History of the Conflict

When Yoweri Museveni became president of Uganda in 1986 a woman named Alice Lakwena from a local tribe started the Holy Spirit Movement (HSM) in opposition. The group gained regional support by recruiting followers and forming alliances with other rebellious groups. Their goal was to free the north from government oppression. Eventually Alice Lakwena was exiled and Joseph Kony, who claimed to be a distant cousin of Lakwena, became her successor. He renamed the HSM to the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA); they started to lose support and the number of members began to decline. His solution was to begin stealing not only food, but CHILDREN. Kony's tactics were- and still are- evil and malicious; he forced children to kill their own parents and demanded girls to be sex slaves for his officers. He claimed to have spiritual powers and manipulated young boys and girls. Kony and the LRA have abducted more than 30,000 children in northern Uganda and the number is still growing. In an effort to protect the people of northern Uganda, their government required them to leave their villages and enter "safety" camps. Unfortunately, the camps were infested with diseases and filled with constant violence. "At the height of the conflict, 1.7 million people lived in these camps across the region." Almost 10 years after the camps began to form, arrest warrants were finally issued for Kony and four of his top commanders. Of these 5 people, 3 still remain free, one of them being Joseph Kony. A year later, "peace negotiations" began; Kony would send a representative to speak on his behalf but no official agreement was ever signed. In 2008 Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, and Sudan (with intelligence and logistical support from the United States) collaborated and launched Operation Lightning Thunder. The operation, unforuntately, failed. To retaliate, the LRA attacked villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo and killed nearly 900 civilians and abducted 160. The LRA repeated the attack almost exactly one year later, this time killing 321 people and abducting 250. The LRA left Uganda in 2006 but have continued, to this day, their attacks in the border regions of northeastern Congo, South Sudan, and Central African Republic.