EXTREMIST GROUPS
The Lord’s Resistance Army was an extremist, terrorist organisation operating across several African states, which terrorised the population for over 20 years.
It was founded by Joseph Kony in Uganda, a witchdoctor, who presents himself as a spiritual leader and a representative of the Christian god, within a belief system that combines traditional animist beliefs with Christianity. While the Lord’s Resistance Army has committed numerous terrorist attacks, it has no clear objective or purpose. It claimed to seek to establish a Christian theocracy and depose President Museveni but mainly responded to the wishes of its founder, his deputies and commanders. The International Crisis Group has stated that ‘the LRA is not motivated by any identifiable political agenda, and its military strategy and tactics reflect this.’
The LRA has been implicated in horrific crimes against humanity, including capturing children and forcing them to become soldiers, rape, murder mutilation, abduction and slavery. According to the United Nations, the LRA were responsible for over 100,000 murders and the abduction of an estimated minimum of 60,000 children, most of whom were inducted into the organisation as child soldiers. Over a million individuals were displaced due to the violence they caused. At the height of the conflict, some 2 million Ugandans were living in camps.
Founder of the organisation, Joseph Kony belongs to the Acholi ethnic group, as the son of subsistence farmers. The Acholi were strongly and violently resistant of British colonial rule, and the Acholi region remained underdeveloped compared to the rest of Uganda. After losing control of its Empire, the British had little appetite to keep Uganda as a protectorate. Uganda achieved independence in 1962, but fell into disarray under the dictatorship of Idi Amin in the 1970s. Succession was violently contested until Yoweri Museveni assumed the Presidency in 1986, following a five year civil war. After abolishing both age limits and term limits on the role, Museveni remains in power in Uganda at the time of writing after abolishing both age and term limits on the role of president.
Some Acholi tribesmen revolted against Museveni’s accession, including a spiritual leader called Alice Lawkena and her followers. Lawkena claimed to have spiritual powers, and used these to convince her troops to march on Uganda’s capital. However, due to her eccentric rules of engagement which prohibited use of weapons and advised use of an ointment of her own creation which she claimed would repel bullets, her campaigns were disastrous. Upon defeat, she fled to a refugee camp in Kenya.
In 1987, following Lakwena’s example, Kony declared himself a prophet and founded the Lord’s Resistance Army. With initially few followers, he was able to recruit former soldiers from Acholiland to his ranks – welcoming some of the most brutal and least disciplined soldiers to have fought in the civil war. These formed the backbone of the LRA’s organisation.
While it was initially supported by local Acholi, its increasing plunder of the local region drained support from the population, and the LRA resorted to abduction to fill its ranks. Tens of thousands of children and a similar number of adults were forced to join the organisation. Some 20,000 were recorded seeking help from NGOs which provided assistance to former child soldiers. Civil Society Organizations for Peace in Northern Uganda suggest that 80% of the LRA’s soldiers were abducted as children, although this is likely to have decreased as the organisation lost ground. The organisation was modelled on the Ugandan military, with ranks and titles, but assigned by Kony personally according to his own caprice. New recruits received little training and have a very high risk of becoming casualties in any fighting.
From 1991, the Ugandan army began to target the LRA, and it seemed likely that Kony would be forced to negotiate. However, from 1994, the LRA found support outside of Uganda’s borders. Sudan, which had provided shelter to Acholi fighters after Museveni’s assumption of the presidency, used the LRA as a proxy force in hostilities against the Ugandan government, and to fight internal enemies – the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, which Uganda had supported – on their behalf. Sudan provided weapons, ammunition, military training and two camps.
The war ended in 2005 when Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir negotiated peace with the rebelks of South Sudan. The LRA were no longer useful to the Sudanese government. Without support, and under military pressure from the Ugandan military, the LRA were forced out of their territories in Uganda and Sudan, and moved to Congo.
In the same year, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for five senior LRA commanders, including Kony. He was charged with 33 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The ICC had established in 2002 to try individuals for genocide, war crimes and other major human rights violations. At the time, Kony was participating in peace talks with the Ugandan government in 2006. While the ICC’s action was justifiable on moral grounds, it was may have made the peace process more fragile, especially since it hampered Museveni’s offwe of providing Kony with amnesty in exchange for disarmament. It also made Kony suspicious of the peace process, according to one of his wives who was captured.
The LRA did not cease attacking civilians or looting supplies during the talks, and few of the most important members of the LRA attended them; Kony himself was disengaged during the process. However, a position was finalised between the parties – but with the death of Vincent Otti, the main player in the talks, lines of communication between the negotiators broke down. Kony was impossible to contact, and Museveni grew impatient with the failure of the peace process to show quick results. LRA fighters have stated that Kony ordered the death of Otti himself.
In 2008, the Ugandan Government launched a decisive military attack in concert with Congolese and Sudanese forces, which succeeded in scattering the LRA. Routed from their territory, members carried out violent attacks in northeastern Congo, South Sudan and the Central African Republic, razing villages, torturing and raping the villagers. From the 2010s, they were under constant pursuit, but remained a source of terror across the regions in which they were active, their numbers now diminished to 400. Abandoning whatever ideology they had once followed, their violence was mainly for survival, and the survival of Kony and his lieutenants; only those at risk of prosecution by the ICC place an ideological veneer upon their activities. Kony continued to assure his followers that they would return to Uganda, overthrow Museveni, and take up posts in the Ugandan army. He also continued to attempt to re-establish a relationship with Sudan.
In 2012, Kony briefly became notorious outside Africa, when the US charity Invisible Children released the film ‘Kony 2012’, which has been seen over 100 million times. The film focusses upon Kony’s use of child soldiers, and was publicised by celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, yet its influence was limited by the bizarre behaviour of the Invisible Children’s founder. While this film was produced, the remaining LRA fighters were living miserable lives: malnourished, and constantly fleeing military attacks whilst fighting diseases from HIV to malaria, and facing violence at the hands of other LRA members. The troops were widely dispersed, keeping in touch using communications technology, unable to regroup.
To date, Kony is the ICC’s longest standing suspect at large. He has not been captured at the time of writing, but the remnants of his army has largely been wiped out. The ICC have recommitted to his capture, in order to create a ‘meaningful milestone’ for the many victims of Kony and the LRA, in crimes ranging from rape and murder to enslavement. In 2021, a former commander for the LRA was sentenced to 25 years in prison for similar offences. The US State is currently offering a bounty of $7.4 million for information that leads to Kony’s arrest.