities of Eisenach and Bochum, residents are feeling a special empathy for the U.S. Both are home to Opel car plants, shut down as parent company General Motors pleads with Capitol Hill for a loan.

Opel has approached the German government in an attempt to secure liquidity should GM go bankrupt. German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed to consider a loan, but immediately faced resistance even within her own party from lawmakers concerned that funds might find their way back to Detroit to prop up the ailing American parent company. All this comes at an inopportune time for Opel. Their Insignia model just won the title of European Car of the Year for 2009 — the first time in 22 years that a GM car has taken top honors. Perhaps the Insignia is a bit more stylish than 1987’s Opel Omega…

As the head of Europe’s second largest economy, French President Sarkozy announced a $25 billion investment fund yesterday. The bailout is part of a plan launched last month aimed at protecting French companies from foreign take-overs. Despite payback clauses and caps placed on executive pay, the bailout has angered France’s powerful unions who are staging massive strikes this week in air and rail travel, and postal and telecom services.

Sarkozy, who currently holds the rotating presidency of the E.U., has been so vocal about the excesses of laissez-faire capitalism and the necessity for better market regulation, that The Economist semi-jokingly questions whether the global financial crisis has turned him into a “closet socialist.” Sarkozy was instrumental in arranging the recent G-20 summit, but returned from Washington disappointed by its outcome. On Tuesday, he announced that he and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will co-host another meeting of world leaders and financial experts in January 2009 in Paris to continue looking for ways out of the crisis.

In 2001, two-fifths of Turkey’s banks failed after an irresponsible lending spree. Taking over the banks and restructuring them cost the state a crippling 30 percent of GDP and plunged the economy into a deep recession, triggering one of the I.M.F.’s biggest-ever loans. At the G-20 summit in Washington last weekend, Turkish Prime Minister Reccep Tayyip Erdogan announced his country may be close to reaching an agreement to receive yet another emergency loan from the I.M.F. But Prime Minister Erdogan has warned the Turkish business community not to expect a government bailout this time: “Nobody should expect everything from the government. It’s not like the government is going to inject cash into the emptied safes of companies. Let me put it clearly, such a thing is out of the question.”

Asia

After months of avoiding the global financial crisis and years of excess money in the banks, Japan has also slipped into a recession. The world’s second largest economy has seen a recent appreciation of the yen and consequently, a decline in the demand for exports, especially among its most loyal customers. In the United States, the world’s largest auto market, the price of Japanese vehicles is rising and sales are dropping. Japanese car manufacturers Honda, Nissan and Toyota are reporting steep declines in sales and profits. Sony is also predicting a 59 percent plunge in profits due to deteriorating sales of gadgets and flat-screen TVs.

Prime Minister Taro Aso announced a $51 billion stimulus package last month, which included 2 trillion yen ($20.3 billion) in special benefits to all households. Aso hoped to encourage domestic consumption by distributing $600 to each family of four. Some economists predict that the worst is yet to come in Japan, but the bleak outlook hasn’t stopped Japanese consumers from snatching up an entire stock of diamond-encrusted mobile phones. Studded with 537 diamonds – a total of 18.34 carats – and a price tag of 13 million yen ($134,000 dollars), the line of 10 phones sold out within three days.

South Koreans have begun to fear a repeat of their 1997-1998 economic collapse, when the I.M.F. had to step in with a $58 million bailout. The government of South Korea responded to the current downturn by setting up a $30 billion currency swap with the Federal Reserve of the United States, which was designed to alleviate the pressure on the country’s banks. On November 14^th, China and Japan also agreed on a currency swap with South Korea, contributing $4 billion and $15 billion respectively.

Despite a slowdown in garment exports and tourists, Cambodian Prime Minister Sun Hen sees the silver lining. At a summit with Thailand and Vietnam earlier this month, Sen said, “’The rich people in Europe, the buyers in America, will not buy expensive clothes produced in Europe anymore but the cheaper goods produced in Cambodia and Vietnam.”

In the first weeks of the global financial crisis, China — the world’s fastest growing economy and largest holder of foreign-exchange reserves — was hopeful the slowdown would pass it by. But figures released in mid-October showed growth dipping to its lowest in five years, down from 11.9 percent last year to 9 percent this quarter, confirming that no nation is immune. With foreign exports and investments shrinking, Chinese unemployment is on the rise, and could reach up to 2.7 million laid-off workers by January 2009. Time Magazine calls it “China’s worst nightmare,” due to the labor unrest that might result. This week, Chinese authorities issued an order to companies in the big manufacturing regions of Shandong and Hubei provinces: they must now seek government consent in order to fire more than 40 people at a time. To shore up domestic growth and market confidence, on November 9 President Hu Jintao announced a 2-year $586 billion stimulus package — four times as large as America’s current bailout plan — focused on tax reform, increased spending on education, health, and housing, and major infrastructure projects such as roads, railways, airports, and the power grid.

China suffered from two major recessions in the past 30 years, in the aftermath of the Tiananmen uprising in 1989 and during the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, when it last adopted a big stimulus plan. The Economist argues that this time China might “genuinely avoid a hard landing: the underlying economy, while far from perfect, is in better shape, and the government has more room to boost its spending… [M]ost economists think the stimulus package will be enough to keep growth at 7.5-8 percent for the year as a whole. If so, of the world’s eight biggest economies, China will be the only one to enjoy any growth next year.” Chinese consumers may help keep the rest of us afloat.

As the West increasingly relies on China to help it weather the storm, geo-political compromises may be in the offing. The U.K. is rumored to have secured a Chinese donation to the I.M.F. by agreeing to reverse its century-old position on Tibet: since late October, Briatin no longer recognizes Tibet as an autonomous entity but rather as a part of the People’s Republic of China.

The Middle East and Central Asia

Iranian hardliners have hailed the economic crisis as divine punishment for the perceived greed and corruption of the West and its allies. “The oppressors and the corrupt will be replaced by the pious and believers,” according to Iran’s firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who sees the downturn as signaling “the end of capitalism.”

He’s not the only one to see this crisis as a turning point in the culture war between East and West. Dubai’s once-booming economy has been hit hard, but some see the downturn as a chance to save the local culture. Traditional Bedouin culture has been all but lost in Dubai’s rush to become an international center of business, media and tourism. “The city needs to slow down and relax,” says Abdul Khaleq Abdullah, a political science professor at United Arab Emirates University. “It’s good for the identity of our country.”

The U.S. is expected to spend close to $200 billion on the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year alone. With the economic crisis wreaking havoc in the homeland, something has to give. Peter Beinart, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations says that “the economic environment is making a speedy drawdown of U.S. troops [in Iraq] more likely.” That might sound like good news to some. But experts warn that the financial crisis might fuel instability in fragile nations from the Middle East to Pakistan. On November 15th, a struggling Pakistan reluctantly accepted a $7.6 billion loan from the I.M.F. But still, there is fear that economic troubles will hinder Pakistan’s ability to fight the Taliban insurgency in the country’s tribal regions.

Africa

Last month, former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan said that we cannot use the global financial crisis as “an excuse for inaction” in combating poverty and food shortages in Africa. In times of financial crisis governments often renege on promises of financial aid. In fact, the U.N. Food Agency reported that only a tenth of 22 billion euros in food and agriculture assistance pledged to the U.N. for 2008 has actually been paid.

But there are some who feel the time is ripe for Africa to excel as an economic force. Kuseni Dlamini, the South African head of the multinational mining firm Anglo American, said that now is the “great era of opportunity for Africa to rise and shine in the global scheme of things and be met as an economic giant.” Kuseni cited Botswana as a “shining example” of a country that has managed its natural resources (diamonds) in a responsible way, which has delivered long term benefits in education, infrastructure and healthcare to the country. John Simon, U.S. ambassador to the African Union has called Africa “the new frontier” in the global economy.

According to Antoinette Sayeh, director of the I.M.F.’s African Department, growth in sub-Saharan Africa, the continent’s poorest region, will remain strong. Sub-Saharan Africa experienced one of its highest growth rates in decades in 2007, growing at a rate of 6.5 percent. In the midst of the global financial crisis, the I.M.F. projects that growth in sub-Saharan Africa will fall by only half a percent in 2008 and 2009. However, Sayeh warns that sub-Saharan Africa’s economic growth could weaken with a lower inflow of capital, i.e. through foreign aid, and a reduction in commodity pricing. The I.M.F. has also identified eight sub-Saharan African countries — Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia – as having enough growth and investment to be considered emerging markets.

Latin America

With oil dropping below $50 a barrel, the Venezuelan economy may be at risk. More than 90 percent of export revenue and more than half of the government’s budget derives from oil. With these economic risks come political risks for a government whose extensive social programs are funded with oil revenues. Venezuela holds regional elections on Sunday, November 23, and economic troubles could reduce outspoken President Hugo Chavez’s hold on power. Among other challenges, Chavez allies will have to compete with Chavez’s ex-wife, Marisabel Rodriguez (she has since married her tennis coach).

Like Venezuela, Mexico relies heavily on oil revenues. The country also relies on remittances sent home by Mexican migrants abroad. Both have declined in response to the international financial crisis. In August, the collapse of the U.S. housing market (which employs many Hispanic immigrants in construction jobs) and increased illegal immigration raids contributed to a 12 percent drop in remittances, the largest monthly drop on record. Fortunately, September figures were more optimistic. Mexico receives the third-largest amount of remittances worldwide, and receives by far the largest amount coming from migrants based in the U.S. Interestingly, the decline in remittances has not been seen (pdf) in other Latin American countries that rely on them.

Mexico is also strongly connected to U.S. investment, which could prove problematic in weathering the financial crisis. Colombia, perhaps the strongest U.S. ally in South America, is less entangled with investments, but will be affected now that U.S. banks are reducing loans to developing countries. In addition, a trade agreement that would open some areas of trade between Colombia and the U.S. could be threatened by the the recent U.S. election. One outcome of the 2008 U.S. election was the ascendance of legislators advocating “fair trade” platforms, as opposed to “free trade” platforms. President-elect Obama, for example, has advocated for stronger labor protections in the Colombia agreement, citing violence against Colombian labor leaders. President Bush and out-going Republicans, however, have pushed for the deal to be signed as soon as possible.

The Planet

There may be some surprise winners and losers in the financial crisis, but the outlook for the planet seems to teeter back and forth between the two poles. U.N. climate honcho Yvo de Boer fears renewable energies and conservation will suffer from sinking oil prices, while countries will spend less money on protecting the environment as they fork over cash to rescue banks. Validating his concerns, at a recent E.U. summit, some Eastern European countries talked about backing away from CO2 emissions targets, citing the expense. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi added, “We do not think that now is the time to be playing the role of Don Quixote, when the big producers of CO2, such as the United States or China, are totally against adherence to our targets.”

But what’s bad news for some may actually make climate change activists pleased. With high rates of unemployment and foreclosure, populations are commuting less and shifting away from areas of suburban sprawl. Until the economic downturn, California was not set to meet its ambitious and trend-setting greenhouse gas emissions target. Now it seems as though they’re back on track. Less consumer demand likely translates into lower energy use – fewer road trips, fewer flights and a greater willingness to utilize public transportation. And, as the Christian Science Monitor reports, “One silver lining of the financial crisis is that investment decisions may not be as short-term as they have been.” Renewable energy and green technology projects might attract investors as safer bets for the long term.

WIDE ANGLE has also reported on the economic crisis in Ireland and Argentina.

WIDE ANGLE viewers often ask what they can do to help. Here is a short list of organizations that are working to help child soldiers in Uganda and around the world. If you know of other reputable groups that you’d like to recommend, feel free to do so in the comments section.

Betty Bigombe Children of War Foundation
Foundation started by Betty Bigombe, a former Ugandan government minister involved in negotiations with the Lord’s Resistance Army

childsoldiers.net
Organization started by a Belgian journalist that helps pay for former child soldiers in Uganda to go to school

Save the Children
International organization promoting the needs of children worldwide. Their child soldiers program helps communities understand and cope with children who are returning from combat

Christian Children’s Fund
An international organization that works to protect children in conflict and natural disasters and psychosocial interventions

International Rescue Committee
Works to identify and care for child soldiers who have been demobilized or escaped from armed forces

BBC Timeline
Ugandan history

CIA World Factbook: Uganda
Information about Uganda’s government, demographics, and economy

Katine
Ongoing series about Uganda in the British newspaper The Guardian

CHILD SOLDIERS

Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers
Works to prevent recruitment and use of child soldiers, and promotes rehabilitation and integration

Child Soldier Relief
A blog with links to news regarding former child soldiers around the world

Survey of War Affected Youth
Research, programs and reports for Ugandan youth in armed conflict

Amnesty International
About child soldiers

World Bank
Collection of reports on child soldiers

Human Rights Watch
Children’s Rights Division

Lost Children
Website for the full-length documentary

PSYCHOLOGY

International Trauma Studies Program
Columbia unversity program to study, treat and prevent trauma-related suffering

ABOUT THE ISSUE

The region of Northern Uganda was ravaged by one of Africa’s longest civil wars until 2006. For over 20 years, more than 65,000 children, some as young as five years old, have been kidnapped by Uganda’s anti-government rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and forced to serve as child soldiers and sex slaves.

Under the command of LRA leader Joseph Kony, these children have been terrorized into committing the worst atrocities, even killing their own families. Lord’s Children follows three former LRA soldiers who escaped from the bush and have since taken refuge in a rehabilitation center.

ABOUT THE FILM

WIDE ANGLE is with the center’s counselors as they help the physically and emotionally scarred children put their lives back together. Jennifer Akelo was abducted by the LRA when she was nine years old, handed a gun and trained to fight. Raped by a rebel soldier, Jennifer now fears that she is HIV positive. Kilama, 13, is rejected by his grandmother who is fearful of his turbulent past. Homeless, he wanders to the nearby city, like thousands of other children, in constant fear of being re-kidnapped by the rebels.

At a young age, Francis witnessed two children executed with machetes for not following orders. Terrified of a similar fate, he fled and now hopes to be reunited with his mother. As these children piece their lives together, the LRA continues to carry out attacks in the region. While the ICC has issued an arrest warrant for Kony in 2005, he remains at large hiding in the jungle of neighboring Congo, where he and his followers have been accused of more child kidnappings.

Under the command of LRA leader Joseph Kony, these children have been terrorized into committing the worst atrocities, even killing their own families. Lord’s Children follows three former LRA soldiers who escaped from the bush and have since taken refuge in a rehabilitation center.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Thank you very much for having me.

AARON BROWN:
Did you see the film?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Yes I did.

AARON BROWN:
What did you think?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
It’s good; it tells a story, but I also think it leaves out some very important aspects of what child soldiers go through. The boys are vulnerable, but you have the girls that are even more vulnerable. Especially the ones that have come out with children who in some cases are not accepted by members of their own families.

AARON BROWN:
The children of the children?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
The children of the children, yes. And so, I think that there’s more to be told about it; that probably the documentary does not quite capture it. But you can’t do everything.

AARON BROWN:
Well, we can’t do everything, but we can do some of it. And I want to talk about as much of it as we can. There is in a child who has been ruined this way–

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Yeah.

AARON BROWN:
–this empty look in their eyes. In your experience, are we ever able to restore to that child, childhood?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Very rare. It’s very difficult, because when they tell you the transformation they go through when they are abducted– that eventually a brutality is what makes you get recognition. That you may survive, that is, if you can kill in the most terrible manner, going out to raid. And so, when they come back, the community is hostile towards them too. And they feel very insecure.

Now, there are very few, I would say, that can recapture their youth. That depends on what they have done, how long they stayed in captivity, and yes, pretty much, based on what they’ve gone through, or what they have witnessed. Because some of them come back after they’ve killed their own members of the community and parents. And a lot of them are very suicidal. And unfortunately, there’s no proper counseling to help them, to bring them out of what they have gone through.

AARON BROWN:
Is it guilt? Do they feel guilty?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
They feel– yes, there’s a sense of guilt, definitely. A lot of them– it’s very difficult to know, is it guilt, or are they afraid? Because you’re dealing with a situation here where victims became perpetrators of violence. So, a lot them of course will tell you, “I was forced to, I had to do it, if I didn’t do it, they would kill me.” But then, as they will tell you later, is that time comes when you’re no longer ordered. You do it on your own. You initiate this violence, because it earns you recognition and it earns you promotion, food, and you’re awarded with wives.

AARON BROWN:
This happens to children at the age when their moral compass is defined.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Absolutely.

AARON BROWN:
I mean, there are a number of things about this that are horrible and pernicious, but it is at that particular age when human beings define, to a great extent, what is right, what is wrong, how–

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Absolutely.

AARON BROWN:
–how to live in a community.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Right.

AARON BROWN:
And once that is defined–

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Right.

AARON BROWN:
–how do you turn the switch and say, “No, it’s wrong. Everything you know is wrong. Backwards.”

BETTY BIGOMBE:
That’s very difficult, because it would have to be a process. I’ll tell you, a study that has been conducted in Mozambique, which also had lots of child soldiers, where when they returned, the community got involved in their rehabilitation. Only 12 percent of those who came back alive were ever to recapture their childhood, to be able to become productive members of the community. But the rest, somewhere along the lines, just go to waste.

I mean, they also give up because they come out, they think, “After what I’ve done, risking to accept me, how can I live with what I’ve done?” And in schools– some of them were lucky to go back to school– they exhibit very strange behavior. Recently when I was home, and I went to one of the schools, and they were expecting me. It’s one school that has absorbed many child soldiers.

So, a 17-year-old who was abducted when he was seven years old, had returned, was taken in that school, and there were skirmishes. So the principle of the school came to town and said, “You know, we’re trying to restrain a boy who was a child soldier, who picked up a wooden chair to hit another child, saying, ‘I’ve killed 82 people, you’re going to be the 83rd one.’”

So, in defense, if they are offended, or somebody attacks them, that violence always comes back, comes out. And unfortunately, too, the community is not really prepared to be able to understand their problems and to treat them in a manner that they need more understanding; that you have to understand who you’re dealing with. But you also have parents who have come back and said, “This is no longer the child I knew.”

AARON BROWN:
This is not mine. Right, there’s a moment in the film where a grandmother is talking about her grandchild–

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Right.

AARON BROWN:
–clearly is afraid that this child has come back in a way. Your first impulse is to be kind of angry with her, but she’s not being unrealistic; this child is in some ways someone to be feared.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Absolutely, because it’s so many of them, too, that have threatened to kill their parents, threatened to kill their grandmothers. So, most of them go to what you call home, for a period of time, and then because you know very well that their thought goes to be a normal child, you cannot ask them to do the normal work that you would have asked a child to do.

AARON BROWN:
Do we know much about how they are transformed, or brainwashed, or is it a systematic process, or do they just figure out what’s required of them to survive?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
In a way, yes, because most of them tell you, when they’re abducted, how they’re treated. How if anybody tries to escape, they’re killed in the most brutal manner. And they ask one of the abductees to kill the other one. And if you say no, then– I was dealing with a boy who had to kill his own brother. They were abducted the same night. His brother complained that he had blisters, he couldn’t walk anymore. So he was asked to kill him. And when he was given an axe, and when he didn’t hit hard enough, they said, “We will kill you instead.”

So he said the second time around he had to really hit his brother to kill him. Now, of course he wishes he didn’t do it, probably they should have killed him; he feels extremely guilty. But later, they realize that if you’re brutal, if you show courage, and you did things in the most brutal matter, then you get recognition, you’re given food, if there’s no food, you’re given the looted proceeds and you’re promoted, you’re rewarded. So, very slowly, everybody vies to be that, to show courage and that means show brutality.

AARON BROWN:
Yeah.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Right.

AARON BROWN:
Are they selected in any specific way, or are they just randomly abducted?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
They’re just random. They would storm in a school and abduct as many children as possible. They would storm in a village, usually in the night when people are supposed to be home, and they randomly abduct in the internally displaced camps; they would storm in and just abduct. And let me back up a little bit. I’ve talked to so many who have told me their life story of how the fear, when you first go in, how scared you are, how terrified about everything. How the orders– you can’t even try– even if you’re sleepy, there’s no way you can sleep.

They say, “You know, if you’re given an order to carry out, if you don’t do it, they’ll kill you. If they say cook in 30 minutes, you better cook in 30 minutes or else you’re killed.” So, it is order, and order, and order that they live with and they get transformed to live by that order. And of course that personal ambition also comes in– that “I’m going to vie to become a senior commander, because that way, you are in charge of the others, and you also give orders.” And they also have slaves in there. The younger ones become slaves to them.

AARON BROWN:
Boys and girls?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Boys and girls.

AARON BROWN:
Is there a difference in the way that the girls are treated relative to the violence that’s perpetrated on people?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Not necessarily. The girls, of course, they’re soldiers. They become child mothers, they are still the cook. They are the people that carry all the luggage that they have. So they have more roles to do. But my experience when I went out to the bush to meet with Joseph Kony– I found the child soldiers and the girls most brutal. They don’t blink, they look at you straight, you greet them, they don’t answer. But I believe this is all to show that they are courageous when they do all that.

AARON BROWN:
You know, you’re actually one of the few people in the world that I can ask this question to, and I suspect it’s the question that everyone who’s seen the film, or read about this, knows anything about this wants to ask, which is, what kind of person does this to children? Steals them, turns them into killers, sucks their souls right out of their bodies. What kind of person does that? You sat across from that person.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Well, yes I did, several times. In fact, the first time I met with him, what went into my mind was–

AARON BROWN:
Joseph Kony?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Yeah, that’s right–

AARON BROWN:
Joseph Kony.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Joseph Kony– the first time I sat across with him, what went into my mind was, “I wish I could open up his brain and try to understand why he does what he does and the way he does these things.” I wanted to desperately understand that, because it was, “So, this is him, he actually does exist.” Now, at the same time, he’s the kind of person who can talk a lot of sense, too.

I’ve also talked to the wives or the commanders that have been close to him. One of the things they do say is that he’s got supernatural power. He has direct contact with divine powers. So, apparently, he’s been able to predict many things that have happened. And that’s one of the ways he controls their minds, because he has supposedly 12 spirits that give him orders and commands. And he also claims he is working on the spirits’ orders. I also have had a crime profiler conduct an analysis to try to understand this man, because of what he does.

The crime profilers reported that he has multiple personality disorder but he’s also a psychopath. Right, so, he exhibits very many faces, some of them will tell you, “Oh, he’s very kind, oh he’s very humorous, oh he’s extremely smart.” Because the things he talks about– he would gather all these child mothers, and tell them not to use synthetic materials, let your babies lie on the mat, bare mat, because then there’s circulation of air, and that is good for the baby.

When they have pains, I mean difficulty in child delivery, he gives them herbs that he mixes himself. So, some of them believe– and then they say, “Well, then you don’t want to see the other side of him.” Right, that, when brutality comes.

AARON BROWN:
I read once where you said that, and I think it was when you first met him, you wanted to talk to him, to convince him to change.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Right, yes.

AARON BROWN:
I mean, if here’s a guy who has a messianic complex, who believes he has a relationship to God, or is a God, that’s different from– those people don’t change. Unless it’s an act, they don’t change. So is it an act, or does he believe it?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
No, he totally believes it, unfortunately. You know, you kind of think you can do the undoable. You kind of believe you can try to convince him, even talk a language he understands best to convince him to give up what he’s doing. In my recent telephone conversation with him, not so recent; this was last year. And he told me– we were talking about the International Criminal Court.

And he said, because I was telling him that he could still come out, and live a normal life. And he kind of said, “Are you kidding me? Given what I’ve done, I know my fate. I have only three options: it’s death, it’s prison, and maybe going into exile.” So, he does know.

AARON BROWN:
So that’s a very rational–

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Right.

AARON BROWN:
So then, part of him is completely rational, if self-absorbed, and then there are other parts that– one of the things that I find remarkable about Kony and about the whole movement, is like all movements– on the one hand, we tend to see it in very simple terms. He’s destroyed thousands of lives–

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Yeah.

AARON BROWN:
Children. But this has gone on for 21, 22 years now. And in its core, there must be some grievance that people are drawn to. He must touch in some people something, or he couldn’t find followers. Not all of his followers are abducted, some are there willingly. So, what is it– the political grievance, or the political issue here– that he sells?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
You’re right in that it’s true at the beginning, he did not abduct people. You know, people joined him voluntarily. But you have to understand the history of Uganda, where it came from. The violence that followed after Uganda’s independence. And the tribal feelings. That was engrained in us, I suppose. We like to blame the British for it, although we’ve had a chance to correct these problems, but we haven’t corrected them.

So when Museveni came into power, there were five different factions trying to overthrow him. And we negotiated with some of them, some of them were defeated. And those who were adamant, who did not want to come up, but they wanted Museveni to be forcibly overthrown, joined him. And these were some smart people; these were trained soldiers, these were lawyers, these were engineers, medical doctors, that were desperate for change because northerners were fighters, they dominated the army during the colonial times.

And that just went on. During Obote, too, that Museveni fought. So consequently, as one group gave up, or got defeated, or reached an agreement with the government, the desperate people moved on to him, or from the defeated armies of Alice Lakwena, who preceded Joseph Kony, so they joined in following tyranny. And apparently, some fallout came when they wanted to fight conventional warfare. But here is a guy that said, “Carry stones, because stones turn into bones.” This is a guy that said, “Carry trees, sing hymns as you go to the battlefront.”

And so, some were killed. It was just painful at the beginning because here are these innocent people who were told to go with a few guns, and carry stones, that would purportedly turn into bones. And they swear the stones would turn into bones. I mean, after today, I was talking to one who said, “You could feel the sparkle in your hand as you hold it.” And they would see fire. Had he worked on their psychology? I don’t know.

But anyway, to answer your question, at the beginning, yes, he did have that– he enjoyed support. And then when I went in, a lot of people turned away from him; they also defected. And then he started maiming body parts; he started cutting noses, lips, and ears. Then he turned people against him. But you still have people who gained from wars, and will support them. They’re not very many, but they are there.

So they’re his confidants, when they loot goods from people, they share it with him. But, generally, he has brutalized his own people so much so that he really does not have that support. And again in that too, to try to escape, and the transformation most of them go through, because now it’s 90 percent children who were abducted 18, 20 years ago.

AARON BROWN:
Why does he– if trust is the right word, why does he trust you?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Does he trust me? I don’t know.

AARON BROWN:
Well, he talks to you, and he listens to you– whether he embraces everything you say, you know, that’s more of a struggle. But he accepts your presence.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Well, one, I always joke about this, that maybe that spirit had not told him that I’m a bad person. That’s a possibility. But the other thing, too, when I initiated peace talks, my mandate was not to mediate, not to negotiate. My mandate was, negotiate surrender. But I–

AARON BROWN:
Just to back up just a half a step. I mean, you literally were sent by the government–

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Right.

AARON BROWN:
–to what is, correct me if I’m wrong, but your ancestral home.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Right, it’s true.

AARON BROWN:
– in the northern part, to be among your people, in that sense, and the mandate, as you just said, was not to negotiate with him, but somehow convince him and convince his followers to surrender?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Right.

AARON BROWN:
That was an easy job.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
No.

AARON BROWN:
Oh.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
That’s why I shifted gear.

AARON BROWN:
Yeah, I’d find “Plan B,” too.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Right. So, I decided then to persuade the government. But I saw very clearly, it was not going to– the military victory, surrender, what incentives did I have to get them to surrender when they had weapons? When they felt they had reasons to fight. The government army was also not really fighting them, there was so much corruption in the army, that, you know, they knew where the rebels were; the rebels were never attacked.

Two, despite the fact that Joseph Kony is a crazy person, I’m also a very strong believer that military victory will never bring sustainable peace. You can subdue people, you can humiliate them, they feel they have no voice, they’ll go underground– it will resurface. So, my position was then, you know, even if he is a sick, crazy, man who’s done what he’s done, there are some issues that need to be addressed. Maybe just not northern Uganda, but nationally. And this could be an opportunity to address some of these tribal problems, people who feel marginalized. Use the forum to do that.

Right, so I persuaded them, the president, and made contact, secret contacts, and tried to find him by staying in these camps with internally displaced people, and dancing with them, encouraging them to speak up, I was able to identify some supporters that could connect me with him directly.

AARON BROWN:
Was it helpful in this process that you were a woman?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
At the beginning it was very difficult. At the beginning, the rebels– because, I had not just Joseph Kony, I’ve other rebel groups to deal with, too, that interpreted the president’s appointment of a woman as an insult, as lack of seriousness.

AARON BROWN:
Really?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Yes. Well, and also people generally believed, “Oh, she will last a couple of months, she will run out, she’ll get well away from here. She’ll not be able to deal with this.” You also have–

AARON BROWN:
They pretty clearly didn’t get you.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
So, it also took taking risks, great risks, reaching out and staying in places that nobody ever went to, that finally convinced people that I was serious, and yeah, that’s what it was.

AARON BROWN:
I mean, I know that this isn’t about you, and you don’t like to talk about that necessarily, but I think it’s helpful for people to understand how you became not just the woman you are, but how you became connected to that movement, how you’ve tried to bring them out of the bush and into a more civilized world. If people understand what you gave up in the first place. I mean, you went and lived in the villages, you ate the food, danced the dances, sang the songs, hugged the children, took care of– you lived there.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Right, yes. Well, I did. At some point, when I thought, well, I had two children of my own that never saw me. I was never there for their birthdays, or Christmas, or Easter, or went to their school. Their father did everything. So, that hurt my relationship with my children quite a bit, especially my daughter, who was very young at the time. But the other thing, too, what really propels you is, you know, you go into these camps, people have gone without food, and when you get there, you give them hope. They smile, they think somebody somewhere cares.

So the question is, do I abandon them, do I just go away and live, you know, comfortably? I’m fairly educated, and maybe I would get a better job, and as you probably know, I came to the World Bank, and I was in Washington working, when I went back in 2004. I was actually getting ready to go on a World Bank mission, when there was this news on CNN splash– the Lord’s Resistance Army went into an internally displaced camp and killed over 300 people. And then newscast footage, of the only person who has met this leader, is showing me.

It was at that point in time that I decided, “No it can’t go on anymore, I can’t stay here anymore. I’m just going to go back. I’m going to go back and persuade the government to agree to a negotiated settlement. I’m going to look up my old contacts, and reestablish contact with the rebels, and persuade them to come to the table.” This belief that military tradition was going to come, and it had gone on for, at that time, close to 20 years. People are dying. Children are not going to school– it just can’t go on anymore. So I decided to go right back and take it on.

AARON BROWN:
I’m a little reluctant to ask this. Let me try. You went at this off and on for a 10 year period. I mean, you talked about your relationships with your own children. You gave up a tremendous amount. You stepped away from it. You went back to it. In all this time, all this energy, all this effort, you know, people were dying. To what extent, if at all, do you feel like that is a failure of yours? An inability to close the deal?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
That’s a good question because in 1994, when I met the rebel leader many times and at great risk, too. But that was not the problem. And we got very close. We had the date and venue agreed upon. The rebels were all out on the street. And overnight, the President comes and gives an ultimatum. And counsels the peace talks. That was totally devastating for me.

I felt a sense of defeat. If I’m asked to name three or four things that have hurt me most in my life, that was one. That is one of them.

AARON BROWN:
Because it became clear to you that you not only had to persuade the rebels, and a leader who is not all there, not totally sane on– but you had a government and people who had influence in the government in the capitol for whom war was good business. War helped solidify their power. They didn’t want peace in the end, did they?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
I would say yes. I don’t think anybody would want war in their backyard. Because if you look at the human cost, the economic cost. But you also had people who were directly benefiting from the war. But that was not the official policy. That was not the position. I think my problem was that Mr. Museveni, the President, did not take the war very seriously.

AARON BROWN:
Because it was in some other place. I mean, it was in his country but–

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Well, it was in country–

AARON BROWN:
– it wasn’t knocking on his door.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Well, he visited and spent time. But fighting guerilla warfare is not– the other thing I would say was that why was he believing his commanders all the time? That was my biggest problem. That he really did not know the reality of what was going on. Because he came out again and again to say that we’re going to end the war in two months, or in three months, and it went on. He was certainly listening to his commanders in the field, who definitely distorted the whole picture.

They would tell him that there are now only 15 rebels left when there were thousands. So, my question to him was, “Why do you believe these people who are misinforming you for years? And so, they will tell you, they’re now only left with 15 guns, and you believe it, and then the war drags on. And then you get so many of them coming out.” That’s something I would question. And I will still question because when I was in the field, I used to say, “The war is not going to end militarily.” Because these guys are not engaging the rebels. But, you know, I can’t explain it really.

AARON BROWN:
I guess my point here is that on the one side, nothing I say or think suggests that Kony is anything but, frankly, evil.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Absolutely.

AARON BROWN:
On the other side, the government is not exactly blameless for the continuation of this all. There have been opportunities. In some cases, opportunities you created, or helped create that might have ended this years and years ago. And those opportunities were lost, and how many children, how many adults, how many people have suffered because of those lost opportunities?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Oh, absolutely. Well, you know, you can even say that even abduction of children in camps, government is to blame. For not providing security or not protecting people in the camps. Yes, you absolutely can say that. There are many factors. Because when I go back– let me talk a little bit about the challenges of mediation. You will always have spoilers. People who– they’re not part of the government. But maybe they’ve been benefiting from it.

I talked about some of the soldiers creating ghost soldiers. So instead of having 700 fighters, he only has 200. So that the salaries of the rest is in his pocket. He obviously does not want that war to end. You have ordinary people who are out on the street. We’re sending wrong information to the rebels. We’re giving them wrong messages. “Oh, she wants you killed.” You have also– don’t forget that the government of Sudan, Kartoum was supplied with guns. Was giving sanctuary to the rebels. And seriousness to peace talks also depends on supplies to the rebels. If they’re still receiving supplies. They might be reluctant to talk.

AARON BROWN:
I was reading the other day that there were exiles. You’d gotten in exiles in Britain and the United States who were sending money to keep the rebels in supply. So, there are lots of actors in this–

BETTY BIGOMBE:
There’s very many actors. And I believe, in 1994, the President was misadvised. He was misadvised. And we even had Acholis, from the same tribe, in government writing to him to tell him not to allow me to continue. Because they looked at it as a personal gain. As a, you know, a victory.

AARON BROWN:
A victory they didn’t want you to have?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Yes. That a woman, if I was going to bring peace to– you know, if many times it had been made and not succeeded because some of them had been with the rebels. And the rebel leader had refused to talk to them. So, you have very many players that really ruined the process. And you always have to guard against that. Have your own intelligence. Who is talking what to whom. And what are they saying.

What kind of information is getting to the rebels? That confuses them. What information is going to the government that probably– even when I went back in 2004, and we got close again, I was not well-received by some military officers.

So, you always have very many players, who are looking at their self interest as the most important thing. And they will manipulate the situation. They will, you know, cause a lot of confusion that can undermine them in their entire process.

AARON BROWN:
And–

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Not to mention, proliferation of mediators. You have NGOs clamoring to be the actual mediators. So, there’s very many challenges.

AARON BROWN:
So, it’s, you know, evil meets jealousy meets power meets–

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Right, you got it.

AARON BROWN:
–and not to sound naïve in all of this, but at the end of the day, you can have evil and jealousy, and power, and politics, and history in all of this. And what I see are hundreds or thousands of children whose lives have been stolen from them. I see hundreds of thousands of people who have been brutalized in ways that are unimaginable. Tens of thousands of people within camps. Starving in some cases. Certainly not unusual for them to starve. And don’t you– I do. Don’t you wonder– how does this madness end?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Precisely. You kind of cannot understand, oftentimes, the mind of spoilers. Why do they do it. Because the other thing too is that everybody wants to be directly involved. And if they are left out— you cannot take the entire tribe. If they’re left out, then they must undermine it. Yeah.

They will write letters and drop them off for the rebels, not to trust. So going back to the question of diasporas supporting the rebels, I do not know. It’s difficult for me to say for a fact that they are actually sending help. Because I do not know. I don’t know whether anybody has investigated. But as for verbal support, some of them do. They’re thousands of miles away. Their children are going to see. They do not know that these people in the camps, food comes once or twice a month, or once in two months. And it lasts eight days, and then they have nothing else.

When they try to go out and supplement, look for vegetables in the wilderness, they’re blown up by landmines. They don’t get to read about it. They’re comfortable. And for them, they think they are hurting Museveni if the war continues or humiliates Museveni if it continues. So, while I cannot substantiate, or I have no reason to believe that they actually are shipping or sending money, or shipping military wares, the verbal support, the moral support is definitely there.

AARON BROWN:
Can we go back? I just have a couple more things. But I want to go back to the role of women in this. Because I think I sometimes don’t quite get how women are seen in African culture. Because on the one hand, like in all other cultures, they are seen as lesser players. But in another sense, they’re somewhat revered. I mean, I actually think that people are saying, “No, actually they’re smarter, saner, more decent. And so, if a woman comes to us, we need to be more respectful. We need–” Am I right? And is that part of the conflict here?

That on the one hand, you were seen one way, but on the other hand, you were taken in?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
That’s true.

AARON BROWN:
Yes.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Yes. It took a lot. Like I said earlier on, I was dismissed. Nobody took me seriously. Insulted. And while some friends said, “Well, the President wants you dead. Why does he send you to this place?” So, it really took all that living with these people who were bearing and taking the brunt of the war. It was taking risks. Going into these places when you’re not even sure whether you’re going to come out alive. I’ve seen landmines blow up people right ahead of me, killing them. It means going through ambushes. And you don’t give up.

The next day, you’re still there. So, it is that stamina, that determination that I believe the rebels, the people saw in me. And therefore give me support.

But you also have the ordinary woman. Just like I said in the camps. You go in. They still want to dance for you, to entertain you, and they’ve gone without food for days. But they’re happy that you are there. They’re looking up caring for the sick. They’re also going out, taking risks to look for food. To look for firewood. To look for drugs to give to their families. They hold the communities together. And to me, these are the real heroes. Because they don’t give up. They’re so resilient.

I was talking to a woman. Talking to a woman who came to church to me and said, “Next time, you’re going to meet with the rebels, that Joseph Kony, I’m going to go with him and with you. My three sons were abducted. I don’t know where they are.”

So, I said, “Okay, I will let you know.” But of course, I couldn’t take her. So, the following time, she heard I had gone to the bush again. She came back and said, “Well, you didn’t take me. I want to look at that man in his eyes and ask him where my children are. When LRA abduct, when they rape, when they destroy, when they kill, I say, I’m not a mother of killers. I’m not a mother of rapists. I’m not a mother of people who destroy for the sake of destruction.” Then I said, “You know, I can’t. Because that will jeopardize the peace concept. But I will find out where your children are.”

So, I did my research. I found them. Both of them were dead. When she came back, and I said, “I’m very sorry they’re dead.” Tears rolled down. And she said, “How did they die? Was it painful? Were they just shot? Were their bodies ever buried or eaten by animals? Is there somebody that could take me so that I could pick up the bones and–”

Now, a woman– and many of them who have gone through that, will still receive me with a big smile, and hug me. And she’s so despondent at the same time about life. But you know, she’s not giving up on the other children who are still alive. She’s still going to get up the next day. And care for them. And look for food. And try to get them educated. So, to me, these are the real heroes. They are the people that really keep you going. Because you look at them and say, “If this is what she’s going through,” and they’re in thousands– you know, who am I? What am I? The little that you can do is to keep her hoping, and alive.

AARON BROWN:
And is it a false hope?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
I don’t think so. I think the peace process has gone to a level that now, people are trying to go back home to rebuild their homes. I think it’s genuine hope in here. Although, what worries me, and this is where I always keep saying that there is a need to protect people. The Lord’s Resistance Army has relocated. Half of them are in Congo. Half of them are in Central African Republic. Part of them are in southern Sudan. But they have resumed abduction of people and children in these countries. And they’re training them. So, you have the problem exported to these neighboring countries. In 1994, 1995, after the first initiative failed, LRA withdrew for almost nine months. And people were home. Nobody expected them to come back. But they had gone to Sudan.

They walked thousands of miles. Came in one night, and killed 300 people in one little town. So, can we believe that now that they’re several hundreds of miles away that they will never be able to come back? That is one question. So, protection must given to people in Central African Republic, in Congo, and Sudan, so that LRA does not rebuild its manpower strength.

AARON BROWN:
The endgame, as we say, is complicated here. And one of the complications seems to be that the world court has indicted Kony and three of his commanders. And that’s created an obstacle in some ways, some would argue, to a negotiation. Do you agree with that?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
First of all, my take is that without the arrest warrant, probably LRA would not have demonstrated seriousness at the peace talks. I think International Criminal Court has been a catalyst in getting LRA to go to the table and talk.

But of course, the question is what incentives does he have to come out with the arrest warrant hanging in there? I also want to realize that there are victims. In fact, what victims were telling me the other day is that, you know, “We desperately want peace. But we’re also very worried that peace agreement will be reached. And Kony will be given a package. Maybe a house, a car, and guns, and salary. He’ll be rewarded for what he’s done. For having killed us. For having abducted our children. For having raped our people.” Now, I just told you this story of this woman which will ask me– and painfully. When she was walking away, she told me how, you know, whether she could pick up the bones somewhere and give them decent burial.

When she finally wiped out her tears, as she was going away, you know what she told me? She said, “I still have two sons left. They will also revenge.” Now, if there is no justice, it’s very likely that victims would want revenge. So, while they desperately need peace, what they’re saying is, let the international court seek– let the whole thing be sequenced. Let’s have peace first. And then take him to court.

AARON BROWN:
Right. But, I mean, just going back to something you said earlier– believe me, I’m not making an argument for anything that allows evil to live well. I’ve seen enough of that in my life. Whether it was the former dictator in Haiti, or anywhere else. You know, that’s not the argument.

But people who make the argument say if he believes as you told me he believes that his life is down to three not great options– death, prison, or maybe life in exile– do you understand why some people would say if the price of an end to this brutalization of people is this guy goes away and lives in exile, it’s an imperfect end? It’s not certainly justice by any reasonable definition of justice. But it’s the best you can get after 21 years. Is that reasonable?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
I have spent a lot of time with victims to be able to get a sense of what they feel about this man. There’s no doubt that everybody is so desperate. In fact, to tell you the truth, what has been quoted often times that “Oh, the Acholi people are saying they ready to forgive him.” This is all very much driven by a quest for peace. Okay, but when that reality– somebody that one day, you know, he’s alive. He’s had 200 children with those children, those young girls. He has done so much. Somebody somewhere will one day say, “We want justice.” At some point.

Of course, for the time being, they’re so desperate that they’re saying, “Forgiveness.” Those who have come out already, the rebels, they’re experiencing a lot of difficulties.

Because the community’s really not quite forgiving them. There’s a school, which is exclusively for LRA, you know, this built by the Belgium government. Children born in captivity. Those who fought. Those who are now old. Once you find them in that environment, they’re happy, they’re dancing. Of course, they have a lot of flashbacks, and they’re violent among themselves. But get them to go out on the street, they’re dead scared that their victims might spot them out. And might take the law in their own hands.

So, while the demand for peace is very, very high, there are also people who feel that justice must be served.

AARON BROWN:
But here’s where I see the dead end, if you will. Even if Kony is killed, and his commanders are killed, and they’re all wiped out, there’s still– no one ever forgives, I don’t believe, the people or the movement, or the individuals who stole children, brutalized children, brutalized communities. That forgiveness is not– that’s not gonna happen. There’s always going to be the– you can’t kill everyone who has lost somebody, and you can’t kill everyone who’s killed somebody.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
That’s true.

AARON BROWN:
So, how does this end? How does this end well? Or, because what you just said, I think, you know, I’m not sure you meant it quite this way. But it’s what I heard. Is that every time this kid leaves that school, that protected environment, he lives in fear. And he lives in fear with good reason.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
I believe so. In the documentary, the young boy says, “Well, you know, the first few days, you’re well received. And then, later, it becomes very difficult. People are pointing you out that you did that.”

When the ritual before the performance of the Acholi traditional ritual of forgiveness, as he was waiting, he whispered that he was very nervous. And the woman asked him, “Why are you nervous?” He said, “I’m so scared of people. For the first time, I’m going to see them. And they are going to see me.” So I suppose this is something that we do not have one single solution to the problem. Because it’s far too complex.

As I said earlier, you’re dealing with a majority that are victims that became perpetrators of violence. So, there’s really not going to be one single solution.

It would have to be a hybrid of some level of justice. Somewhere could truth and reconciliation be a remedy in this situation. Could taking two or three to civil court be a solution, so that victims feel justice has been served. Some of the former rebels themselves were telling me, “You know, we go out to rent little huts in the community. But you conceal your identity. Because if anybody knows, you’re the prime suspect if anything goes wrong. And then, you have victims talking, saying, “Well, they’re here back alive, but others, we’ve never seen their bodies. Or so-and-so is killed.” So, it’s a community that’s been greatly scarred.

But what is required, as I said earlier, is being very proactive in talking to the people to find solutions to this problem.

AARON BROWN:
The sad truth is, these are the sort of resentments that live on for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
That’s true. That’s true.

AARON BROWN:
This is not somehow unique to Uganda, or Africa. You can see it in Eastern Europe between Serbs and others. You see in the Middle East. I mean, and someone says, “Well, where did this begin?” You say, “Well, this began 1,000 years ago.” And 1,000 years from now–

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Right. Yeah, it is. It’s very complex. It will take time to reconcile the community. Like I always say, that, you know, when the same people have killed one another, and you’re trying to reconcile them, and try to say, you know, live together and start loving one another. It’s not as easy as two people in different countries have killed one another, or have hurt one another.

Because later, they don’t have to deal with one another directly. But these are people who will have to cohabit. Somehow find a way of living with one another. So, it will have to be a process. And you’re right to say it will take years to heal.

AARON BROWN:
You’ve been at this a long time. In some ways, it occurs to me that you didn’t so much seek it out as it sought you out. Somehow, you became this person. How are you changed by it? How are you different because of it? Are you a more optimistic soul, less optimistic? How is Betty different?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Betty’s hopeful. She sees a real future that the war is over. But at the same time, I know very well that it doesn’t just happen like that. There’s lots of challenges ahead of us. Reconstruction. Putting up schools. I’m now more active in educating– that it is so important to address some of the underlying causes of the conflict in Uganda. Take this opportunity to reconcile the people. First of all, the Acholi community, the laboring districts that have been hurt. And nationally. We need to look back at the time that Idi Amin came into power.

Can this be resolved? I’m a strong activist for sustainable peace. That it took long to go this far. It took a lot of pains. But definitely, there are dividends. So, one most always deal with these complex situations with hope. Because at the end of the day, after trying and trying, and a lot of times falling down, that it is important not to give up. And I think my spirit is just never give up.

AARON BROWN:
Why does he go after child soldiers? Why not adults?

BETTY BIGOMBE:
You know, first of all, you need to understand that the problem of child soldiers is not only Uganda. It’s not only Joseph Kony. With Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sri Lanka, Columbia, and many other places. I think, first of all, these warlords find it easy to transform the mind of a child. Children walk very fast. And now there are all these weapons that are very light. You know, you train them. You train them to use it. They’re reckless. They, you know, they go. They do exactly what they’re told to do. It’s very easy to manipulate them. So, warlords more and more are going after child soldiers for this– they act as spies. They go and find information. They’re sent, in the case that I’ve seen them, they climb up trees to see where the so-called enemy is. They carry heavy luggage. So, they find them useful. If you took somebody at me, at my age, I’m not going to walk fast. I’m not going to walk fast. You know, it would be difficult to change me from what I am today.

So, more and more painfully, and I think it really is a very serious problem. That warlords are using child soldiers more in the DRC/Congo. But the recent indictment of one of the warlords by the International Criminal Court from DRC– Mr. Lubanga was then indicted. And he’s sitting in the Hague. It’s a very positive step. Because I look at that as a deterrent in future for warlords not to abduct and use children in wars.

AARON BROWN:
You know what I think part of it is? I don’t know. I can’t prove this. There’s two parts. One is that children want to be loved.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Absolutely.

AARON BROWN:
And, in a weird way, they’re not that picky about who loves them. They want to be loved.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Absolutely.

AARON BROWN:
And the second thing is that children are children. And so, climbing the tree and spying in a child’s mind can be a game. It’s not as horrific as sometimes as we see it. This ability to rationalize. And adults know that about children and take advantage of that in children. And, I mean, no one ever should pretend that these people haven’t taken horrible advantage.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Of course.

AARON BROWN:
I’m grateful for your time, and your honesty with us. Thank you so much for joining us on Wide Angle.

BETTY BIGOMBE:
Well, thank you very much for having me. And I think this is a great job to bring the story out to the American people. On the one hand, I want to express my gratitude that you’re doing what you’re doing. Thank you.

AARON BROWN:
Thank you.

OLIVER STOLTZ:
My name is Oliver Stoltz. I’m a German filmmaker and producer, writer, and director of Lord’s Children, together with my partner, Ali Samadi Ahadi.

WIDE ANGLE:
Can you talk about how you came to this film, and what interested you about it?

OLIVER STOLTZ:
When I lived in Los Angeles, I stumbled on the internet over a study of the U.N. about the fate of children in Northern Uganda. And it was interviews of children who have been abducted and had been forced to kill, and I never heard about his before. I was looking for more information, and was going after this whole situation in northern Uganda, trying to understand it. My idea was a fiction project, a feature film, but then the next coincidence came when I met my directing partner Ali Samadi Ahadi. And we found out that he too as a child was involved in war. We both were very early on in conflict zones, me in Namibia, southwest Africa before independence, when there was also a rebel war going on. And my partner was forced into the Iranian army during the first Iran-Iraq war, and had to flee Iran in order not to be killed in a minefield. They used children at that time to clear minefields.

What happens if you’ve been made into a murderer, and you’ve been made to do something, which is hard to realize even for a grownup. As a child, how do you live after this? How do you cope with what you’ve been through? And we started investigating about trauma theory, met people and investigated different conflicts that involved child soldiers.

WIDE ANGLE:
How did you gain access to these camps?

OLIVER STOLTZ:
We got access to the rehabilitation camps in northern Uganda through the Catholic Church in northern Uganda. They helped us because they were running through the organization Caritas, they were running a camp right in the epicenter of the war, which was created out of children who returned and said, ‘here we are and that’s where we want to be treated’. And so the Church started to build a center around these children. We went where other people feared to go and that’s how we got access.

WIDE ANGLE:
So, what were the obstacles of filming in a war zone? Was the camp ever attacked?

OLIVER STOLTZ:
The camp was attacked almost every two, three months. The obstacles were on one side the rebel attacks in the whole area that traveled to the war zone. There were on a daily basis attacks on the street. On the other side, it was the government that prevented journalists, people they couldn’t control, from going into areas where they couldn’t control them. So that’s why we decided to shoot without shooting permission and with small equipment. The biggest fear we had was traveling into, going to the rehabilitation center in Pajule, and making those moves to other places. It looks like, in the film, this is just an easy drive but this was like playing lotto with our lives. Because there were attacks on the street everyday.

WIDE ANGLE:
How long did you follow these children?

OLIVER STOLTZ:
We followed them over a course of six to eight months. We traveled four times to see their development.

WIDE ANGLE:
Can these children be rehabilitated and reintegrated?

OLIVER STOLTZ:
Oh, absolutely. I’ve seen it myself. There is something in us human beings, no matter how awful life has been treating you, especially in children, and you can never destroy hope. All these children — they’ve been raped, they’ve been forced to kill, they’ve witnessed killings. All of us grown ups would break and would be traumatized for life. But those children, they have different ways of coping with it. But what kept them going was hope for a better life. And you can work with this hope, and this is what those social workers do. All you need to give them is opportunities, instead of stigmatizing them and keeping them separate, you have to get them back into society, give them an education. That’s the main thing everyone wants. To be some way of supporting themselves and making a living. They’re still outsiders, and the only thing those children have learned for a long time is killing, so you need to give them other tools.

WIDE ANGLE:
We’ve spoken to a few psychologists who have said the community that they return to and the way that they are accepted are so vital to their reintegration and rehabilitation. Did you find that?

OLIVER STOLTZ:
Yeah. It is. The boy that best coped with the whole thing was Francis. Because he had a very loving family that really took care of him. He now has a scholarship. He’s really on his way to maybe even go to university. Kilama, the other boy, the family wasn’t there. No one is really being a guide for him. I try to do what I could from Germany on the phone, but you can’t be a parent on a long distance phone line. I think your trauma therapists are right. It’s love, acceptance and coming back to a society that is not stigmatizing you and having an opportunity in life.

WIDE ANGLE:
What is one moment or one experience that stays with you from making the film?

OLIVER STOLTZ:
The place where we stayed in the rehabilitation center was a few weeks before we came it was attacked by rebels. And Francis was one of those rebels who attacked the place where he fled to later on. So he described to me how he was going after the priest, the same priest that was there who was our host in this place. And how he was trying to find cookies, and where he was looking, and it’s the same kind of place where every night we shut iron doors and hope that no one was attacking us.

WIDE ANGLE:
OK, well one last question, this film was shot in 2003 and 2004. Have you followed up with these children in the last four or five years?

OLIVER STOLTZ:
We paid for their education after we finished filming until they are on their own legs. So Kilama went to high school for two years, he dropped out. He started his own business. He has a wife now, he is like selling soap and beer and small things and we gave him starting money for that. Francis is still going to school. Jennifer got into sewing school and then we bought her a sewing machine. Everything fell into a fire so we gave her more money to start up again. She’s still together with her husband. She got a little boy, she named him Ali after my partner.

WIDE ANGLE:
Thank you, Oliver.

OLIVER STOLTZ:
Thank you very much.