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

From the Publisher

“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 in the mid-1980s, the Lord’s Resistance Army has ravaged northern Uganda. Tens of thousands have been slaughtered, and thousands more mutilated and traumatized. At least 1.5 million people have been driven from a pastoral existence into the squalor of refugee camps.

The leader of the rebel army is the rarely seen Joseph Kony, a former witchdoctor and self-professed spirit medium who continues to evade justice and wield power from somewhere near the Congo~Sudan border. Kony claims he not only can predict the future but also can control the minds of his fighters. And control them he does: the Lord’s Resistance Army consists of children who are abducted from their homes under cover of night. As initiation, the boys are forced to commit atrocities—murdering their parents, friends, and relatives—and the kidnapped girls are forced into lives of sexual slavery and labor.

In First Kill Your Family, veteran journalist Peter Eichstaedt goes into the war-torn villages and refugee camps, talking to former child soldiers, child “brides,” and other victims. He examines the cultlike convictions of the army; how a pervasive belief inwitchcraft, the spirit world, and the supernatural gave rise to this and other deadly movements; and what the global community can do to bring peace and justice to the region. This insightful analysis delves into the war’s foundations and argues that, much like Rwanda’s genocide, international intervention is needed to stop Africa’s virulent cycle of violence.

Publishers Weekly

Eichstaedt (If You Poison Us) offers a heartfelt if sometimes lopsided look at the consequences of prolonged civil war. Northern Uganda has been under siege by the rebel group the Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA, for 20 years, leading to death tolls rivaling those in Darfur, Sudan, which has garnered considerably more media attention. The LRA is known for employing brutal techniques, including mutilating community members who inform on them, kidnapping children to serve as male child soldiers or female "brides," sex slaves for rebel soldiers. Interviewing victims of these crimes, as well as perpetrators, government officials and non-governmental actors, Eichstaedt weaves a story of a decimated culture caught between merciless violence and the chaos of refugee camps. The result is a close analysis of this underreported crisis, which has only recently shown signs of abating. However, some of Eichstaedt's conclusions seem uninformed at best, including his one-sided look at religious views in Uganda, which prompt his remark, "There is no moral center of gravity here, no spiritual compass that one can hold against the horizon to escape the clamor and chaos." (Feb.)

Kirkus Reviews

Veteran journalist Eichstaedt (If You Poison Us: Uranium and Native Americans, 1994) blows the lid off atrocities in East Africa involving alarmingly young war recruits. After working with the Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) in the Hague to successfully establish an independent news agency in Afghanistan, the author in 2005 went to Uganda to do the same. The nation had been racked by civil war for 20 years, and nearly 95 percent of its citizens lived in refugee camps. But the desperate situation received little international media coverage. Eichstaedt's attention soon focused on Uganda's northern region, ravaged by the Lord's Resistance Army. This guerrilla group, formed in rebellion against the government, was comprised mainly of children. The author personally interviewed eyewitnesses to the LRA's slaughter of Ugandan citizens, its own high-ranking officers and the child soldiers themselves. Their tales of savagery repulsed him. "That humans were capable of doing such things for years on end was hard to fathom," he writes. Dense, in-depth reporting showcases LRA leader Joseph Kony, a self-proclaimed witch doctor and prophet whose adoption of the name Lord's Resistance, and of the Ten Commandments as a "moral guide," was bitterly ironic in light of his tactics. The LRA kidnapped thousands of young male soldiers and child "brides," forcing them into military service and sexual servitude. The young soldiers' first assignment was often to kill their family members. Interviews with former LRA members give an intimate spin to this concentrated narrative; those who managed to escape frequently returned home to find themselves ostracized by their families for the violence they haddone. A shaky truce has been established between warring factions, Eichstaedt writes, but the LRA and the elusive Kony remain formidable obstacles to lasting peace. A chillingly lucid report on a terminally tragic catastrophe. Agent: Michele Rubin/Writers House

What People Are Saying

Desmond Tutu
You must read this powerful book. Peter Eichstaedt has given voice to the victims of the largely unheard-of tragedy of Uganda. This story calls out to our very humanity.

Mac Maharaj
A book filled with haunting images that leave one groping for answers. (Mac Maharaj, South African author and activist)

Douglas Farah
This fine firsthand account should be read by anyone seeking to grapple with the challenges of war and peace in coming decades. (Douglas Farah, author, Merchant of Death and Blood from Stones)

John Dau
This book is a call to action to help our brothers and sisters in Africa that we can no longer ignore. (John Dau, president, John Dau Sudan Foundation, and coauthor, God Grew Tired of Us: A Memoir)

Details from Seller

• ISBN: 1556527993
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
• Pub. Date: February 2009
• Condition:

Comments from the Seller: Brand new item. Over 6 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: U20091204002200G

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents