First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army

by Peter Eichstaedt

Book Overview

"Richard Opio has neither the look of a cold-blooded killer nor the heart of one. Yet as his mother and father lay on the ground with their hands tied, Richard used the blunt end of an ax to crush their skulls. He was ordered to do this by a unit commander of the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group that has terrorized northern Uganda for twenty years. The memory racks Richard's slender body as he wipes away tears." For more than twenty years, beginning...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1556527993
• ISBN13: 9781556527999
• Release Date: February 2009
• Publisher: Lawrence Hill Books
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

I highly recommend this courageous firsthand account!

This courageous book is dedicated to the people of northern Uganda who lost their lives or suffered at the hands of the Lord's Resistance Army. Peter Eichstaedt has given voice to the child soldiers and other victims of the largely unheard-of tragedy of Uganda. We rarely hear about this on the evening news! I highly recommend this firsthand account of events that are taking place in our lifetime for anyone seeking to understand the state of the world. We are all connected. "First Kill Your Family" should be read by the young people of our country as soon as they are old enough to comprehend the content, so that they can begin to understand the challenges humanity is faced with. The book opens with a quote by Martin Luther King Jr.: "Man's inhumanity to man is not only perpetrated by the vitriolic actions of those who are bad, it is also perpetrated by the vitiating inaction of those who are good." --Suza Francina, yoga teacher, author, activist and volunteer with Global Resource Alliance (GRA),an organization based in Ojai, California, that is dedicated to improving the quality of life for the people of Africa. www.globalresourcealliance.org.

The Pearl

Through a grant garnered by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, the author traveled to Uganda in 2005 to establish a radio station. War had been taking place in Uganda for twenty years. Gulu was the epicenter of the conflict. Abducted children, boys and girls, child soldiers and child brides, served the Lord's Resistance Army, LRA. Commanders of the LRA ordered Richard Opio, age seventeen, (for instance), to kill his mother and father. It happened in 2000. The LRA is a ragtag militia. It is also a cult and is led by Joseph Kony. A million and a half people have been driven to seek safety in internal refugee camps. After two years Richard left. He applied for and received amnesty. The conflict has disrupted the Acholi, the primary ethnic people of northern Uganda. Richard now faces alienation and distrust in the refugee camp. Winston Churchill called Uganda the pearl. It is about the size of Oregon, straddling the Equator. English is the official language. There is a sixty-six percent literacy rate. Uganda has been the scene of tribal and ethnic rivalries. Idi Amin overthrew the government in 1971 and was not sent into exile until 1979. By the early nineteen nineties the LRA had fought throughout northern Uganda. The group had spilled over into the Sudan and Congo. The thousands of former abductees suffered from physical. psychological, and social problems. In their home communities some were rejected and labeled. There are two hundred refugee camps across northern Uganda. The camps have damaged family structure. People complain the traditional culture has vanished. Human rights abuses proliferate in armed conflicts. The death rate in northern Uganda is higher than the death rate in Darfur. The persistence of the rebel movement is difficult to explain. Some of the Acholi have refused to condemn Kony for LRA atrocities. Instead, they have supported the granting of amnesty by the Ugandan Parliament. Kony is said to have been a very good witch doctor. A former witch doctor claimed that Kony used his witch doctoring skills to maintain power. In 2000 near Bwindi Impenetrable National Park a cult called the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments was responsible for a mass murder. One observer blamed the cult's existence on the Ugandan fatal obsession with the occult. The LRA has been opposed successfully by a group called the Arrow Boys. The Arrow Boys used a coordinated alert system. After twenty years of guerilla war, traditional land management has fallen apart. The Ugandan government decided to extend amnesty to Kony and his commanders. Peace negotiations began in 2006 and continued through 2007. The book is of great interest. Victims of the conflict speak in their own voice.

Depressing

One of the legacies of colonialism in Africa has been violent conflict in literally dozens of the continent's countries. One such conflict has taken place over the past couple decades in Uganda. Not only has the country survived the brutal rule of Idi Amin and been ravaged by the AIDS epidemic, but has also seen some of the most brutal warfare in Africa. One of the more cruel aspects of this war is the forcing of children to fight. Peter Eichstaedt's "First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army" focuses on this phenomenon of forcibly involving children in a struggle run by adults. While this book gives a detailed account of the Lord's Resistance Army's involvement in the war in Uganda and is chock full of information, a reader completely unfamiliar with this topic can easily read this book and not feel lost. This is due to a nice amount of background information in the first portion of the book -- maps, a preface, a chronology, and an interesting prologue. There are also ample photographs in the book to give the reader a visual idea of what is being described in the book. The main strength of "First Kill Your Family" is that Eichstaedt interviewed actual child participants and victims of the war. It is their voices that are the most compelling aspect of this book. The author brilliantly weaves interviews and anecdotes into an easy-to-read narrative of the conflict. "First Kill Your Family" is not a book that gives the reader a lot of hope. The cycle of violence will most surely continue unless massive intervention takes place by the world community of nations, which is highly unlikely. Eichstaedt has made a valuable contribution with his book in terms of educating people about the war in Uganda and its effect on the people of Uganda. It also exposes the reader to the evil practice of involving children in war. I cannot find any flaws in this book, as it is well-written and demonstrates solid scholarship. People interested in this topic should certainly read "First Kill Your Family."

The war in Uganda is a definite candidate for "the forever war"

Most Americans are familiar with much of the bloodshed that has taken place in Uganda since it achieved independence from Great Britain. Unfortunately, a great deal of this is a consequence of the academy-award winning movie, "The Last King of Scotland", which depicted the brutal rule of former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Almost unknown is the two-decades long continuous war fought in Northern Uganda by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) led by a man called Joseph Kony. Kony is a former witch doctor that claims a Christian heritage and power as a medium. Kony argues that his army fights to support the Christian Ten Commandments, which the reason for the inclusion of "Lord's" in the name of his army. Northern Uganda is a region almost guaranteed by geopolitical and geosocial forces to be in a state of continuous warfare. First and foremost, it is a region with several native tribes with a history of animosity. Some tribes are traditionally farmers, others traditional herders and others traditional warriors that prey on the others. The northern tribes are also distinct from those that inhabit the southern section of the country where the major cities and central government are. Secondly, it is a region, like most of Uganda, of very fertile soil, so it is easy to grow food and support a large population. Finally, the region shares borders with Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The DRC is a chronically unstable country, the central government has no control of the region bordering Uganda and the mineral wealth in that region is a prize to be fought over. Sudan is a country split into two disparate regions, the Arab north and the more African south. The two factions have been fighting for control of the southern Sudan for years and the discovery of large reserves of oil in the region have raised the stakes. Given that neither the DRC or Sudan governments have much control over their regions that border Uganda, this allows the LRA to occupy safe havens just across the border from Uganda. The mineral wealth also makes it a region of interest to other nations. Peter Eichstaedt is a veteran journalist that traveled to this area in order to study the conflict firsthand. The LRA is known for their brutal treatment of people, often resorting to mutilation of the people they are stealing from and abducting children. Male children are impressed into the army as fighters and the females are handed out as "brides" to LRA soldiers deemed worthy of the prize. Eichstaedt presents an accurate yet very bleak portrait of this war, he goes to great lengths to establish the historical, political and tribal context for what is taking place in northern Uganda and the neighboring countries. It is a very complex situation, Catholic missionaries that have lived in the area for years are still often uncertain as to what the underlying motives of the players are. Situations like this are an abject lesson for Western observers who believe in simple soluti

Ugandan Genocide

Peter Eichstaedt spares no details as he describes the violence of the L.R.A. and the often equally oppressive national army towards the people of Uganda. For some reason, the systematic destruction of this country's human and natural resources has failed to draw the same attention that has been given to similar atrocities in Darfur, and this is a strong effort to create an awareness of and outrage about another African killing field. Eichstaedt shows the tragic interplay of witchcraft, despair, greed, psychological manipulation, modern military weapons and the inattention of the global community that has allowed Joseph Kony to create and expand the L.R.A which relies on children to carry out murder. The lack of commitment by the international community is a discouraging and frightening commentary on our values as well as a harbinger of what the future of the global community will become. This is a powerful and credible work not only because it is accurately researched, but because it is told by people who have first hand experience either as the kidnapped children or individuals who have had intimate contact with them and their families.