Unfortunately this is all too true. Two years ago I spend 24 hours in Uganda, the city of Mbale, and in the morning we heard from a pastor who ministers in the northern part of that country and he told us the tales of war. Crazy, until then I wasn't really aware of the situation. But it is dire indeed. National Geographic did a story within the past year on it, detailing the lives of the children, the miles they must walk to safety each night so they are not kidnapped in their sleep, and the deprivation of those taken. The anger burns inside of me.

I spent the past week in northern Uganda. I am conducting field research and interviews for a book I am writing on human slavery.

I hope to be one of many to raise awareness of this tragic epidemic. Criminal activity currently enslaves 27 million people globally, half of which are children under the age of 18, and the trade generates an estimated $13 billion dollars annually.

Slavery takes a tragic twist in Uganda. Children are abducted and forced to serve in a rebel group calling itself the Lord's Resistance Army. The LRA has snatched up as many as 40,000 children over its 20-year existence.

During my visit to Uganda, I interviewed numerous young people who escaped the LRA and have gained refuge and rehabilitation at World Vision’s Children of War Center. Only a few days out of captivity in some cases, the children spoke of unimaginable terror. Some of the children I spoke with had spent eight years in servitude, and many had spent at least four years with the LRA.

Most of the boys are trained to be mass murderers. I realize that language is strong, but it fits. The LRA targets young children because they believe they are more easily molded into trained killers. They learn how to engage in combat with soldiers and are forced to pillage defenseless villages, often leaving countless dead in their wake.

A smaller percentage of the girls are forced to be soldiers. Most of them become sex slaves and domestic servants to the older LRA soldiers. Typically after a village raid, the commanders divide the girls up amongst themselves. Only men of a certain rank have the privilege of owning these young girls.

At the moment most of us who are 21st century abolitionists focus on stopping the captivity and ongoing abductions of children in Uganda. Spending some time there, however, I got a glimpse of an equally daunting task: How do you bring about reconciliation once the terror comes to an end?

World Vision workers in the camp already are starting to address this dilemma. Idah Lagum Lumoro, a counselor and camp director at a World Vision center, shared with me a heart-rending tale of a woman who had her nose, lips, and ears sliced off by the rebels. When she came to the rehabilitation camp, she was horrified to encounter the very rebel soldier who had ordered her torture. In his own defense, the young man claimed that a superior officer in the LRA had commanded him to give the order. Even though civilian witnesses present at the crime confirmed that fact, you can imagine how difficult it was for the woman to forgive this young ex-officer.

That story, unfortunately, is not rare. Nearly every child abducted into the LRA has been forced to participate in atrocities. Typically, an abducted child's initiation is to kill a family member, or perhaps someone from his or her home village. For that reason, after release many of the children fear to return to their home village.

Many of the young girls have given birth to a child. They too do not view a return to their home village because the years of rape have brought them shame.

For that reason, Lumoro and her team of World Vision counselors not only help individual children to restore their lives after they escape. They reach out as well to the communities from which the children have been abducted and against which they might have committed atrocities.
Lumoro explained to me that in the Ugandan culture, when a murder is committed it is not only an offense to a particular family, but against an entire clan. A stipulated restitution must be made. If that restitution is not fulfilled, then a murderous revenge will be sought against another clan. In northern Uganda today, however, nearly 90% of the population lives in internally displaced person's camps and murder has ruled for two decades. It is impossible to balance the score with traditional restitution.

Lumoro asks her Ugandan brothers and sisters to practice forgiveness as an exercise of healing. "If we forgive, and ask for forgiveness, we are set free; then we can walk in unity," Lumoro told me. She presented the choice that Ugandans have to make for the future: "Only in unity can we rebuild our land with peace and development. If we do not forgive, our communities will explode in the future."

When people have been wronged, they often harbor a conviction that they cannot satisfy their hurt until justice (really meaning revenge) can be done. Maybe then, they say to themselves, they can begin to forgive and forget.

Lumoro emphasizes, however, that revenge and forgiveness take us down two distinct roads: "Forgiveness starts with today's enmity; revenge nurses the enmity until it can reach satisfaction in some future opportunity."

"If you want love to take root in your life," Lumoro reminds me, "you can only travel down the road of forgiveness."