 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com “Richard Opio has neither the look of a cold-blooded killer nor the heart of one. Yet as his mother and father lay on the ground with their hands tied, Richard used the blunt end of an ax to crush their skulls. He was ordered to do this by a unit commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel group that has terrorized northern Uganda for twenty years. The memory racks Richard’s slender body as he wipes away tears.” For more than twenty years, beginning in the mid-1980s, the Lord’s Resistance Army has ravaged northern Uganda. Tens of thousands have been slaughtered, and thousands more mutilated and traumatized. At least 1.5 million people have been driven from a pastoral existence into the squalor of refugee camps. The leader of the rebel army is the rarely seen Joseph Kony, a former witchdoctor and self-professed spirit medium who continues to evade justice and wield power from somewhere near the Congo~Sudan border. Kony claims he not only can predict the future but also can control the minds of his fighters. And control them he does: the Lord’s Resistance Army consists of children who are abducted from their homes under cover of night. As initiation, the boys are forced to commit atrocities—murdering their parents, friends, and relatives—and the kidnapped girls are forced into lives of sexual slavery and labor. In First Kill Your Family, veteran journalist Peter Eichstaedt goes into the war-torn villages and refugee camps, talking to former child soldiers, child “brides,” and other victims. He examines the cultlike convictions of the army; how a pervasive belief in witchcraft, the spirit world, and the supernatural gave rise to this and other deadly movements; and what the global community can do to bring peace and justice to the region. This insightful analysis delves into the war’s foundations and argues that, much like Rwanda’s genocide, international intervention is needed to stop Africa’s virulent cycle of violence. |
Average Customer Rating:   Fresh Experience I just returned from a very full two week trip working north of Kampala. I met with social workers, doctors, pastors, villagers, etc...all Ugandan. I have to say that this book prepared me well. I went out of my way to verify what I had learned from this book. I found nothing in it to be fantastical or false. It gave me a very good view of the people, their history and their struggles. The book is an easy read and I highly recommend it for those who want a snapshot of Uganda before they embark on the journey. I hope to return to Uganda...they need a lot of help. "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime". Heartbreaking In "First Kill Your Family," journalist Peter Eichstaedt explores why Uganda has been immersed in a twenty year war and what is keeping the country from finding a workable resolution. He begins with firsthand accounts of the child soldiers and "brides," that is youths who were kidnapped and forced into the Lord's Resistance Army. Those who survive and escape tend to find only more heartbreak when attempting to reunite with their families and make the most of their freedom.
Though it's not the fault of the book itself, which is very well-written, evenutally it becomes a frustrating read. Even the most pessimistic reader might be expecting a somewhat clearer resolution to the conflict, or at least the prospect of peace in sight, but not here. Those responsible for the violence insist repeatedly that it is not their fault and deny the most barbaric of the crimes they are accused of committing. The U.S. also does not come off looking good here, being depicted as refusing to help the rest of the U.N. form an International Criminal Court. However, there are plenty of heroes in the book, many of which directly risk their lives to help. Among other topics, the author looks at witch doctors, the changing land laws, and the not-so-subtle attempts to intimidate victims from identifying the "bad guys." No easy answers but a thorough look at the questions.
Incrediable glance into Uganda & the LRA The book starts off as a page turner. I enjoyed the personal thoughts and accounts of the author (also reporter). The maps & history up front really help set the stage for understanding what was happening in Northern Uganda.
The author reports the situations in Uganda with countless personal stories to really make the situation real to the reader. Seeing the state of the LRA through the eyes of real men, women and children's accounts. The interviews are what make this book worth the read. Including, an interview with Joseph Kony's first wife. To hear what they went through and how they feel now, you can almost see the hope of a future in those rescued.
There are also chapters on how God & the demonic (witch-craft) play a large role in this civil war. The book covers every major player in this war and all ideas and sides for the end of the LRA. It's throughly researched & reported on.
Probably the perfect length and blend of stories & information. Cursory This is a short, quick-reading book on the long-running Ugandan civil war by a journalist who seems a relative stranger to African issues. He gives a brief overview of this long-overlooked situation and devotes chapters to such other African phenomena as the widespread belief in witchcraft and the child-soldier phenomenon.
Maybe I'm just sour because I was looking for an in-depth inside account of the Lord's Resistance Army -- which is what the title was selling, after all -- and instead received a quick overview of the civil war as a whole and its historical and cultural context, pitched to someone who is reading his or her first book on African chaos. But maybe I realized after reading a certain number of this book's interviews with ex-LRA officers who refused to admit any wrongdoing and ex-LRA conscripts who refused to discuss their time in the LRA that the author couldn't really get on the inside of this story, but felt a laudable impulse to set what he had on paper anyway to bring what attention he could to this overlooked meatgrinder of a war.
The author gets points for good intentions, but this book is, at best, the first two hundred pages in a book that ought to be twice this long and twice as deep. Readers new to Central Africa's humanitarian crises will find it an accessible introduction with the added benefit that its focus is a war that hasn't already been covered in dozens of other books. I suppose the reasons it hasn't been covered in dozens of other books - the Ugandan civil war's inaccessibility and incomprehensibility - are some of the reasons for this book's shortcomings as well. The LRA in northern Uganda. As the author states, this is a brutal conflict in the heart of Africa. Most Westerners have probably not heard of this conflict, and few people travel to Uganda to actually be threatened by it. However the threat posed by the LRA, and other rebel groups in Rwanda, and the DRC hurts African society. Children become brutalized and insensitive to suffering. Brutal acts are committed to please the sadistic pleasure of a few top commanders. African society itself may have suffered irrepairable damage due to these rebels groups/militias.
The author desires Westerners to lend a hand in helping societies help in the policing of their states. With the many conflicts open in the Third World, this is asking a lot. African society itself must repair the damage done, and destroy those groups (like the LRA) who threaten the state and society. This is another story about a conflict that will probably cause more death and destruction in the near future. |  |
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