LRA Leader Was a Child Soldier Himself

Dominic Ongwen is one of the five leaders of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) who have been indicted by the ICC. Like the others, Ongwen is charged with numerous crimes against humanity, including the forcible recruitment of children “as fighters, porters and sex slaves to serve the LRA.”

The indictment makes a strong case that Ongwen is guilty of the charges against him. There is, however, an interesting wrinkle to the child recruitment charges: it appears that Ongwen himself was forcibly recruited as a child by the LRA:

The date of birth on Ongwen’s arrest warrant is recorded as “unknown”. But to his family, tracked down this week in Olwal, in the Gulu district of northern Uganda, he is remembered as a 10-year-old, one of thousands of children abducted in the 20-year conflict between the LRA and Uganda’s government. He was taken from near his home in 1986. “He is a lost child,” said Akot Madelena, Ongwen’s aunt, who looked after him when his mother died.

His guardian, Madelena, who is heavily pregnant with her seventh child, believes there should be amnesty for child rebels. “If he needs punishment, let them give it at home, I am ready to look after him.”

The eldest son, Ongwen was in effect a child farmer, responsible for three younger brothers. He rose early to work that morning in 1986. At 11am he started the 4km walk home, before it became too hot to work. “We were coming from digging and a group of men with guns took Dominic,” said his cousin Kilama Christoper, now 28. “They took him because he was the biggest.”

Terrified, Dominic did not resist or beg.

The LRA’s fighting force is made up primarily of child soldiers, many forced into gruesome killing rituals to cut them off from their communities. Humanitarian agencies say 20,000 children have been abducted or killed in the war, and nearly two million people displaced. Ongwen was indicted by the ICC in July 2005, along with four others, including Joseph Kony, the LRA’s head. But his circumstances present “a fundamental dilemma”, an ICC source in Uganda acknowledges, as he is a “veteran child soldier”. The ICC does not prosecute minors; but Ongwen was an adult at the time of the charges.

Andre Laperriere, of the ICC Trust Fund for Victims, in northern Uganda, said child soldiers and abductees are “among the most victimised”. He said thousands of children in northern Uganda had “completely lost their childhood… forced into terrible acts during the war”.

[snip]

The opposition leader Morris Oyengo-Latigo, said: “Most of the so-called fighters are victims, who were abducted, subjugated to mental torture and transformed into a fighting force. And the challenge is, when does somebody become responsible?”

That’s a very difficult question to answer. The article’s subtitle reads “Uganda’s boy soldier turned rebel chief is a victim, not a criminal, says his family.” I disagree: even if everything Ongwen’s family says is true, the fact that Ongwen was victimized by the LRA does not excuse — legally or morally — his intentional victimization of others. He is a criminal, even if his personal history predisposed him to act criminally.

That said, it is difficult not to sympathize with Ongwen’s plight. He is obviously less culpable than his fellow indictees Vincent Otti and Okot Odhiambo, both of whom freely joined the LRA. The best solution, I believe, would be for the ICC to take his history of victimization into account at sentencing if he is ever convicted. Mitigating Ongwen’s sentence would affirm the criminality of his actions, yet ensure that the punishment fits the crime.