by PATRICK LEJTENYI

“It reminded me of the Holocaust,” says Lara Rosenoff. She’s sitting in a Mile-End café, and her pictures from northern Uganda are the topic of discussion. “If I knew about it, I felt I had to tell the world about it.”

A visit last fall to the east African country—for the last 19 years trying to suppress a bloody but hitherto localized rebellion—has had an obvious effect on the 30-year-old Montreal photographer. This was Rosenoff’s first trip to a war zone, the first time she had seen bodies destroyed by violence, the first time she had to deal with military obfuscation and the squalor, bustle and desperation of makeshift refugee camps.

Rosenoff’s photo essay, on display from Jan. 28 to Feb. 7 at Galerie Espace, sheds some light on what the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland calls a “forgotten crisis.” There are striking images of death and devastation, but also of life, vibrancy and human dignity. With a second generation now being born into the war, Rosenoff feels that the world’s general apathy has gone on long enough. This show, she feels, is her first action in what she thinks will be a life-long commitment to the region.

Messiah gone mad

The man most people blame for the violence in Uganda is Joseph Kony, the deranged leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a shadowy, intensely brutal rebel group operating in the north for 19 years. Kony believes himself to be a new Messiah, but doesn’t shy away from using the most barbaric means in his apocalyptic campaign to rule Uganda as a god-king. He’s intent on creating a society ruled by the 10 biblical commandments, but it’s hard to square his bloodlust with any kind of religious compassion. Kidnapping, rape, mutilation, mass murder and forced cannibalism certainly don’t seem to fit into the ancient Hebrews’ vision of a righteous society.

A particularly vile tactic the LRA shares with other ragtag guerilla armies is the forcible abduction and recruitment of children. International organizations like Médecins sans frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) estimate that the number of abductees reaches into the thousands. Through fear and brutalization, the children are brainwashed into serving and perpetuating the LRA. The boys generally become fighters, the girls sex slaves, cooks, porters and messengers—and sometimes fighters themselves. Those attempting to flee are brutally murdered.

While figures are hard to come by, tens of thousands more are thought to have died. Over 1.6-million people have fled or been forcibly displaced by the national army in the Kitgum, Gulu and Pader districts—approximately 80 per cent of the local population—and now live, if they’re lucky, in cramped, unsanitary “protected villages.” Malaria, diarrhea, malnutrition, poor hygiene and lack of clean water are sending mortality rates through the roof.

The war, despite government claims to the contrary, seems to be spreading south, out of the Acholi-speaking regions and into the Lango- and Teso-speaking ones. This, of course, has added an element of ethnic and linguistic tension to an already complex conflict.

A ceasefire negotiated just after Christmas, meanwhile, broke down almost immediately.

Bad and getting worse

With this grim picture comes public indifference. The war in northern Uganda has been little reported or discussed, even in that country. “I found it scandalous to see in Kampala [Uganda’s capital] that people didn’t see, or chose not to see, this war,” says Patrick Lemieux, a Montreal-based MSF administrator who worked in northern Uganda over the winter of 2003–04. “And these were young, well-educated people. It’s quite frustrating to see them living in a completely different world only five hours away.”

Lemieux was working in the Lira district, outside the region where most of the violence was taking place. That didn’t mean he was any less busy. “The population is 100 per cent dependent on assistance,” he says. “Food, water and shelter weren’t available, so people would sleep anywhere they could. Old factories, in the fields—they’d squat wherever they could.”

Things don’t seem to be getting better. “After a year of the initial displacement, conditions remain past the emergency threshold,” he says. “For this to continue after a year isn’t normal. There needs to be some attention paid here.”

For MSF’s 67 international volunteers and 510 local staff, there is more than enough work to go around. Lemieux has seen local families so desperate they force their girls into prostitution for food or money. The risk of HIV infection is increasing. Even though Uganda has been put up on a pedestal for its handling of the AIDS crisis, Lemieux says that only now is any kind of treatment being spread north. All data previously collated, he says, were taken in the more peaceful south.

Girls to the front

The particularly muddy waters of northern Uganda may get somewhat clearer thanks to Montreal-based non-governmental organization Rights and Democracy. Last year it published Where are the Girls?, a study of girls in fighting forces in northern Uganda, Mozambique and Sierra Leone. Beginning on Jan. 1 this year, one of the book’s authors, Tufts University scholar Dyan Mazurana, will be conducting on-the-ground interviews with Ugandans to understand the gender and generational effects of the conflict. “We’re trying to use local sources to seek the comparative root causes and impacts on the community,” says Arianne Brunet, Rights and Democracy’s coordinator of women’s projects.

The three-year project will study in particular the use of girls in wars. “When we talk about these wars, we see that they are normalized, that they’ve become part of the political landscape,” says Brunet. One of the bleaker aspects of the war is economics. “There has been this commodification of human resources,” she says. “If you want multitasking, it’s better economically to abduct a girl. They can be used as sexual slaves, combatants, thieves, informers, intelligence gatherers, they can carry goods, do the cooking—they’re very valuable for all these reasons.”

The Ugandan army seems to understand that, says Rosenoff. “One time, when we were travelling in the north, our convoy was held up because the army said they’d captured some rebels,” she says. “It turned out to be a woman and two kids.”

Who’s Counting? 19 Years of Horror in Northern Uganda, Jan. 28–Feb. 7 at Galerie Espace (4844 St-Laurent)