‘People remained in the LRA partly because they had wives and children’: forced families as a tool of warfare in the Lord’s Resistance Army

The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is well known for the violence it has waged across the African Great Lakes region. While the armed group has been studied extensively, limited attention has been paid to the deliberate creation of families formed through forced marriage and the birth of children conceived through sexual violence. In this article, we explore the strategic value and impact of the creation of LRA ‘families’ through the perspectives of 20 former male LRA members who were abducted into the LRA and who had fathered children through forced marriage. Drawing on interviews with former LRA members while building on the Militarized Social Reproduction framework we highlight the ways in which families were strategically created by LRA leadership to serve key functions. First, families helped to facilitate, control, and maximize labour production, ultimately contributing to the LRA’s military efficiency and functioning. Second, the creation of LRA families worked to increase bonds between members, ensuring compliance and preventing escapes. Third, the establishment of LRA families and the birth of children helped to forge a new ‘imagined nation’, further binding members to the armed group and ensuring the next generation of LRA members. While initially successful, our data also reveal the ways in which, paradoxically, forced families, over time, became a source of resistance and ultimately, disengagement from the LRA. Our data not only underscore the strategic value of family as a tool of warfare within the LRA but also the key role of family bonds in prompting disengagement and demobilization.