Forced to kill, former child soldiers want Uganda to show them mercy. But after 21 years of civil war, can life ever be normal again?

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The night was black as obsidian, for it was the rainy season when clouds obscure even the starlight. The beams of hundreds of torches marked the approach of the rebels, their onward march silent save for the soft thud of the sticks used to beat those who crossed their path and the hushed weeping of women recently raped and widowed.

It was so dark Dennis Oyeto couldn't see his own hands, but he could hear the wood splintering as the soldiers smashed through the door of his hut.

As the thatched roof began to burn, shadowless shapes dragged his family out through mud the colour of congealed blood, rich with the iron ore that colours east Africa.

Hours before he had been eating dinner and playfighting in that same spot. After the soldiers pinned him down next to his two brothers they hit the back of his mother's head as if pounding cassava.

At the sound of her skull cracking, he noticed the men in uniforms were the same age as the pupils at his school: just boys. It was midnight on June 13, 1998. Dennis was eight years old and the elephant grass still stood taller than him.

"Before they took us they beat our parents to death and made us watch," he says, his eyes downcast.

"They said that was a lesson to ensure we would not try to escape, that we had no-one to come back to. Then we walked and walked. All the time I thought of my parents and ways of escaping. Then they told us we had to beat a boy to death after he tried to escape. Anyone who refused was killed.

"I was trained and beaten for three weeks, to remove the civilian in me, they said. Then they gave us two different types of drugs and suddenly all the sadness and pain went away, for a time at least.

"I saw so many people killed. They still come into my mind. I hear them still screaming and crying for help, crying for their lives to be saved. The dreams disturb me so much that they continue through the daytime. I do not know how many people I killed."

For more than 20 years the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a cult-like rebel group, has been waging an apocalyptic war against the Ugandan government and the local Acholi people, abducting tens of thousands of children and raping, murdering and mutilating others by cutting off their lips, ears and noses.

Aid agencies estimate more than 100,000 people have been killed in the civil conflict and another 1.8 million forced into refugee camps south of their homes, south of the area bordering Sudan, the LRA's traditional base.

Then last June the machetes were sheathed and the guns fell silent. As those in the displaced camps fought flooding from heavy rains, a fragile ceasefire began with peace talks brokered in Juba, Sudan.

It has brought a trickle of hope to those who've seen other talks come and go with the seasons. But until the peace looks more permanent, most are too afraid to go home to their villages. Daily survival, alongside the reconciliation and reintegration of former child soldiers, proves the greatest challenge.

Most have come back from the bush malnourished, bearing physical and mental scars. Many have Aids. But for those who escaped abduction there has been little solace.

Care workers explain that rape by government soldiers has been commonplace and domestic abuse still affects more than 80% of the camp households.

Herald chief reporter Lucy Adams visited Uganda and witnessed the counselling and activity sessions supported by the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund (SCIAF) for those in the camps.