Netters this is an interesting article about Kony, his origins and motivations...article taken from site below;
http://www.db.idpproject.org/Sites/idpSurvey.nsf/wViewCountries/14C8D00C472ED3CFC12569260047E374
www.idpproject.org Uganda
Section : Causes and Background of Displacement Sub-section : Background
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Background of the Lord's Resistance Army (1987-2002)
Killing of Acholis loyal to President Obote by Idi Amin in the 1970s
Acholis mobilised for the overthrow of Amin in the late 1970s
The "Obote II" Ugandan army (UNLA) included a predominant Acholi element until Museveni (NRA) gained power in 1986
Acholi contingent of the UNLA continued to engage the NRA forces in 1986 while fleeing to Sudan and creating rebel group Uganda People's Democratic Army (UPDA)
Holy Spirit Movement Front (HSMF) led by Alice Auma "Lakwena" fighting NRA during the 1986-87 period
Joseph Kony fighting with UPDA but "inspired" by HSMF
Peace accord between UPDA and NRA in 1988, but Kony leaving and creating LRA
Breakdown of peace talks between LRA and Museveni in 1994 marks end of support for LRA by Acholi people
First round of major LRA attacks during 1996 forced approximately 110,000 Acholi people to seek refuge in trading centres in Gulu district
Reported in March 2002 that between 2,000 �3,000 LRA fighters remained encamped within Sudan between 65 and 100 km. from the border
LRA actively pursued by Ugandan army during first of 2002 after being considered a "terrorist group" by the US
"From the beginning, the LRA's principal tactic has been to target the civilian population of Acholiland, terrorizing the community and creating paralyzing despondency. In its attacks, it characteristically kills, maims, rapes, loots, burns homes, destroys crops, and � most traumatically � abducts civilians, especially children. Kony is said to believe (or to have been told by his spirits) that the Acholi are to be punished for their lack of support to his cause.
Beyond this vague objective, its own survival and a vaguely-stated goal of 'overthrowing the Museveni government', the LRA seems to have no coherent political programme. As a channel for spirits, Kony has created an aura for himself and his organisation of deliberate irrationality and obscurantism. As a practical matter, the LRA exists as an end in itself, serving to prey upon the civilian population, keeping it in a state of terror and turmoil and preventing any meaningful economic reconstruction of the region. " (Weeks March 2002, p.9)
Historical background:
"During the first post-Independence government of President Milton Obote (referred to as 'Obote I'), the Ugandan army was still derived primarily from the north. The Acholi, while not the majority, comprised its predominant ethnic group. Soldiers from the West Nile region were prominent as well. (Gersony, Section 1, 1997, "Background")
"Amin's persecution of Acholis: Army Commander Col. Idi Amin - an ethnic Kakwa and a Muslim who claimed to be from Koboko County in the West Nile's Arua District - overthrew Obote in January 1971. Fearing the army's Acholi and Langi elements, he ordered them to the barracks, and early in his regime had many hundreds of their officers and enlisted men killed. The Amin regime was characterized by the elimination of many prominent, educated or prosperous Acholi in Kampala as well as in the north, including in 1977 the Anglican Archbishop of Uganda. Some Acholi assert that an entire generation of Acholi leaders was eliminated or forced into exile during these years.
Amin replaced the Acholi in the army with West Nilers, especially Kakwa and Aringa people from northern Arua and with a group many Ugandans refer to as "Sudanese." The term "Sudanese" apparently refers to Sudanese migrant laborers long settled in Uganda and their descendants, who resided around the Jinja area near Kampala; or their relatives from southern Sudan (and some from northeastern Zaire) who were invited to join the Amin forces.
As national and international disaffection with Amin increased, anti-Government elements (including the current president, Yoweri Museveni) coalesced in Tanzania during the late 1970s, and organized to overthrow him. According to some northerners, Ugandan Acholis residing as refugees in Sudan as well as Acholi in Gulu and Kitgum living in their home areas were recruited for this purpose. In Tanzania, they organized and trained to participate in the Ugandan National Liberation Army (UNLA). The Tanzanian Army and the UNLA invaded Uganda and in April 1979 overthrew the Amin forces, many of whom retreated to Sudan.
Following three brief interim presidencies (Lule, Binaisa and Muwanga), and an election whose integrity was widely questioned, President Obote was returned to power in 1980. The "Obote II" Ugandan army, now the UNLA, again included a predominant Acholi element. Its proportion was estimated by some Acholi sources as about 30% to 40% of the approximately 35,000-person force. A larger proportion of officers than enlisted men may have been Acholis. The army, often perceived by the public as largely of Acholi origin, was used by the government for the unenviable job of settling power disputes and carrying out unpopular government orders, gaining for it the enmity of many Ugandans. " (Gersony, Section 1, 1997,"Amin's persecution of Acholis")
"In 1981, the National Resistance Army (NRA) under Yoweri Museveni began an armed insurgency. The NRA was comprised primarily of Banyankole, Baganda and Banyarwanda combatants from southern and central Uganda, including Luwero District where in 1984, Obote forces carried out extensive reprisals against unarmed Baganda civilians. UNLA forces in Luwero were often referred to as "the Acholis" and were and blamed for the deaths of 100,000 civilians.
In 1985, Acholi elements in the UNLA overthrew the Obote government, expelled other ethnic groups from the military, and put a predominately Acholi government in power under General Tito Okello Lutwa. This was followed by authoritative and well documented reports of looting throughout the country by primarily Acholi officers and enlisted men. Following a short-lived power-sharing treaty between the UNLA and NRA, the NRA overthrew the government and took power. Fearing revenge, the ex-UNLA Acholi forces fled to Sudan where they organised themselves into an armed insurgency against the NRA." (UN November 2001, p.13)
"As the Acholi UNLA forces crossed Acholiland, they warned Acholi civilians that the NRA would exact revenge - and in fact kill many of them - when it arrived in Gulu and Kitgum. They urged civilians to follow them across the border to Sudan, and many did. The rest remained at home and held their breath, awaiting developments." (Gersony, Section 1, 1997,"Advent of the NRA")
"Most of the former Acholi UNLA soldiers who retreated from Kampala (fighting the NRA as they withdrew) continued north during March 1986 and finally crossed the international border into Sudan. Sudan provided refuge and a base from which to re-reorganize but, according to most reports, did not provide military assistance. Several Acholi asserted that, in fact, Sudanese authorities confiscated their weapons when they entered Sudan and returned them when they crossed back into Uganda.
According to some reports, senior Acholi officers began actively planning their military campaign against the NRA almost immediately. A Makerere University study [...] asserts that the anti-government Uganda People's Democratic Army (UPDA) was established in Juba in March 1986. One knowledgeable interviewee asserted that in May 1986 key Acholi military leaders, at a meeting in Sudan, identified locations throughout Gulu and Kitgum which the UPDA would attack in mid-August. If these reports are generally accurate, it appears that the UPDA was organized just as the NRA arrived in Gulu, and that its battle strategy was determined during a period in which almost all of the assessment's interviewees characterized the NRA's conduct as exemplary." (Gersony 1997, Section 1,"Phase I UPDA")
The present leader of LRA, Joseph Kony, came to the forefront during the second half of the 1980s:
"In late 1986, a temporary but significant figure emerged on this conflict scene in the form of Alice Auma 'Lakwena.' Lakwena is significant for several reasons: her movement, the Holy Spirit Movement Front (HSMF), came the closest to succeeding in overthrowing the NRM of any movement to date; Lakwena, through the HSMF, was the only early resistance to the NRA/M to claim moral and religious grounds to attempt to influence the conflict; and it seems that Lakwena, rather than the UPDA, provided the greatest inspiration for Joseph Kony, though he fought with the UPDA. Auma claimed to be possessed by the spirit of a dead Italian soldier named Lakwena. To a people who felt they were being punished for atrocities committed by Acholi soldiers fighting the NRA under Obote II and Lutwa, the HSMF promised redemption. In order to join HSMF, one had to undergo ritual purification to cleanse themselves of past sins. According to HSMF doctrine, only an impure soldier could die in battle. There can be little doubt that the success of the HSMF was due, in part, to the beliefs in magic and spirit powers that are a part of the Acholi culture and, in part, due to the early successes of the HSMF.
In October of 1987, a mere 80 km from Kampala, the NRA finally and resolutely defeated the HSMF. Lakwena is said to have escaped to Nairobi, but she has not made an overt gesture toward overthrowing the NRM since.
The UPDA, meanwhile, continued their struggle as a separate movement, which even on occasion clashed with the HSMF forces. In 1988, however, the UPDA signed a peace accord with the NRM. Many of those in the UPDA leadership were given positions in the government. It is said by some that those with the most to gain by coming back into the country mainstream and, thus, the most to lose by staying in the bush were the people who accepted the peace accord. Those who had little education, stood little chance of significant gain, and had already committed atrocities remained in the bush. According to Charles Alai, a founding member of the UPDA, who was, in 1996, Uganda's Minister of State for Public Services, '...by 1988 when we negotiated with the NRM government, Kony had already broken away from UPDA. When we came out, we had already disagreed with Kony and he took the most deadly and primitive officers with him.' Thus, at the conclusion of the 1988 peace accords, a rather large contingent of the disenfranchised stayed in the bush.
Though Kony adopted many of the methods of his supposed cousin Lakwena he never gleaned the popular support she had. His movement, known in 1988 as the Uganda Peoples Democratic Christian Army (UPDCA) and later as the LRA, has had something more of a schizophrenic or disjointed nature about it. Kony has vacillated from near full adoption of Lakwena's beliefs, including the Christian components denouncing witch doctors and diviners, to denying any links with Christian doctrine to incorporating many Muslim rituals and beliefs.
[...]
By 1994, things had once again reached a state where the government felt it needed to attempt to bring peace to the north. Thus, in 1994, peace talks were held between Kony and the NRM. These talks were facilitated by Betty Bigombe. Bigombe, herself an Acholi, was then the Minister for Pacification of the North. Bigombe's efforts very nearly came to fruition. It is said that, at the time, LRA soldiers were staying freely in the trading centers and that a cease-fire existed. These talks ended badly when President Museveni suddenly announced that he was giving the LRA seven days to put down their weapons and turn themselves over to the government. Within three days of this announcement, the LRA had once again begun attacking.
After the breakdown of the 1994 talks, any support that the LRA had enjoyed from the Acholi people dried up. Thus, the mass abduction of children began in early 1995.
[...]
Clearly, the people of Acholi-land have little stomach for a movement that has inflicted so much harm and contributed so greatly to the destruction of their culture and people. Whatever support the LRA has enjoyed in the past in Acholi-land has long since dissipated." (Westbrook June 2000, , sects. III, VI)
"The Ugandan People's Defence Forces (UPDF) deployed in all main trading centres throughout Gulu, Kitgum and Padar Districts and continued to engage in low-intensity battles with the LRA until February 1996, when the later, buttressed by alleged arms and logistical from Khartoum, escalated its attacks against Acholi communities. By July 1996, the LRA had attacked numerous locations throughout Gulu in what appeared to be a campaign to breed fear amongst the population and to force the UPDF to respond in a more forceful and imprecise manner. There followed numerous incidents of Acholi citizens being caught up in "friendly fire" or of being brutally interrogated and accused of being LRA collaborators.
[...]
Initial attacks February � September 1996, resulted in approximately 110,000 Acholi people fleeing voluntarily to trading centres in Gulu district where UPDF detachments offered a degree of protection. In late October, UPDF tactics changed. Officers began encouraging and persuading the Acholi to seek the refuge of 'protected villages.' In some cases, the Acholi were given the option of displacing themselves or remaining in their homes and being mistaken for LRA. In January 1997, neighbouring Kitgum district was attacked, with 81,000 Acholi fleeing to protected villages, reportedly in a voluntarily manner. Those who had been hesitant to move to the protected villages in Gulu, were now given further encouragement. By end 1997, a total of 400,000 Acholi had been displaced - some by force, some by persuasion and some voluntarily � although the exact proportion has never been ascertained." (OCHA 23 May 2001, "Historical Backdrop")
"Current estimates [April 2001] put the strengths of the LRA at around 200 to 300 operating within Uganda and about 800 operating in southern Sudan. The vast majority of LRA fighters and camp followers are either children or were children at the time of their abduction into the movement." (UN CHR 19 April 2001)
"With the development of the Uganda-Sudan relationship [by beginning of 2002], Kony has become increasingly isolated from external support and funding; especially as the UK has frozen bank accounts of known LRA and ADF collaborators as part of the crackdown on terrorism. At the same time, a significant number of his soldiers are taking advantage of the amnesty on offer. In December [2001], the UPDF reported that 82 rebels, including commanders, had surrendered to the government in less than two months and more may have returned directly to their villages. It is alleged, however that Kony has tasked commanders loyal to him to arrest and retrieve the deserters. A demobilisation process has been launched by the Office of the Prime Minister under the Amnesty Law � which applies both to the ADF and LRA � but there needs to be improved promotion and information on the law, and an increase of funding for the process if it is to be truly effective and confidence in it is to be maintained. At the end of December, the Amnesty Commission reported that it was unable to demobilize, reintegrate and resettle over 2,000 ex-rebels due to financial constraints." (OCHA 28 February 2002, pp.31-32)
Research undertaken between November 2001 and January 2002 shed more light on LRA at present
"Ugandan and foreign military and diplomatic sources were broadly consistent in their assessment that the LRA main force, in the Sudan, consists a well-armed and trained body of perhaps 2,000�3,000 fighters, located in an encampment that is also crowded with those fighters' wives and consorts, and with their children as well as young children who have been recently abducted from Acholiland and are undergoing training as fighters � the total population of the main encampment is perhaps 5,000 people. According to international military observers, this encampment is over 100 km. from the border (others in the military place it closer in, at 65 km. from the border), in territory nominally under Sudanese government control, and it is shifted periodically for security reasons." (Weeks March 2002, p.8)
Operation Iron Fist started March 2002 UPDF soldiers in pursuit of LRA in southern Sudan with permission of Government of Sudan, is running into trouble on both sides of the border: "After the attacks in the USA on 11 September 2001, the US State Department declared the LRA, among others, a terrorist group. With the global scene largely dominated by the anti-terrorist campaign in the last months of 2001, prospects for a peaceful resolution to the conflict appeared to recede. The Ugandan government publicly demanded a military solution to the LRA problem. Museveni visited Sudan in January 2002 for the IGAD meeting, and at a pre-summit meeting with Bashir both presidents pledged support for the war on terrorism. This visit, like the earlier visits of President Bashir to Kampala in 2001, signal a marked improvement in bi-lateral relations. Towards the end of January 2002 there were reports of a significant UPDF military build-up in northern Uganda and speculation grew that a move to attack the LRA inside Sudan was imminent." (ACCORD 2002, "Implementing the 1999 Nairobi Agreement")
"A recent agreement signed by the Ugandan and Sudanese governments has given the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) authorisation to sweep through broad swathes of Sudanese territory in pursuit of the LRA.
[...]
'Either way we are happy,' he said. 'In case LRA runs to other areas, we will go there and get them. The protocol permits that. They [the Sudanese government] gave us no objections to going into areas they control.
[...]
During the operation, which began on 28 March, the UPDF overran five LRA base camps in (Eastern Equatoria) southern Sudan, and by 29 March had captured a cache of arms worth just over US $2 million, according to Bantariza. He said there had been no casualties reported since the operation began.
[...]
According to, a private international organisation promoting peace and human rights in Africa, the process leading to improved relations evolved at the regional level under the auspices of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) but was also boosted by the US-led war on terror launched after the 11 September events - in which it has secured Khartoum's assistance against terrorism and listed the LRA as a terrorist organisation.
[...]
[T]he London-based organisation [Justice Africa] also suggested that the Sudanese military could have warned the LRA of the impending Ugandan offensive, enabling it to evacuate its bases before the arrival of the UPDF.
According to Justice Africa, the LRA's main military bases were within the security perimeter of the Sudanese army's southern command in Juba - its major garrison in southern Sudan, from where it could easily have dealt with the LRA itself." (IRIN 5 April 2002)
"After four months, 'Operation Iron Fist,' the military operation underway to root out the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), has yielded few results and destroyed the security of civilians in both Sudan and Uganda. Consequently, the civilian population has been left without adequate protection while the Ugandan army is concentrated on the pursuit of the LRA in Sudan. The current crisis shows the high cost of the collective failure to protect the civilian population (including IDPs) and the urgency for international action without further delay." (NRC August 2002)
"The security situation in northern Uganda has worsened, with continued attacks by LRA rebels. These continue to be characterized by killings, abductions, looting and the destruction of property. One of the most serious incidences reported is the massacre of an estimated 57 civilians, hacked to death with machetes and knives on 25th July in a village near the norhtern town of Kitgum. Vehicles hace been ambushed on th eroad, including a military lorry a few kilometers from Gulu town in which 25 soldiers were injured. The wave of violence has resulted in increased dispalcement, although it is difficult to guage the extent of this while access remains extremely limited. There are an estimated 550,000 displaced in the north. " (OCHA 31 July 2002)
"Rebels crossing into the country from neighbouring southern Sudan since mid-June have attacked 16 of th existing 35 IDP camps in th edistricts of Gulu, Kitgum and Pader, as well as a refugee settltment in Adjumani district." (IFRC 4 September 2002)
"The Sudanese and Ugandan governments have delayed extending a defence protocol because of a new situation created by the recent upsurge in fighting between the Khartoum authorities and rebels in southern Sudan, a senior Sudanese diplomat said on Thursday.
[�]
Fighting escalated in southern Sudan last month after the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) seized the key town of Torit from government control. Last week, the Sudanese army bombed a Ugandan military camp in southern Sudan which it said was situated close to SPLA targets. Speculation is mounting of rising tension between Sudan and Uganda, although the authorities have refused to comment." (IRIN 3 October 2002)
See also Weeks (March 2002, pp 5-14) for a good historical overview of the Acholi and LRA (accessible from the bibliography below).
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Sources:
Accord: An International Review of Peace Initiatives (Accord), 2002, (No.11) Protracted conflict, elusive peace: Initiatives to end the violence in northern Uganda [Internet]
Gersony, Robert, 2 October 1997, The Anguish of Northern Uganda, Section 1, (US Embassy - Kampala) [Internet]
Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), 3 October 2002, Uganda: Extension of defence protocol delayed [Internet]
Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), 5 April 2002, UGANDA-SUDAN: Focus on missing child abductees [Internet]
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 4 September 2002, Uganda Red Cross Society helps thousands left homeless by fighting [Internet]
Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), 31 August 2002, NRC Recommendations � NGO Forum August 2002 [Internal link]
United Nations, November 2001, Consolidated Inter-Agency Appeal for Uganda 2002 [Internet]
United Nations Commission on Human Rights (CHR), 19 April 2001, Statement of the High Commissioner for Human Rights pursuant to resolution 2000/60, on the abduction of children from northern Uganda [Internet]
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), 23 May 2001, Conference On Internally Displaced Persons: Lessons Learned And Future Mechanisms, Oslo 23 May 2001: Uganda Case Study [Internal link]
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), 28 February 2002, Affected Populations in the Great Lakes Region [Internal link]
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), 31 July 2002, Information exchange meeting report
Westbrook, David, June 2000, "The Torment of Northern Uganda: A Legacy of Missed Opportunities", The Online Journal of Peace and Conflict Resolution, Issue 3.2 [Internet]
Willet Weeks, March 2002, Pushing the Envelope: Moving Beyond 'Protected Villages' in Northern Uganda [Internal link]
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