Joseph Kony speaks to journalists in southern Sudan in November 2006. PHOTO | AFP
By
Summary
· The founder of the Lord’s Resistance Army unleashed a wave of violence across northern Uganda for two decades
Eleven years ago, a documentary
catapulted the name Joseph Kony onto the global stage. The controversial film
Kony 2012 told the story of a Ugandan warlord whose forces are believed by the
United Nations to be responsible for the deaths of more than 100,000 people,
the abduction of at least 20,000 children and the displacement of more than two
million people.
Though most of the world hadn’t
heard of Kony before then, Ugandans knew and feared him. The founder of the
Lord’s Resistance Army unleashed a wave of violence across northern Uganda for
two decades.
In 2005, the International Criminal
Court brought charges of crimes against humanity against Kony and four of his
top commanders. In 2013 and 2021, the US announced a US$5 million bounty for
information leading to Kony’s capture.
He remains at large.
Now the International Criminal Court
wants to confirm the charges against Kony in his absence. The hope is that this
will renew international efforts to find Africa’s most wanted fugitive.
So, who is Joseph Kony?
His early life
Joseph Rao Kony was born in 1961 in
Odek sub-county in northern Uganda. He was one of six children in the Acholi
middle-class family of Luizi Obol and Nora Oting.
Kony’s parents were farmers. His
father was a Catholic, his mother an Anglican. Kony was an altar boy until
1976. He dropped out of school at age 15 to become a traditional healer.
In 1987, aged 26, Kony founded the
Lord’s Resistance Army, a Christian fundamentalist organisation that operated
in northern Uganda until 2006.
Altar boy turned rebel leader
Kony rose to prominence after taking
over the Holy Spirit Movement, a rebel group led by Alice Lakwena, his aunt, to
topple the Ugandan government.
The Holy Spirit Movement was formed
after Ugandan president Tito Okello, an Acholi, was overthrown by the National
Resistance Army – led by Yoweri Museveni – in January 1986. The Acholis largely
occupy northern Uganda.
Museveni’s National Resistance Army
was a rebel outfit that later metamorphosed into the Uganda Peoples’ Defence
Forces. Today it’s the national army.
When it came to power, the National
Resistance Army appeared to deliberately target the Acholi population in the
north. Villagers were violently attacked by army troops and subjected to food
shortages. Houses were burnt down, leading to forced displacements. The scale
of these attacks was never documented or substantiated.
Kony joined the Holy Spirit Movement
to fight for the rights of the Acholi. By 1987, however, army troops had
crushed the movement – Lakwena escaped into Kenya where she died in a refugee
camp in 2007.
Kony established the Lord’s
Resistance Army and proclaimed himself his people’s prophet. He soon turned
against his supporters, supposedly in an effort to “purify” the Acholi and turn
Uganda into a theocracy.
The rebel group carried out
indiscriminate killings. It forcibly recruited boys as soldiers and girls as
sex slaves.
Ideologically, the group espoused a
mix of mysticism, Acholi nationalism and Christian fundamentalism. It claimed
to be establishing a theocratic state based on the biblical 10 commandments and
Acholi tradition.
Kony proclaimed himself the
spokesperson of God. He claimed to have been visited by a multinational host of
13 spirits, including a Chinese phantom.
Kony’s military offensive
Kony and his rebel outfit committed
a string of atrocities against civilians. The group waged war for more than two
decades within Uganda – and later in the politically unstable neighbouring
countries of Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Central African
Republic – in an effort to topple Museveni. The actual number of militia
members varied over this period, hitting a high of 3,000 soldiers in the early
2000s.
After the 11 September 2001 terror
attacks in the US, the American government designated the Lord’s Resistance
Army a terrorist group.
In 2005, the International Criminal
Court issued arrest warrants for top commanders of the Lord’s Resistance Army
for crimes against humanity.
In August 2008, the US declared Kony
a global terrorist, a designation that carries financial and other penalties.
The Lord’s Resistance Army was
eventually forced out of Uganda following the failed Juba peace talks of
2006-2008 between the group’s leadership and the Ugandan government. The talks
were mediated by the government of southern Sudan.
Kony and his militia went into
hiding in the DRC. In December 2008, Uganda, DRC and Sudan launched an
offensive dubbed Operation Lightning Thunder to track them down.
Kony’s rebel group attacked
Congolese civilians suspected of supporting the operation. Villagers were
raped, their limbs mutilated and hundreds killed. The group eventually
splintered to evade capture, with most members escaping into the Central
African Republic.
Uganda called off the operation in
March 2009, saying the Lord’s Resistance Army was at its weakest point ever.
In November 2013, Central African
Republic officials reported that Kony was ready to negotiate his surrender. He
was reported to be in poor health in Nzoka, a town in the country’s eastern
region. He never showed up.
By 2017, the rebel group’s
membership had shrunk to an estimated 100 soldiers. In April that year, the US
and Ugandan governments ended efforts to find Kony. They stated he no longer
posed a significant security risk to Uganda. But he is still wanted by the
International Criminal Court.
Kony today
Some of the fighters from the Lord’s
Resistance Army took advantage of Uganda’s 2000 amnesty programme, which
offered blanket immunity to any rebel who had taken up arms against the
government since 1986.
Kony’s exact location, however,
remains unknown. He’s thought to be hiding in the vast jungles of the Central
African Republic or in Sudan.
While attempts to bring Kony to
justice continue, post-conflict northern Uganda is on the slow path to economic
and social recovery.
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