Small Progress with the Lord's Resistance Army
By Douglas Farah
One of the great tragedies of Africa in the past decade has been the mostly-ignored violence inflicted on parts of Uganda, Sudan and the DRC by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), led by a person who speaks directly to God and has been responsible for the kidnapping of thousands of children, the mutilation of many more, and other crimes against humanity.
The LRA is a terrorist organization that increasingly has proved to be a destabilizing factor across several countries in a region that is already reeling from criminal, terrorist and state-sponsored violence. Like the RUF in Sierra Leone and the Small Boy Units of Charles Taylor in Liberia, the LRA preys on children and women, primarily. Women are used as beasts of burden and sex slaves, the abducted children are turned into killers.
The LRA leader, Joseph Kony, gave his first interview ever to a journalist earlier this week, where he denied the undeniable and claimed the atrocities blamed on him were part of a propaganda campaign against him. Indicted by the International Criminal Court, along with most of the LRA leadership, Kony said he was fighting for "freedom." My entire blog is here.