Against Humanity: Lessons from the Lord’s Resistance Army by Sam Dubal

Signing documents: Accountability politics and racialized suspicion in Africa's development audits

“…The change in members’ willingness to sign the attendance form illuminates the meaning of the signature for target populations of development interventions and their own suspicions of audit documents. Anthropologists have shown how bureaucratic practices, such as collecting signatures, fuels mistrust and disobedience among signees in situations with deeply inequitable power dynamics, such as northern Uganda (Dubal, 2018; Mallon Andrews, 2023). Sam Dubal (2018), who worked in northern Uganda with former members of the Lord's Resistance Army, showed that a deep mistrust toward development projects led many potential beneficiaries to refuse to participate in NGO‐led rehabilitation programs.…”

“…Anthropologists have shown how bureaucratic practices, such as collecting signatures, fuels mistrust and disobedience among signees in situations with deeply inequitable power dynamics, such as northern Uganda (Dubal, 2018; Mallon Andrews, 2023). Sam Dubal (2018), who worked in northern Uganda with former members of the Lord's Resistance Army, showed that a deep mistrust toward development projects led many potential beneficiaries to refuse to participate in NGO‐led rehabilitation programs. As one interlocutor protested: “I refused.…”

African Studies Keyword: The Bush

“…To this end, I draw on the context of Oryema's artistic upbringing and his ordeal at age twenty-three fleeing political violence in Uganda; the life's work he created in France; permutations of his ancestral homeland of which he sang in love, anguish, and sometimes anger; and the meanings of the bush that these experiences illuminate, including within the context of literature of Acholi and Africa more broadly. For the bush is a capacious concept (Riesman 1998;Nyamnjoh 2011;Geschiere & Socpa 2017;Dubal 2018). It is a dangerous place, one to be avoided-a jungle, a tangle of grass, where visibility wavers-and it simultaneously lures warriors to prove themselves (Riesman 1998).…”

“…In recent literature of Acholi meanings of the bush, scholars both foreign and Acholi-born seek to understand and explain Acholi cosmology as well as how experiences in the bush impact the fates of former combatants and erect a barrier to belonging (Finnström 2008;Oloya 2013;Dubal 2018;Victor 2018;Porter 2020;Odongoh 2021). This literature shows ordinary people's trauma due to the 1986-2006 armed insurgency.…”

Becoming a Fearless Tiger

“…While insurgencies in other contexts did not theorize the creation of new men as in the socialist tradition, ethnographies on non-state armies show that militancy means more than having a political aim and learning how to fi ght. Rather, militancy also has a deep impact on fi ghters' identity and subjectivity and contributes to creating a new community (Aretxaga 1997;Feldman 1991;Hedlund 2020;Hoff man 2011;Pudal 2018). As Saramifar (2015) has shown for the Hezbollah and Grojean (2014) for the PKK, this transformation is consciously guided by the insurgent group through military training; it is here that a recruit leaves his or her previous social life to embark on the life of a freedom fi ghter willing to sacrifi ce himself or herself for the aims of the insurgent group.…”