Decision by US and African allies to call off hunt for Lord’s Resistance Army leader may give fighters chance to regroup

The US and its African allies have called off their hunt for Joseph Kony, one of the world’s most wanted fugitives ,who is blamed for the deaths of at least 100,000 people and the suffering of millions more in central Africa.



Kony leads the Lord’s Resistance Army and has a $5m (£3.9m) price on his head. He was one of the first people the international criminal court in The Hague indicted for crimes against humanity.

About 150 US special forces and more than 1,500 Ugandan troops have been hunting Kony for almost a decade across a swath of remote forest and brush along the borders of the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan.

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The 56-year-old is believed to be moving with between 20 and 30 loyal fighters, several wives, his two sons and hundreds of followers. Many analysts believe he is hiding in the disputed, mineral-rich area of Kafia Kingi in South Darfur, Sudan, from where he and his sons can organise smuggling operations undetected.

Other groups loyal to the LRA, which Kony founded nearly 30 years ago, are scattered across central Africa.

Ugandan troops began leaving CAR earlier this month. The US special forces, deployed as part of a billion-dollar mission to kill or capture Kony, have also begun to withdraw. Officials and senior soldiers in both Uganda and the US say the LRA is no longer a threat. “The mission to neutralise the LRA has now been successfully achieved,” the Ugandan army said in a statement.

Analysts say Kony and the LRA are a shadow of the threat they were 10 or even 20 years ago, when they could deploy thousands of fighters and terrorised wide areas of central Africa. “The LRA has been in survival mode for some time,” said Ben Shepherd, an expert in central Africa at London’s Chatham House thinktank.

Pamela Faber at the Center for Naval Analyses in Washington said the group, which is much diminished by defections, internal purges and battle casualties, was a vestige of its former self.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Joseph Kony (left) and his deputy, Vincent Otti, at a meeting with the then UN humanitarian chief, Jan Egeland, in November 2006. Photograph: Stuart Price/AFP/Getty Images

Many, however, say the LRA – known for atrocious brutality against civilians including mass abductions and rapes, executions and torture – can still cause serious harm. Norbert Mao, an opposition politician and former chairman of Gulu district in northern Uganda, where the group emerged in the 1980s, said the withdrawal of troops gave it a chance to regroup.

“Now that the Uganda government is stopping the search for LRA, it might become a mercenary force that can be used by any other groups to terrorise civilians. They will be soldiers of fortune and that’s a threat to the region,” he said.

Kony is now unlikely to appear before the ICC, but the trial of Dominic Ongwen, one of his key lieutenants, started earlier this year. It has revealed appalling details of the LRA’s atrocities.

The charges against Ongwen include murder, attempted murder, torture, rape, sexual slavery, conscription of children under the age of 15 into an armed group and, for the first time, “forced pregnancy” and forced marriage.



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The group has been blamed for the deaths of about 100,000 people and the abduction of 60,000 children. It relied on the abduction of largely defenceless villagers and refugees, including children, to provide labour and combatants. Girls were forced into sexual and domestic slavery while boys were forced to take up arms.

Former LRA abductees say they were forced to maim and kill friends, neighbours and relatives, and participate in gruesome rites such as drinking their victims’ blood. Ongwen himself was abducted by the LRA when still a teenager.

Most of the charges against Ongwen focus on attacks on refugee camps between 2002 and 2005. One of the worst involved a four-day raid on camps in north-eastern DRC in December 2009, in which about 350 civilians were killed and another 250, including at least 80 children, were abducted.

Brenda Atim, 28, a resident of Limu village in Gulu district of northern Uganda, which suffered heavily from LRA attacks for many years, said victims of the rebels may not now get justice.

“[This] is a big blow to the families affected by LRA. They thought Kony would be arrested and handed over to the ICC to answer to the charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity which he committed. The affected families would have loved to see their tormentor in the dock as they receive justice,” he said.

Joseph Kony pictured in 1994 during peace talks with the Ugandan government in Gulu. Photograph: Reuters

A member of Uganda’s northern Acholi ethnic minority, Kony was born in 1961 in Odek village in Gulu. He took up arms in the late 1980s, following in the footsteps of another messianic rebel, Alice Auma Lakwena, a former prostitute who is believed to have been either his cousin or aunt.

Kony claimed to be defending the Acholi against President Yoweri Museveni, who seized power from northern military rulers at the head of a rebel army in 1986. He says the Holy Spirit issues orders to him on everything from military tactics to personal hygiene, and that he wants to impose a regime on Uganda based on the Bible’s ten commandments.

Despite widespread northern resentment against Museveni during the government’s brutal war against the LRA, Kony’s policy of mass abductions soon lost him the support of local communities.

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In the 1990s, the LRA conflict spilled into neighbouring countries after the Sudanese government in Khartoum began backing the group in retaliation for Uganda’s support of southern Sudanese rebels battling for independence.

When Sudan signed a peace deal with the southern rebels in 2005, support for the LRA dried up, and after being forced into neighbouring DRC by the Ugandan army, Kony agreed to peace talks. These rapidly broke down.

A concerted campaign by activists in the US led Barack Obama to sign a law in 2010 that allowed the deployment of US special forces to work with regional armies to hunt Kony down.

Kony surged to unexpected worldwide prominence in 2012 on the back of an internet video made by a US-based advocacy group that became one of the fastest-spreading internet videos in history after more than 100 million users across the globe watched it in just a few days.

Popular interest waned quickly, however, even after the US put a bounty on Kony’s head in 2013. “The mission had a very specific objective: to remove Kony from the battlefield. The idea that it was a success depends on what Kony does next,” said Ledio Cakaj, a US-expert on the LRA.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ugandans in Lira district watch a screening of Kony 2012, a 30-minute YouTube film by the US campaign group Invisible Children. Photograph: STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images

Even if Kony dies, the LRA may regenerate, possibly through recruiting in CAR where there are “an almost unlimited number of fighters”, he said.

Kony’s eldest son, Ali, may succeed his father if the veteran leader dies. Both he and Salim, another son, play command roles and have been under US economic sanctions since last year.

Salim is thought to look after security and military operations, while Ali is involved in strategic planning, intelligence and smuggling networks involving elephant poaching and ivory trafficking. “Both brothers have every incentive to remain doing what they have been doing all their lives and spearhead a regeneration of the LRA outside Uganda,” Cakaj said.

Salim is reported by US officials to have killed LRA members who intended to defect.

The LRA “are a time bomb. They can explode any time and if we keep ignoring them, we shall pay the price. They are in touch with one another and militarily trained. They need a source of income and skill to live on. All they know is fighting. Leaving them empty handed will put them into position where another dangerous group to come up,” said Mao.

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Small LRA groups continue to carry out attacks, mostly in rural areas. Campaigners say the group was responsible for the murder of 21 civilians and the abduction of around 700 in 2016, with attacks targeting remote villages in the border areas.

A leaked memo revealed the Trump administration’s doubts about US involvement in the fight against the LRA, which is estimated to have cost $800m. The decision to pull US forces out, however, was taken last year, well before Trump took power.

Marine Gen Thomas Waldhauser, the head of US Africa Command, told reporters on Thursday that US forces would continue to help train militaries in central Africa. “Even though we are officially ending [the Kony mission], we are certainly aware of the fact that we do not want to leave a void there,” Waldhauser said.

Faber from the CNA said risks from the LRA remained. “Even if the LRA is well past its prime, it has survived for three decades and that was a lot to do with responding to the challenges. Other groups can learn from it. There are risks of regeneration. For the people in those vulnerable border areas I don’t think it is yesterday’s war,” she said.