LRA using fear to mould recruits.

Samuel Opong can hardly believe his luck. The 15-year-old was abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels last year, forcibly trained to fight and, soon afterwards, forced to fight. In three fierce battles with the Ugandan army last December, he was hit by bullets in the left leg and arm. The rebels had forced him and other recent recruits to attack an army unit near the Sudan border. "I lost so much blood I started fainting, so they left me," he told IRIN at Gulu Support the Children Organisation (Gusco) counselling centre for former LRA abductees. "I woke up from the cold next morning and then [government] soldiers found me." Walking with difficulty and aided by makeshift wooden crutches, another former abductee, Patrick, said he could hardly believe he was still alive. "When we were abducted, they welcomed us and said the LRA was now our new home. But then they started saying we will all be killed in battle and only the children born to the commanders will remain." Samuel and Patrick, like several other children recently escaped from LRA captivity whom IRIN interviewed last week, tell of a chilling new prophesy from the LRA leader, Joseph Kony. They were told that all Acholis (Kony's tribe) were destined to be killed in battle - so recruits need not fear the battles. Veronica Atim, a counsellor at the World Vision centre in Gulu, told IRIN: "It seems they are now being told that they are destined to die to make them more fearless on the battlefield: they’ll fight because they believe there’s no hope of survival anyway. It is really sick." Josephine Lalam, 22, who spent eight years in Kony’s camp in Sudan and gave birth to two children in captivity before escaping last week, told IRIN that Kony had said that all abductees must die because they were not true Acholis. The only true Acholi, Kony reportedly said, were those born to the wives of the commanders - most of whom are ironically abductees. "The other Acholis are meant to die. He [Kony] said he had a message from God that they must be killed to make way for the new children of the LRA." "It is because they [the Acholis] are stubborn," she said. "They won’t join him to fight the NRA [President Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Army, now renamed the Uganda People's Defence Forces], so they must die." The LRA have waged war in northern Uganda for 18 years, but have often seemed more like a bizarre cult than a guerrilla movement because of their seemingly mindless atrocities against civilians and lack of political agenda. Tens of thousands of civilians are thought to have been killed by the rebels in the north in night-time raids on villages and refugee camps. The United Nations estimates that 1.5 million people have been displaced by the fear of LRA attacks. Almost all the LRA’s fighters are children abducted from their homes in the war-ravished region and forcibly recruited. Boys are taken as soldiers, most girls taken as "wives" for the rebel commanders. Kony claims to have magic powers derived from the Holy Spirit and manipulates beliefs in witchcraft to instil fear in his followers. But in this latest twist to the tale, abductees are being told that only children born in LRA captivity will survive the battle between the rebels and the government. The abductees would be killed, they are told. Esther Opira, a nurse who has been working for five years at Gusco, told IRIN: "Recently we got this message coming up. The kids say Kony is telling them he is a saviour of the Acholis, but now it looks like only the LRA’s own children are to be saved. The abductees are told: you will soon die. They are really scared." Betti Acam, 10, is visibly traumatised. Every day she spent in captivity she was told she would soon be killed. She speaks in a faint whisper and never looks anyone in the eye when she does so. "Some of them take a long time to even be able to interact," said Veronica Atim, Betti’s counsellor at the World Vision centre in Gulu. "They still have that fear. You can see it on them." At least 8,500 children were abducted by the LRA last year alone, according to estimates by relief agencies. Many of these children have never been seen again.