Book - "Wizard of the Nile"

By Anthony:

I would like to recommend that you read the book I just finished called, "The Wizard of the Nile: The Hunt for Africa's Most Wanted," by Matthew Green.  It is about a journalist who goes to Uganda and tries to get a meeting with Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA, which terrorized Northern Uganda and parts of Sudan for decades, fighting against the Ugandan government, and committing numerous atrocities against civilians.

If you want to know more about the recent political situation in Uganda, or more about the LRA, then this is a book for you.  By reading the book, you will also get some sense about what Ugandan life is like, and what kinds of interesting tribes and people there are in Uganda.

In the book the author gives nice summaries of the history of the region, after doing quite a bit of careful research and interviewing many people.  I knew a fair amount about Uganda already, but I learned a lot that I didn't know. 

The author gives a more realistic picture than we are used to, of Joseph Kony, the current Ugandan government, as well as the role of the United States in the conflict.  He doesn't defend Kony, as Kony is certainly responsible for thousands of child abductions and countless atrocities.  But he does explain Kony's role in the political situation, and shows us he is more than just a demon possessed madman (as we like to think of him, though he may indeed be that too).

Here are a couple things that I found interesting.  We tend to think of the LRA as this rag-tag group of children with AK-47s thrust into their hands running around maybe strung out on drugs.  But as interviews with actual child soldiers in this book make clear, the LRA was a pretty sophisticated fighting machine, with divisions and tactics, modern weaponry, intelligence officers, and strategy.  They trained and got themselves ready to fight.  And the children and other soldiers really gained a sense of camaraderie with each other, in the same way that I think modern soldiers today become very close during combat. 

I also learned that there was at least some aspect of really wanting to rebel against the government in the agenda of the LRA.  It was not just about randomly committing atrocities.  They had some reasons that made good sense as to why they were fighting against the government.  And I learned a lot about Uganda's current president.  It was troubling to see that some of the cultural/political realities that started this conflict are in some ways still there.  Uganda is completely at peace right now, and the LRA is out of Uganda, but that doesn't mean everyone is happy with the current system.

What was further really troubling to hear was about how the Ugandan government with help from Western aid organizations and governments just put Northern Ugandans in camps whether they wanted to or not, for their own safety.  And their lives in the camps for years and years ended up giving them far worse suffering and a far greater death toll, than they may have faced if they had been allowed to stay on their homelands.  Life in the camps was horrible and full of disease and squalor.

Sometimes the book seems more like a travel adventure book than a really good analysis of the situation, but I still found it helpful.  I really appreciated his descriptions of former child soldiers, as well as reporting on his interviews with them.  I didn't think the book was necessarily excellently written, but it is definitely worth a read, and it is easy to read, especially if you want a good starting point at understanding the LRA in Uganda.