Uganda - Lord's Resistance Army

The LRA, led by Major General Joseph Kony, a former altar boy, has been pouring freshly trained and armed guerrillas into Uganda from Sudan over the last couple of years. A far cry from their primitive beginnings in 1988 under his aunt Alice Lakwena who started the Holy Spirit Movement (a gal who said she could protect her fighters from bullets until they were wiped out). The LR is-get this-a Christian fundamentalist group. Their agenda is to create a theocratic state based on the Ten Commandments. There are daily occurrences of looting of convoys and hit-and-run firefights with the army, usually leaving scores of government soldiers and civilians dead.

Joseph Kony leads this savage group-armed and uniformed by Sudan-whose members believe their bodies will deflect bullets when smeared with tree oils. In June 1997, Kony ordered his men to avoid killing civilians and to await reinforcements from Sudan. In the first six months of 1997, the LRA was responsible for 400 deaths in the northern third of Uganda and the displacing of some 200,000 farmers. The LRA specializes in abducting children, whom they train and enroll in their ranks. Some 3,000 schoolchildren were abducted in 1995 and 1996 by rebels targeting them as recruits.

The strength of the LRA has been estimated by the government at 600 men, but Sudanese money has expanded the LRA into a real army. Kony says he has 6,500 men in three brigades that operate in groups of 30 or less. Despite their new military bearing it's hard to know if local Acholis have to still be careful not to be found within six miles of a road, riding a bicycle or motorcycle, and anyone keeping ducks or sheep will be killed. The LRA considers ducks and sheep to be unclean animals. The LRA has experienced a number of setbacks at the hands of Clabe Akandwanaho, the brother of Museveni.

Around 5,000 children have been kidnapped and escaped from the LRA, but another 5,000 are still being held in rebel bases in the Southern Sudan according to Amnesty International. The children are sold for weapons (one AK per child) to Arabs and some say to do gooder Christian groups that create a ready market for the children. If their statistics are correct the number of freed slaves equals the number of kidnapped children from Northern Uganda.

According to Tomy Masaba Bambi in London, Joseph Kony is no longer in his camp in Jablein 80 miles from Juba but under house arrest in an undisclosed location. Also senior LRA leaders have had their passports taken away and were not allowed to leave the region. Kony was getting $7,000 a month from the Sudanese military until February 1999. There are two reasons suggested: one is that Turabi, under pressure from the United States, shut him down; the other is that Kony was also getting support from Kabila. The LRA has an office in London that keeps promising an intimate meeting with Kony. The LRA information office in Khartoum has been closed and its coordinator Yassin Ojwang moved to Aden. Their office in Nairobi lost its phone lines, and its secretary-general, Dominic S. Wanyama, and spokesperson, John Obita, were apparently sent to a refugee camp in Northern Kenya. For now the LRA can be contacted in London:

Alex Oloya

E-mail: aoloya@hotmail.com

London Mobile: 07931747202