Description
Book SynopsisWhat happens when children are forced to become child soldiers? How are they transformed from children to combatants? In Child to Soldier, Opiyo Oloya addresses these timely, troubling questions by exploring how Acholi children in Northern Uganda, abducted by infamous warlord Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), become soldiers.
Oloya – himself an Acholi, a refugee from Idi Amin’s rule of Uganda, and a high ranking figure in Canadian education – is a scholar who challenges conventional thinking on child-inducted soldiers by illustrating the familial loyalty that develops within a child’s new surroundings in the bush. Based on interviews with former child combatants, this book provides a cultural context for understanding the process of socializing children into violence. Oloya details how Kony and the LRA exploit and pervert Acholi cultural heritage and pride to control and direct the children in war.
Child to Soldi
Table of Contents
1. Introduction 2. Conceptual and practical challenges 3. Gwooko dog paco, defending the homestead, cultural devastation and the LRM/A 4. Culture, identity and control in the LRM/A 5. The autobiographical voices of becoming CI soldiers (I) 6. The autobiographical voices of becoming CI soldiers (II) 7. Dwoogo paco, returning home References Footnotes
