Child Soldier to War Criminal - The Cycle of Violence in Uganda

Dominic Ongwen, Brigade Commander in the Lord’s Resistance Army under the leadership of Joseph Kony, stands on trial at the International Criminal Court on 70 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes. His charge list makes for grim reading: murder, enslavement, inhumane acts of inflicting serious bodily injury and suffering, cruel treatment of civilians, intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population, torture, rape, and pillaging.

But Ongwen’s trial is not unique in the nature of the brutality it will examine; these stories are unfortunately all too familiar in the region of central Africa that the LRA has terrorised for over three decades. Rather, it is unique in that it marks a first for the International Criminal Court. This is the first time that an inductee is being charged with the same crimes that have been done to him. Thomas Obhof, a defence lawyer on the case, has emphasised this point in discussing the charges against Ongwen: ““He was tortured … forced to watch people being killed, was used for fighting as a child soldier. Even the prosecution have said that what he went through is a serious mitigating factor.”

Ongwen was abducted by LRA soldiers when he was around ten years old (he claims in his own testimony that he was 14, but this is disputed by other LRA captives who think he was younger). Once captured, he was tortured and forced to watch videos of people being killed. As he became indoctrinated, he was taken under the wing of Kony’s deputy commander, Vincent Otti, who acted as a father figure to the young boy (and would later be indicted alongside Ongwen by the ICC, though he would be executed by Kony before facing justice). He was told he was fighting for the future of his people, the Acholi of northern Uganda, and that his missions had come from God. He was told he would grow up to be a leader of a feared and elite military unit. And he did, impressing Kony and Otti with his military tactics, and striking fear into the heart of any civilians who knew his name.

Now in the dock, this former child soldier stands before the world as a perpetrator of the very acts he witnessed and suffered through as a boy. Almost 2,000 people will be represented by the prosecution in his case, which is currently ongoing. As far as many are concerned, life imprisonment will not be justice enough for Dominic Ongwen. Joseph Akweyu Manoba, appointed by the ICC to represent the victims, told the Guardian “They tell me that if the ICC doesn’t punish him and he returns to Uganda then they will kill him themselves”.

And who can blame them? Ongwen’s Sinia Brigade ravaged northern Uganda between May 2004 and October 2005, attacking IDP camps, and killing, raping, and plundering their way across the land they were supposedly liberating.

Ongwen’s childhood abduction by Kony’s men does not excuse his own abhorrent acts. He remains responsible for his own crimes, and if he is found guilty he should be held accountable for every single life he ended or ruined. But his story should remain a warning for those seeking revenge for horrors inflicted upon themselves.

Perpetrators are rarely simply perpetrators. Many were victims first. This does not absolve them of their moral duties, and nor should it change our opinion of them or their actions. But the contexts in which a monster is made should be examined, because only then can we work towards ending the cycle of violence that only breeds more violence.

Dominic Ongwen, child soldier turned war criminal, now faces some form of justice at the ICC. His captor, torturer, commanding officer, and spiritual leader, Joseph Kony, remains at large. The LRA has abducted 3,400 more children since 2008. Child Soldiers International reports that active recruitment of child soldiers occurs in at least 46 countries globally, and that children have served in at least 18 conflicts since 2016. All will live with the consequences of violence for the rest of their lives.

As the ICC tries to find a semblance of justice in the case of Dominic Ongwen, it falls to all of us to work towards ensuring that we do not have to do this again. As Ongwen’s story demonstrates, it is far easier to harm than to heal. Violence can undo in seconds what peace takes years to achieve. We must strive for peace, however hard that may be.

You can find out more about child soldiers here.

Humanitarian Commandos - The Problem with Politicising Aid

The international humanitarian sector faces a host of challenges in improving its capacity to respond to complex emergencies across the globe. In the context of increasing violence being perpetrated against aid workers globally (174 aid workers were killed in 2017 alone, a 30% increase from the year before), international NGOs and humanitarian organisations are facing difficult decisions regarding how best to remain effective in supporting civilians affected by conflict, and also safeguarding their own personnel.

When a situation becomes too unsafe for humanitarian work to continue, the consequences can be disastrous. For example, when MSF was forced to suspend operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 450,000 people were affected. Therefore, humanitarian organisations and development actors are searching for new ways of working that can allow for continued aid support in dangerous areas, and that also provide a modicum of protection for the aid workers themselves.

According to a recent report from USAID’s Global Development Hub, the answer may be to train aid workers as commandos. The proposal of the development of so-called Rapid Expeditionary Development (RED) teams within USAID would allow humanitarian work to continue in areas where other civilian American personnel are unable to reach, according to the report’s authors. The suggestion is that “RED Team members would be specifically recruited and trained ... to secure communities vulnerable to violent extremist radicalization and exploitation” and that these individuals would then be able to act independently of partner organisations in delivering support in austere environments.

This sort of “elite humanitarian” capability may well increase the capacity of USAID to respond in hard-to-reach areas and allow for a more hands-on approach to complex emergencies as they unravel, but it also risks further blurring the line between humanitarian action and military activities.

Traditional humanitarian approaches to security are characterised by ‘acceptance’, or the idea that aid and development workers will be kept safe by the fact that they are not perceived as a threat (as enshrined as a fundamental principle of humanitarian action by the Red Cross movement). In contrast, the use of military-style tactics and techniques help to contribute to a “culture of war” that can lead to the perception of foreign actors as combatants rather than benign actors.

The growing number of attacks on humanitarian actors since 2003 has been attributed to the increasing link between INGO activity and the agendas of western governments. USAID, as an American organisation, can be expected to work in support of wider US strategic goals, but humanitarian actors more generally must be seen to remain neutral in the conflict situations in which they respond. A 2017 article published in International Peacekeeping found that “there is a growing consensus that the politicization of aid and its embeddedness within military operations may be contributing to greater humanitarian insecurity…”. This extends to the humanitarian sector in its broadest sense. If one organisation is seen to be acting in a way not befitting of the humanitarian agenda then the entire sector is held responsible - and suffers the consequences.

The USAID proposal argues that RED Team members could be used to help win the “hearts and minds” of local communities, but this very terminology was borne from the counterinsurgency movement in the US military (as the report itself references). Humanitarian action should not be about “winning hearts and minds”. It should be about saving lives. Governmental agencies like USAID or DFID will of course work to uphold national interests, but the co-option of humanitarian activity to meet political ends puts the whole sector in the firing line.

The legitimacy of the humanitarian sphere as a neutral, impartial, and independent force for good is the best defence an aid worker can have.

“Humanitarian commando” is an oxymoron. Aid worker deaths and kidnappings will continue to rise if the lines between humanitarian and combatant remain blurred.

Valentine's Poems and a Poundland Lenin

It’s been another day of useless and stupid political discourse in the UK. Today, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell comes under fire for calling Winston Churchill a “villain” for his decision to send in soldiers to break up striking miners in Tonypandy, South Wales, as home secretary in 1910 – 1911. In response, Sir Nicholas Soames, Tory MP and grandson of Churchill, referred to McDonnell as a “third rate, Poundland Lenin” who was only making the statement in order to gain publicity. If that were the case, it certainly worked. Theresa May and Boris Johnson rushed to the defence of Churchill, with Johnson declaring on Twitter “"Winston Churchill saved this country and the whole of Europe from a barbaric fascist and racist tyranny and our debt to him is incalculable… JM should be utterly ashamed of his remarks and withdraw them forthwith.". The argument has become so heated that Tory MP Robert Halfon even requested an “emergency debate” on Churchill in Parliament.

McDonnell’s quote came in response to a question posed in a Q&A with Politico: “Winston Churchill, hero or villain?”. Given the simplicity of the question, McDonnell was almost forced to answer unequivocally; in Tonypandy, Churchill was the villain.  He did later clarify that Churchill was a “hero” in the war.

Now I would like to suggest, and bear with me here, that both responses might be correct. Is it not possible that the “greatest Briton who ever lived” is also the man who enthusiastically supported British concentration camps in South Africa during the Boer War? Is it not possible that the man who led Britain at a time when the Empire was on the brink of collapse did his utmost to defend the UK, even at the expense of the colonies?

There is no such thing as a hero or villain. There are only public figures who make decisions that benefit some, often at the expense of others. Good people do bad things, bad people occasionally do good things, and those of us who fall squarely in the “average” category will keep doing both. The world is not black and white. And we should not treat it as such.

Reducing Winston Churchill to a “hero” or a “villain” deprives us of the ability to rationally evaluate the decisions that he made as a leader. When we talk about someone as influential as Churchill we should be able to do so objectively, or we risk historical revisionism. Take Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, a peace icon and Burmese national hero who later stooped to the depths of inhumanity in her tacit support for ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Rakhine. Her past triumphs should not justify her current crimes. Nor should Churchill’s status as a British hero make him immune to criticism.

This debate serves as a distraction to the looming debacle of Brexit currently hanging over the UK. But in case you were worried that the Churchill scandal was preventing Parliament from making serious progress in Brexit negotiations don’t worry, Tory MP Andrea Leadsom and SNP MP Pete Wishart found time to spar on the issue through some Valentine’s poems…

What has happened to debate? In the Twitter age, it appears to be easier to launch a personal attack against someone with an opposing view than to consider their argument and respond with a reasonable critique. When the Brexit negotiations in the UK parliament look more like point-scoring exercises than meaningful discussions on how best to secure a deal, we have to start to question where it all went wrong. If we lose the ability as a society to debate the legacies of our most important public figures, or the content of the policies that will shape our country for decades to come, then we lose the ability to meaningfully come together to find solutions to our biggest issues.

You may or may not agree with John McDonnell. You might think I’m wrong to criticise those who responded angrily to his comments. You might also be pro-deal, be happy to leave the EU without a deal, want a second referendum or have no idea what it is that you want from the Brexit madness anymore. That’s good. That’s normal. Let’s take a breather and ask why we’re so upset. Let’s talk about it.