Terror organization: Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

Status: Leader of the LRA.

Role: He is considering today the most wanted terrorist in Africa. His terror organization is fighting against westerns, locals, wildlife rangers, Christians, Muslims and basically every group that will interrupt its missions. The LRA was the main supplier of ivory from elephants that were slaughtered mainly in Congo DRC. This ivory was sent to China in return of weapon and money, some of it funded and weaponized the LRA.

He is accused with crimes against humanity, terrorism, child abuse, child soldier, sex slavery, murder, crimes against wildlife, illegal trade in ivory and drug trafficking.

According to the UN he is responsible for the deaths of more than 100,000 people, the abduction of at least 20,000 children and the displacement of more than two million people.
He has Ugandan citizenship.

Location: Unknown, estimation that he is in the area between South Sudan and the Central African Republic. Another option is that he is in Sudan.

Born: 1961

Place of Birth: Odek, Northern Region, Protectorate of Uganda

Activities:
Joseph Rao Kony (born c. 1961), commonly known by his initials JRK, is a Ugandan terrorist who is the Canon of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) since 1987. The group is designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations Peacekeepers, the European Union and various other governments

An Acholi, Kony was born into a middle-class family. Kony’s father Luizi Obol and his mother Nora Oting were both farmers. Kony dropped out of school at a young age. In 1987, he formed the Lord’s Resistance Army. Kony declared a military offensive in Uganda, aiming to overthrow Yoweri Museveni’s Ugandan government and establish a theocratic state based on the dominion theology. After Kony’s terror activities, he was banished from Uganda, and shifted to South Sudan. Kony described himself as a freedom fighter, struggling for a Christian Uganda.

Kony has long been one of Africa’s most notorious and most wanted militant warlords. He has been accused by government entities of ordering the abduction of children to become child soldiers and sex slaves. Approximately 66,000 children became soldiers, and 2 million people were displaced internally from 1986 to 2009 by his forces. Kony was indicted in 2005 for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, but he has evaded capture. He has been subject to an Interpol Red Notice at the request of the ICC since 2006. Since the Juba peace talks in 2006, the Lord’s Resistance Army no longer operates in Uganda. Sources claim that they are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Central African Republic (CAR), or South Sudan. In 2013, Kony was reported to be in poor health, and Michel Djotodia, president of the CAR, claimed he was negotiating with Kony to surrender.

By April 2017, Kony was still at large, but his force was reported to have shrunk to approximately 100 soldiers, down from an estimated high of 3,000. Both the United States and Uganda ended the hunt for Kony and the LRA, believing that the LRA was no longer a significant security risk to Uganda. As of 2022, he is reported to be hiding in Darfur.

Kony has been implicated in abduction and recruitment of child soldiers. The LRA have had battle confrontations with the government’s NRA or UPDF within Uganda and in South Sudan for ten years. In 2008 the Ugandan army invaded the DRC in search for the LRA in Operation Lightning Thunder. In November 2013, Kony was reported to be in poor health in the eastern CAR town of Nzoka

Looking back at the LRA’s campaign of violence, The Guardian stated in 2015 that Kony’s forces had been responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 and the abduction of at least 60,000 children. Various atrocities committed include raping young girls and abducting them for use as sex slaves.

The actual number of LRA militia members has varied significantly over the years, reaching as high as 3000 soldiers. By 2017, the organization’s membership had shrunk significantly to an estimated 100 soldiers. In April 2017, both the US and Ugandan governments ended efforts to find Kony and fight the LRA, stating that the LRA no longer posed a significant security risk to Uganda.

While initially purporting to fight against government oppression, the LRA allegedly turned against Kony’s own supporters, supposedly to “purify” the Acholi people and turn Uganda into a theocracy. Kony proclaims himself the spokesperson of God and a spirit medium and claims he is visited by a multinational host of 13 spirits, including a Chinese phantom. Ideologically, the group is a syncretic mix of mysticism, Acholi nationalism, and heterodox Christian fundamentalism, and claims to be establishing a theocratic state based on the Ten Commandments and local Acholi tradition.