Lord's Resistance Army

Reports are emerging of the massacre of 321 people including children in the Democratic Republic of Congo in December 2009 by the notorious Lord's Resistance Army, a sectarian Christian militant group based in northern Uganda, but who carries out atrocities across many African countries including Sudan, Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of Congo.

The group was founded in 1987 and is engaged in an armed rebellion against the Ugandan government in what is now one of Africa's longest-running conflicts. It is led by Joseph Kony, a former alter boy, who proclaims himself the "spokesperson" of God and a spirit medium, primarily of the Holy Spirit. In an interview in June 2007 the then second in command Vincent Otti stated "Lord’s Resistance Army is just the name of the movement, because we are fighting in the name of God. God is the one helping us in the bush. That’s why we created this name, Lord’s Resistance Army. And people always ask us, are we fighting for the [biblical] Ten Commandments of God.

That is true – because the Ten Commandments of God is the constitution that God has given to the people of the world. All people. If you go to the constitution, nobody will accept people who steal, nobody could accept to go and take somebody’s wife, nobody could accept to innocently kill, or whatever. The Ten Commandments carries all this." However a USA funded report of the same year concluded "the LRA has no political program or ideology, at least none that the local population has heard or can understand."

It is believed that the Lord's Resistance army numbers between 500 -3000 people including women and children, and in fact most of the army's soldiers are children, abducted from their families and forced into conflict. In the northern districts of Uganda, almost every family in the Acholi and now Langi area has been affected. Many families have lost a child through abduction, or their village was attacked and destroyed, families burned out and/or killed, and harvests destroyed by an army of abducted children. It is estimated that since the LRA's inception 10,000 boys and girls have been kidnapped by the army and forced into war, with very high casualty rates.

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants on 8 July and 27 September 2005 against Joseph Kony, his deputy Vincent Otti, and LRA commanders Raska Lukwiya, Okot Odhiambo and Dominic Ongwen. The five LRA leaders are charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, rape, sexual slavery, and enlisting of children as child soldiers, however they have remained elusive. One of the chilling dilemmas when addressing the terror unleashed by the Lord's Resistance Army is how to deal with its child soldiers. How does an LRA fighter return home? How does his village receive him? How does the community receive those that at one time terrorized them?