What was kony 2017

The taskforce was drawn from all units of the Ugandan army, but may not have exceeded 1, men, according to media reports. But the Ugandan troops have recorded significant successes. Four key LRA commanders have been captured, and an insurgency of 2, fighters that terrorised a huge swath of territory across central Africa has been sharply degraded.

The LRA, now believed to be down to less than armed men, has splintered into small units operating in the remotest regions of eastern CAR, north-eastern Congo, and Darfur. He is believed to be hiding in the Kafia Kingi enclave, a disputed border area between Sudan and South Sudan. Khartoum is not a member of the regional taskforce and, as a historical supporter of the LRA, appears to have given Kony safe haven.

Crucially, though, he no longer leads his men. There is a group … who has decided to leave [the] LRA and operates on [its] own. The LRA has been completely disorganised with no central command. In the fall of , the mayor of a remote Central African village biked 70 miles over two days to reach the town of Sam Ouandja to request that Invisible Children install a radio in his community. Some villages also earn money by charging roving traders a few Congolese francs to make calls.

Isolated communities in Congo and the Central African Republic are desperate for more radios, which are often the only lifelines to the outside world. Villages use them to exchange news about commodity prices, request medical help, and keep in touch with family. While he grumbled about the lack of pay from Invisible Children, Ambroise likes that the job broadens his horizons. Whatever their complaints, volunteer operators — and, indeed, many Congolese in this neglected region — are grateful to Invisible Children for providing connectivity in a corner of the country almost devoid of social services.

But I sensed that operators were only partially aware of the risk they were running by becoming veritable intelligence operatives. Invisible Children clothes its operators in T-shirts with a logo — a handset surrounded by emanating radio waves — emblazoned on the chest.

On my last full day in Dungu, I drove with two operators to check on a malfunctioning radio in Duru, a town some 50 miles away, near the South Sudanese border. On the way back, we stopped in a flyspeck village with a high-frequency radio operated by Catholic Relief Services.

A Congolese army officer was inside using the radio, which would be against Invisible Children protocol. I asked the operator if the army listens to his daily calls.

Absolutely not, he replied. They do not have our frequency. A few kilometers down the road, I stopped at several Congolese army checkpoints, which are usually just two or three soldiers living in thatched huts and farming small plots to feed themselves.

The checkpoints appear every few miles or so marked by dummies dressed in helmet and fatigues, both to alert drivers and sometimes draw LRA fire as soldiers beat a retreat. At the second checkpoint, I introduced myself, handed out cigarettes to lighten the mood, and asked the Congolese soldiers if they ever listened in to the CRS radio network.

He puffed on his cigarette and then recited the two daily call times. Kony himself may be dialing into the twice-daily rondes for all Invisible Children knows: He uses high-frequency radios to direct his scattered fighters from the safety of Sudan, where he is believed to have taken refuge some miles away. There is no way to know who is on the line.

American and Ugandan troops responded within a few hours; when they left, the rebels running the village beat the operator, believing that he was collaborating with the LRA he was not and the U.

Gunmen asked if anyone had a phone, and residents immediately led them to the home of an Invisible Children operator with a Thuraya satellite phone, which the group distributes in some areas of the Central African Republic where installing a high-frequency radio is too difficult — or where it might attract the wrong attention.

LRA gunmen stole the phone and held the operator captive for a week. Sean Poole said he had no record of such an attack, although he did point to a December attack on Kpabou that was reported by satellite phone in which the LRA abducted 10 civilians and stole a high-frequency radio battery for its own use.

I first asked Zerla about her relationship with the U. A week later, I pressed her again on this point. I asked if she was comfortable being in the dark about how military commanders used the intelligence she provided. I continued to ask probing questions, and she became so agitated that she stood up from the table, walked over, and loomed above me.

But the foundation no longer provides air support and military training to the UPDF, and since , Bridgeway has considered its counter-LRA work mostly finished. Invisible Children wants to stay in the region for as long as possible. The group's data, gathered over the radio network, shows an uptick in violence: The LRA abducted people and killed 21 last year, up from and 11, respectively, in It is already one of the last NGOs in Dungu.

The radios will remain, an emergency hotline to which anyone can listen and no one will respond. Last summer, the Ugandan military announced that it would draw down its counter-LRA deployment. Kayanja Muhanga, who was preparing to redeploy to Mogadishu, told me that the number of Kony's fighters was dwindling, and other hotspots more central to Uganda's national interests — like Somalia and South Sudan — now required greater attention, which is why the UPDF considers its mission in central Africa more or less complete.

Is it worth the huge cash outlays? The Congolese army is worse than nothing at all. What will happen to those operators? Think about it. On my last day in Dungu, the plane taking us to Obo arrived an hour early.

A gardener loaded our bags into a Land Cruiser, and I made my farewells. I promised to write Joseph on WhatsApp. He smiled and retreated into the darkened radio room to join his colleagues. The operators expected more bad news from Masombo, the village attacked just before I arrived — and where LRA gunmen had shot a motorcycle passenger just a day earlier. It was 10 a.

We drove through Dungu, past the rotting, rusted signs of long-departed NGOs, to a grassy airstrip maintained by the local Catholic diocese.

I climbed into the co-pilot's seat of a Cessna Caravan It is the same model aircraft that Invisible Children will likely charter when the money runs out, the adventure must end, and Zerla, Marie-Regnault, and the other Western employees leave Dungu for good. At one time he was pursued by Ugandan and US troops but they gave up the chase in arguing that with his dwindling band of followers he had become a spent force. Following a International Criminal Court arrest warrant Mr Kony is wanted on 12 counts of crimes against humanity and 21 counts of war crimes.

He is accused of brutalising civilians in northern Uganda through murder, abduction, mutilation and the burning of property. From the s, LRA attacks became infamous. Rebel fighters would hack off their victims' limbs or parts of their faces. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to flee their homes, tens of thousands were killed and thousands of others were abducted for fighting and sexual slavery.

Mr Kony himself is thought to have taken many of the captured women as wives. He also has an unknown number of children, two of whom, Salim and Ali, have been sanctioned by the US for their alleged role in LRA activities. Born in the early s into an Acholi peasant family in Odek, a village in northern Uganda, Mr Kony is remembered as an amiable boy. He became a traditional healer after leaving primary school, but in the s was drawn to the Holy Spirit Movement led by charismatic figure Alice Auma, better known as Alice Lakwena.

She said she was fighting for the rights of the Acholi people who were feeling marginalised in the turbulent politics of s Uganda. They felt excluded from power after President Milton Obote, who was from the north, was overthrown in a military rebellion, and eventually replaced by current President Yoweri Museveni in Despite promising her followers protection from bullets, Ms Auma's movement was defeated in and she fled to Kenya.

The LRA was founded in the aftermath of that defeat saying it continued to support the people of the north and wanted to install a government based on the biblical 10 commandments. At one time the LRA was popular in the north, but that waned as the group's brutality increased. Mr Kony has used religion and traditional beliefs to inspire his followers but some question his sincere commitment to those ideas.

They say, 'You, Mr Joseph, tell your people that the enemy is planning to come and attack,'" he has explained. In a film broadcast on the BBC, one of his close allies, Captain Sunday, said that through the help of spirits the LRA leader could see the future. He was also immortal, the captain added. He has created an aura of mysticism around himself and his rebels follow strict rules and rituals. They say that the oil is the power of the Holy Spirit.

He has also used terror to maintain control, beating and killing followers who were caught trying to flee.