Joseph Kony and his murderous cult, the Lord’s Resistance Army, have been haunting northern Uganda and neighbouring countries for 24 years. Their modus operandi involves riding into unarmed towns, shooting, slashing, maiming, ripping open and looting, kidnapping children to become recruits or sex slaves, and retreating to secret hideouts, ready to repeat the same sequence at another town. They live to strike terror into the hearts of others.
The Ugandan government’s response to this has wavered. On several occasions they have taken military action and succeeded in destroying some of the LRA forces, but the majority of LRA members have escaped and proceeded to take revenge by killing and maiming thousands more unarmed civilians. Peace agreements made by the LRA have never been kept. Foreign soldiers sent to fight the LRA have fared no better than Ugandan forces.
Now the US government is debating the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Bill, which proposes to offer the Ugandan government further assistance in eliminating the LRA. There is no doubt that the LRA is an evil which needs to be purged from the face of the earth, but I suspect that terminating the LRA will require more than just legislation in a distant land.
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For an in-depth look at Joseph Kony and the LRA, see the book, First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army.