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Lord’s Resistance Army

For the past eighteen years, Joseph Kony-led Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has waged a war in mostly Northern Uganda that has murdered, by current estimates, 30,000 people, abducted 20,000-30,000 children who have been forced to conduct most of the atrocities and have caused war related deaths from injury and disease that number several hundred thousand.

LRA was organized to violently overthrow the government of Uganda. In that sense, LRA is a rebel force and every government has the right to defend against violent overthrows. In the early years, LRA had popular support and spread a vision of overthrowing the Museveni government, restoring the Acholi community to its rightful political place and administering a religious society according to the Ten Commandments. Kony claimed to be seized by the Holy Spirit, found his visions in dreams, had a direct link with God and the power to protect his combatant forces from harm. With the mass removals of cattle and livestock in Acholi, the continued fear of massacres in Acholi by the NRA and the perceived threat of further government repression, there was, initially, widespread support of LRA. Religious leaders gave Kony and his commanders their official blessings, and for some, LRA recaptured the mystical support Alice Lakwena had brought to youth.

It did not take long, however, for Kony and his commanders to start victimizing Acholi, largely because he found it difficult to recruit Acholi youth as soldiers. Independently, he may have also believed that the Acholi people needed to suffer, redeem their sins and become pure. There are, in fact, many versions of Joseph Kony, what he believes and what motivates him. For some time, there was evidence that this self-styled Christian mystic converted to Islam, a useful conversion if he did, since LRA has been based in Southern Sudan and until recently, supported by the Islamic Khartoum government.

It is generally believed that as Kony found it difficult to rally popular support in Acholi, LRA started abducting Acholi children to become his army. He did this, it is believed, not only to raises and maintain an army, but to punish the Acholi community for not supporting his movement. This became even more apparent as Acholi people sought and increasingly relied upon the Uganda People’s Defense Force (UPDF), to guarantee their safety. In a short period of time, LRA became an army of abducted children, girls and boys, led by adult male commanders. While the stated aim of LRA was to redeem the Acholi community and overthrow a repressive government, in fact LRA was victimizing the Acholi community. Except for short periods of time when LRA attacked in Teso and Langi, LRA has restricted its rebellion and strategies in Acholi and against Acholi people.

Some believe that Kony and his senior commanders have become entrenched warlords, profiting from their role as an army that can commit atrocities not only in Uganda but in Sudan, and potentially, on a regional basis. The various sides of decades- long wars in Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo use proxy and rebel armies to augment their regular armies. Unlike many armies, LRA does not have huge labor costs. Children constitute 90% of is army, and children do not have to be paid. A small cadre of loyal commanders receive the power and wealth that drives them, and the other “benefits” of commanding obedient children, not least of which includes “marrying” abducted girls. Whereas many armies need high powered and advanced weaponry – which LRA has been known to have – child soldiers do not ordinarily carry guns. Pangas (machetes), hatchets, axes and knives are their weapon. The costs remain low and the population remains terrorized. Whereas no one wants to die from being shot, people in general are terrorized at being hacked to death, or having one’s legs or arms chopped off. It is this terror that keeps LRA such a formidable force, one which frightens the UPDF as well as the civilian population.

In short, LRA is a terror organization out of control, with no clear political or other rational objectives. It terrorizes and traumatizes the very people it claims to protect, and is largely responsible for the condition of the Acholi people today. LRA uses violence, fear and terror to achieve its objectives, and its very existence and continuing raids, more than any other factor, is the chief obstacle to peace in Northern Uganda.

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