Uganda’s Endless War

The cult-like insurgency of the Lord’s Resistance Army is the strangest war in postcolonial Africa. Growing out of Alice Lakwena’s militant Holy Spirit Movement, these northern-based rebels have fought the Ugandan government of President Yoweri Museveni since 1986. But barring Lakwena’s initial uprising, which may have killed 10,000 people, the LRA has never posed a substantial threat to Museveni's regime and to the bulk of the country’s population. In fact, the now-forgotten rebellion of the Allied Democratic Forces in western Uganda posed a greater challenge to the Kampala government.

What separates the LRA from movements on the continent is its enigmatic leader Joseph Kony (pronounced Co’yn). A member of the Acholi ethnic group, he was born in the early 1960s in Odek in Gulu district. Kony is a former Catholic altar boy who ended his formal schooling at a young age and became a witch doctor. He allegedly has the ability to heal people, and friends describe him as...