- guardian.co.uk, Sunday June 15 2003 10.00 BST
Kenneth Oryem says he is lucky. The rebels considered taking his eyes and legs but settled for his hands, nose, lips and ears. On his hospital bed, head swathed in bandages, Oryem is grateful they did not take his life.
Three days earlier he was abducted from his sister's home in Oryang, a village in northern Uganda, and tied up by the side of a dirt road while six rebels took turns: an axe for the hands, a scalpel for the face and a machete-like tool called a panga for the legs.
One of the younger rebels, a boy called Odel who had identified Oryem, 31, as a former soldier, persuaded his comrades to stop chopping his shins and to leave the eyes. 'They left me alive to feel the pain and to set an example to the others,' said Oryem, a father of four.
Oryem was right. The disfigurement was to terrorise, and it worked: around his bed, visitors clustered. Outside the British-built hospital the tale was whispered across the town of Kitgum.
The Lord's Resistance Army is often depicted as a crazed, apocalyptic cult rather than a guerrilla force, but it has been fighting for 17 years and in recent weeks has intensified its insurgency.
Vehicles have been ambushed and blown up by mines, killing and wounding dozens of civilians and exposing the limitations of the army's helicopter gunships and convoys. The number of youths forcibly conscripted has soared as LRA raids grow bolder: 41 seminarians abducted in one night from Lacor and marched through the bush, with four killed soon after.
'They couldn't keep walking, so the rebels preferred to kill them rather that let them go free,' the Archbishop of Gulu, John Baptist Odama, said.
Virtually no outsiders have met the LRA leader, Joseph Kony. Tall and lean, a mystic who communes with spirits, he wants to rule Uganda according to the 10 Commandments. His followers have broken just about all of them, murdering, raping and looting in a terror campaign which has displaced almost a million people.
Conflict started in the mid-1980s when northerners rebelled against President Yoweri Museveni's southern-oriented government. As the insurgency mutated into a quasi-spiritual movement with no clear objectives, so it degenerated into child abductions and atrocities, mostly against fellow ethnic Acholis.
'We have 800,000 in camps with virtually no access to basic services. Health centres have collapsed and schools have closed. The Acholi people feel they have been forgotten by the rest of the world,' said Simon Addison, of Oxfam's humanitarian programme in northern Uganda.
Father Jose Gerner, one of the religious leaders mediating between rebels and government, said the situation was never so bad. 'People are dying from malaria, exposure, malnutrition and Aids.'
A lull in the conflict ended when America last year included the LRA on its list of terrorist organisations and pressured Sudan to let Ugandan troops clear rebel bases in southern Sudan in Operation Iron Fist. The rebels swept back into Uganda with a vengeance. More followed last month to escape what they mistakenly thought was an Ebola outbreak.
In theory, the rebels are crushable: mostly abandoned by Sudan; only a few thousand members, including women and children; no heavy weapons; no mass support; no diamonds or minerals to barter. Against them are professional soldiers backed by helicopters, armoured cars and intelligence from radio intercepts and spies. Last week the army claimed to have killed 20 rebels and lost seven soldiers in a border battle.
But Kony's forces, on foot in small groups, can cover 30km in one night. They have scouts and spies, know the terrain and are highly motivated. After being forced to murder civilians, often his or her own relatives, a rebel is unlikely to desert. 'The small children tend to be the most efficient killers,' said Pietro Galli, of the Italian charity Avsi.
At dusk, Kitgum fills up with the 'night dwellers' - the thousands who leave their villages and the threat of abduction to huddle in the streets until dawn. They may not know the name, but they know Oryem's face.
Uganda
· President:Yoweri Kaguta Museveni
· The average life expectancy for males is 45.3 years and 47.7 years for a woman.
· More than half a million adults are living with HIV/Aids.
