By Daniel Wallis, Source: Reuters

LIRA, Uganda, Nov 5 (Reuters) – His eyes glazed and the skin splitting on his swollen feet, Tony Odok sits quietly by his parents two weeks after escaping the clutches of northern Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels.

The 13-year-old has spent the last year as a prisoner of the LRA, one of the world's most despised guerrilla groups.

Unrivalled in its brutality, the LRA slices off the lips and ears of its victims and has kidnapped 25,000 children and forced them to serve as fighters, porters and sex slaves.

Ugandan military chiefs and the government 200 miles to the south in Kampala say the war is all but over, but fewer than half the abductees have escaped or been rescued so far.

The future remains bleak for the thousands of traumatised youngsters who have made it home.

Few go back to their villages since most parents are among the 1.6 million people – 90 percent of the local population – crammed into squalid refugee camps by the 18-year-old conflict.

Tony's parents have walked three miles from Lira district's Ojwino camp to visit him at a rehabilitation centre where staff say he is suffering from one of the worst cases of malnutrition they have seen.

"We request you please keep him here and help him because we are helpless, we have nothing to offer him," his father Tom begs a social worker at the year-old Rachele Centre.

It is too early for Tony to talk about what he saw, or was forced to do, in the bush.

But abducted children make up 80 percent of LRA ranks, and they are almost always made to kill or maim in an effort to bind them to the cult-like group through guilt and fear.

FORCED TO KILL

As a result, those children lucky enough to get back to their communities sometimes face a harsh reception.

"Was it you who butchered those people here two months after you were taken?" one Lira boy, Jimmy, was asked by jostling villagers on his return after he was rescued by troops.

Another boy was forced to hack his family to death in front of their neighbours before the LRA marched him into the bush. He was rescued earlier this year, just days after the rebels he was with shot, chopped and burned more than 200 people to death at another refugee camp north of town.

Many boys are so indoctrinated when they first come out of the bush, they salute when you call them, social workers say. Almost all have been forced to kill – mostly other children who tried to escape.

"It happened so many times," whispers Charles, a 14-year-old sitting alone at one end of the dusty compound. "But it wasn't me. I was forced to take part."

REBEL BABIES

The girls seized by the rebels are just as mentally scarred by their time in the bush.

They are forcibly married to LRA officers, and several girls at the Rachele centre nurse babies they delivered while in sexual slavery with the group.

Christine says she was "married" to an LRA major, but at times she also helps cook maize, beans and cassava for Joseph Kony, the sinister self-proclaimed mystic who leads the group.

She gave birth to four of the major's children, but when she finally escaped with them to rejoin her parents in Lira, her father kicked them all out of the house, saying he could not live under the same roof as her "rebel children".

"I feel so very bad, because he is my parent and it is his responsibility to look after me," she says. Her mother left with her, and now scrapes a living for all of them from her job at the local abattoir.

The prospects for girls who escape from the rebels without giving birth are little brighter. About half are infected with HIV/AIDS, the United Nations says.

HOPES FOR A NEW LIFE

But amid the government's statements that peace is finally returning to the region, there are some signs of hope for northern Uganda's troubled children.

At the Rachele centre, a Catholic priest baptises eight children born in the bush by abducted child mothers. Some were named after their rebel fathers, and they are being given new names for the start of what is hoped will be a new life.

Off to one side, wearing dirty shorts and a frayed tee-shirt, five-year-old Peter Okwera chases a small plastic bag around and around. Until minutes ago, he was named after his father, a notorious killer and one of the founders of the LRA.

If the war ends tomorrow, most of these children will live with their fear and guilt for the rest of their lives.

As Tony Odok's parents finish their visit, his father walks over to hug a social worker standing by the gate.

"I couldn't do the work you do here," he tells her in the local Luo language. "I have too many tears."

Shortly after they leave, Tony collapses, probably from exhaustion and the heat. Without a word, two other small boys gently lift him and carry him into his dormitory.

Source: Reuters Alertnet (external link, opens new window).