Lukumbi Village, Uganda, 1981

Word of the rebels came first in the form of rumors. “There are men who move at night,” he was told. “They live deep in the forest.” “They are strangers to this zone.” But Samuel had never seen them with his own eyes.

Government soldiers, however, were known to Samuel and his neighbors. They came in packs, demanding to know where the guerrillas were hiding. Out of fear, people would sometimes offer information. Samuel recalled one person who volunteered to take government soldiers to a rebel camp. They shot him from behind as he led them into the forest. The government troops claimed he was plotting to have them ambushed.

Soldiers maintained a regular presence in the village: knocking on doors, hurling threats, and exacting punishment on those who refused to cooperate. Most of the soldiers were of another ethnic group from another region of the country, and the enmity between locals and those in the military stretched back decades into Uganda's colonial and immediate postcolonial experience. Political sympathies in the village thus lay with the men hiding in the forest. But the soldiers had some local collaborators – representatives of the government's political party, chiefs who owed their authority and wealth to political elites in the capital, and groups of youths from minority ethnic groups in the area. They informed government soldiers about the presence of guerrilla units and identified community members who were offering support and comfort to the insurgents.