We are now in Lira District, the site of the worst atrocity in the 21-year war occurred. Today we visited the Barlonyo internally displaced person's camp, where the Lord's Resistance Army killed 301 civilians in a 2004 attack. The rebels first came and defeated the handful of government soldiers who were in a nearby barracks. Then they stormed the camp, shooting, hacking and cutting people to death. All the huts were set on fire. People fled if they could. Some never saw relatives again: One woman who still had a dazed look in her eyes -- the look I saw in Rwandans' eyes in 1998 -- had suffered the killings of all four of her children.
You would think Uganda would have descended upon the camp, once the area became safe enough to reinhabit, to help surviviors rebuild their lives. Yet it is isolated and has gotten little help.
On our way back from the camp, we stopped and talked to a woman who had gotten both ears and her lips sliced off by the LRA. I asked her if she was angry at the commander who gave the order to mutilate her. She said no. Why, I asked. Because he did not give an order to kill her.
