The Lord’s Resistance Army
Millennialism, Violence and the Timeless Dream
Keywords:
Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony, Alice Auma Lakwena, Child soldiersAbstract
This essay examines the history, strategy and tactics of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a millenarian terrorist group that originated among the Acholi tribe in Northern Uganda. Today, its operations focus on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but it is active in Uganda, the Sudan and the Central African Republic. The LRA is composed of approximately 90% kidnapped child soldiers and as a result of its depredations, almost 90% of the Acholi and other northern Ugandan tribes live in squalid IDP (Internally Displaced Person) camps in Uganda. Children in villages and even from some of the so called protected camps, the so-called “night commuters,” must trek as many as 20 miles each night into towns in order to avoid abduction. The article focuses in particular on the religious aspects of the LRA and on its metamorphosis from a local to a regional and ultimately into an international security challenge.
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