She is free, but the scars of captivity remain

Northern Uganda -

Kevin Akello is a slender 16-year-old girl. It is impossible to ignore that she is beautiful - super-model-beautiful, if you don't count her sad eyes.

Should the 21-year civil war in northern Uganda ever be truly over, repairing the damage will mean helping kids like Akello. It won't be easy.

She was abducted from her Gulu District home in December 1999 and left captivity about a year later.

It was around Christmas time in the evening when she was taken. People were gathering firewood and putting it outside her housing compound to prepare for a celebration. The LRA came at about 7 p.m.

Because she was only 12, she couldn't run fast enough to get away from the rebels. She and a 10-year-old boy cousin were captured and bound together by rope at the waist. They were two of 18 people abducted by the rebels that day.

After she was taken, she said, at first "I cried for my parents. But whenever I cried, [the captors] beat me. So I had to keep quiet because of fear of being killed. We walked for four days without eating."

Life does go on its its odd way amid war. The wife of one LRA commander named Odiambo had recently given birth to twins.

"They gave me one child to carry. Accidentally, they shot the kid in my arms and he died," Akello said in a quiet, emotionless voice. "The bullet moved the kid from my arms. As I was going to carry the child again, that same commander said, 'No, leave that kid. Don't you see that child is already dead? Don't you see the blood? Just leave the child and run for our lives.' "

The rebels returned to Gulu District, where she had been abducted. The rebels took more children; those who resisted were killed.

"We were forced to cook. For me, I was looking after the child of the commander and I did very well. I was not given to a commander" as a wife, even though other girls were.

"I felt very bad," she said. "They just appointed you - 'Go to a man over there.' In the morning you can see the girls crying. They are kneeling. They can't even walk."

While in Gulu, the top commander decided that some abductees, whose legs were badly swollen after two months' forced march, should be released. Akello asked if she could be freed as well. Odiamo said no. His wife said Akello should be killed because she had caused one of the wife's babies to be shot. The wife's anger toward her only grew when the commander said no and reassured Akello, in front of his wife, that no harm would come to her.

"Odiamo has a soul," Akello said. "He was a kind guy. He didn't give orders. Those above him gave orders, and he carried them out because he was a loyal rebel.

"Because he thought I was responsible, he handed over [the surviving twin] to me, and I started watching over that child."

Of course, that only made his wife angrier.

Akello recalled her saying, " 'First you killed my one child, now they hand over my other child.' " The wife was ready to kill her, but a few days later the government army, which had tracked the rebels since their first incursion into Akello's neighborhood, attacked, and the commander's wife died in the battle.

With the mother and the milk she provided gone, the commander realized the baby wouldn't survive. The child cried for two days. Finally, the top officer - higher in rank than the commander - ordered one of the rebels to take the child away from Akello and abandon it.

"I felt very bad for the child," Akello said, "every time that child was in my arms. The mom was a rebel and carried a gun, so she couldn't carry the baby. I felt the baby was part of me. I felt if they could kill that baby, then I could be killed anytime."

She asked the rebels to wait for Odiamo, the father, to return before deciding the baby's fate. She was told she had to choose between the child and her own life. She didn't answer, and they took the baby.

When Odiamo came home, she explained what had happened. The commander told her not to worry: " 'This is how it happens in the bush.' "

Akello finally escaped when the rebel band skirmished with the army. In the confusion of battle, she sneaked across a road and hid until the rebels left.

Once out of captivity, she was taken to a center run by the U.S.-based organization World Vision. She performed a cleansing ceremony that is part of her Acholi people's traditions. Still, the reception she received was mixed: "People had different feelings. Some accepted me. At home, I can say, at least most people have accepted me."

She felt the most hostility from parents of abducted children who were still missing. They would tell her parents, " 'At least your kids came back.' They would look at me with bad eyes. It is not my wish or will that I survived and came back."

Akello even stopped going to school because of abuse from other children. No one wanted to be classmates with her because they thought she had had sex with the rebels. She says she did not. She got some mental-health therapy, but the sadness of her eyes has infected all of her.

"I'm not thinking of anything to do to make my life a better life," she says. "I don't care. I like staying like this. . . . I just want to be free."