The war in Ronald Okello’s homeland of northern Uganda is older than Ronald. It went on for 21 years; Okello just turned 18.

The two foes in the civil conflict – the government army of Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni and a rebel force called the Lord’s Resistance Army led by the reclusive and brutal Joseph Kony – have been negotiating a peace since 2006. Those talks seem to have crumbled, though, with Kony fearing to come out of the bush and face prosecution by the International Criminal Court, which has charged him with war crimes.

Still, the atrocities committed by both sides and the child abductions that have marked the war have largely ended. Life in northern Uganda is inching toward normal.

The story of Ronald Okello, who is set to return to Uganda today after about three weeks in the United States getting a prosthetic right arm, may sound unbelievable. But it is typical of what has happened to children caught in this conflict.

The abduction
It was the year 2000. Ronald Okello was nine years old.

"My mother sent me to buy soap in the Acholibur market. At first I heard some noise,” Okello said. It was a group of rebels talking, using profanity. "When I tried to run, one of them came with his gun pointing."
 
"I never reached the market."
 
The rebels tied Okello up over his shoulders so his should blades were forced backward, and then with his hands behind his back. It was very painful, as was what they did next.
 
"I was crying. When they first tied me, they caned, caned, caned me." After two days they finally took off the ropes. 
 
"I thought about going home but there was no way," he said. "In your heart, you say ‘I'll never escape.’ In your heart, not louder."

Because of his age, his first duties as a rebel were to fetch water, collect firewood, make fires and cook. Rebels cut him on his left arm and put oil and water on the cut, explaining the cut, oil and water were magic that would prevent him from being able to run away. Okello to this day believes the cut carries magic.

When he was 10 years old, rebels gave him an AK-47 and landmines, and trained him to use both. First, though, he went through the Lord’s Resistance Army’s registration process.

"They told me to bend down like this,” he said, folding at his waist until he could touch his toes. Then, he was caned 80 more times. He knows the number because rebels wrote it in a book.  Crying or movements can cause more trouble.
 
"You have to handle it,” he said. “If at 79 you touch your back, they'll start all over again."
 
"The next day they gave me a gun – it was not me alone – with four bullets," he said. His trainers put an object far away and told him to shoot it. A miss brought 20 strokes per bullet. He missed at least twice, he recalled.

Okello played the role of being a rebel, mainly because he had to, but also because doing certain things felt good or brought him respect.

He and other boys went into displacement camps and took beans and other supplies. People feared them, which made the boys feel like big men. 

He smoked cigarettes because he learned that was one way to stay warm on cold nights. Fearing death if he did not follow orders, he fought when commanders told him to fight and killed when told to kill. He does not like to talk about what he did: “Once I talk like this, I dream,” he said.

But he did speak about how young rebels were terrorized into being loyal to the rebel army and the acts they committed to stay alive. One evening, he recalled, a couple of rebels tried to escape. Lookouts found them and brought them back.

The next morning, all the rebels were called together and commanders gave one boy a machete. They laid one of the rebels who had tried to escape down on the ground and ordered the rebel with the machete to kill the escapee. The boy then was told to cook the head and the other man who had tried to escape was forced to eat it, said Okello, who claimed to have seen the entire episode. Many accounts of such atrocities have been told to international groups and corroborated.

The first time Okello killed someone was in the bush. The rebels had found an old woman in a garden and wanted him to kill her.

“I looked at this woman and I thought, ‘What if this is my mom?’”

It was Okello’s test. If he had refused the opportunity, he could have been killed. If he passed, he would be treated better and gain respect. And so he killed her.

“All of that day, I was dreaming of that lady. I saw her face and she said, ‘my son, why did you kill me?’”

But the commanders were pleased, Okello said. “They said things like, ‘the big man, our man, Okello.’”

One day, they said, maybe he too would be a commander.