Joseph Kony

Joseph Rao Kony (born 1961), is the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, a Christian fundamentalist terror organisation based out of Uganda and operating in larger East Africa, infamous for abducting and indoctrinating children to act as its foot soldiers.

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“”Yes, we are fighting for Ten Commandments... Is it bad? It is not against human rights. And that commandment was not given by Joseph [Kony]. It was not given by LRA. No, that commandment was given by God.
—Joseph Kony, making as much sense as ever[1]

Early life

Kony was born in August 1962 in the north-eastern Ugandan village of Odek. He started off as a committed altar boy, but dropped out of school in 1976 due to his persistently low grades. Even as a child, he tended to end disputes with his fists rather than words.

Lord's Resistance Army

The Lord's Resistance Army emerged from the collapse of a previous Christian rebel group, the Holy Spirit Movement, led by Alice Auma to whom Kony may be related. The HSM had been formed to fight the National Resistance Army (not to be confused with the other NRA), led by President Yoweri Museveni. After Museveni was removed from power, his army raped and pillaged the neighbouring countryside. As such, Kony formed the Lord's Resistance Army to replace the Holy Spirit Movement to fight Museveni's forces.

Despite the possibly good intentions with which the army was formed, Kony soon declared that their mission statement was to end the conflict by bringing Uganda under the rule of the Ten Commandments by conveniently ignoring the seventh one. Described by Christopher Hitchens as "a latter day Khmer Rouge", Kony's army has engaged in the mass enslavement of women and children, forcing boys to fight for them as soldiers and selling girls as sex slaves.

Despite the power he has achieved, Kony himself does not seem to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. At first, he attempted sending his troops into battle in cross-shaped formations, but after this didn't work, resorted to tactics that actually made sense except for dousing his soldiers in holy water and oil to ward off bullets and evil spirits. His army was soon reduced from thousands to hundreds of members. Belief in such spiritual body armor was also a feature of other millenarian insurgencies, including the Ghost Dance among the Sioux on the Great Plains in 1890 and the Boxer Rebellion of 1898-1901 in China.

Personal beliefs

Despite his evangelical Christianity, Kony is an Alcholi Voodoo Mystic who claims to be in contact with 13 spirits of varying nationalities, including a Chinese phantom (there goes the third Commandment). Kony is known never to eat pork, allegedly as a debt to the Sudanese Muslims who have been known to support his organisation.

Joseph Kony also believes he is the spokesperson for God and that he is the host of various spirits.[2] Like many people who claim to be God's conduit, Kony uses this as an excuse to do whatever the hell he wants.

Where is he now?

Kony was indicted for arrest by the International Criminal Court but has yet to be found. Reports claim that he has fled Uganda to the Congo and is in ill health. Michael Djetodia, President of the Central African Republic, claims to be in negotiations with Kony[3][4] while other reports claim that he is dead and the LRA has disintegrated. Naturally, conspiracy theories circulate that he never existed and that he was merely made up by Western governments as an excuse to invade Africa for (what else?) its oil. Most agree that people in the third camp have been watching Iron Man 3 a few too many times.

As of January 2018, Ugandan and US military forces have ended their hunt for Kony and his group, with a Ugandan spokesperson stating that "the LRA no longer poses a threat to us." As of April 2017 when the search was officially called off, Kony was estimated to have less than one hundred soldiers left under his command, if even that.[5]

gollark: Yes, this reddit post puts it at 644000, which is less bad.
gollark: ... didn't you say you were reading it *yesterday* or something? I'm pretty sure it's a million words or something.
gollark: Most of the planes I've been on have only had "normal" seating as far as I could tell. Those have mostly been shortish journeys around Europe, so that might be why.
gollark: BTW I use ArchThe AUR is very nice, it still seems to have lots of available binary packages, and it's pretty lightweight.
gollark: Lunar colonization!

See also
  • Invisible Children whose Kony 2012 2013 2014 Eventually brought the name of this nasty piece of work his 15 minutes of world fame, not to celebrate him but to raise awareness of his evil crimes.

References
  1. I will use the Ten Commandments to liberate Uganda
  2. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/the-deadly-cult-of-joseph-kony-1001084.html
  3. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/21/ugandan-warlord-joseph-kony-urged-surrender
  4. https://www.newvision.co.ug/new_vision/news/1334943/cafrica-insists-president-negotiating-kony
  5. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/world/africa/uganda-joseph-kony-lra.html
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