Healing work for the scars inside Sudan - Frontieres

Malaria, malnutrition, AIDS and typhoid are among the many challenges faced by the international humanitarian aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres in the jungle of southern Sudan.

But what do you do when hundreds of the people you encounter are incapacitated not by disease or physical injury but by psychological trauma caused by witnessing the savage violence perpetrated by the Lord's Resistance Army?

The army, a ferocious gang of land pirates who have spent the past six years marauding through southern Sudan and other central African states, have acquired the reputation as being among the world's most violent militias.

Founded in Uganda in the 1980s as a quasi-political Christian separatist movement, the army is led by Joseph Kony, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes.

It is believed that since 1986, the army has been responsible for abducting at least 30,000 children and for displacing about 1.6 million people.

Clubbing people to death, dismembering victims while they are alive and the indiscriminate rape of men and women who get in their way were common experiences tactics to several victims who spoke to The Sun-Herald.