September 18, 1961 - Joseph Kony
What distinguishes Kony among the warlords of his era is the systematic use of children as the primary instrument of his campaign — abducted, coerced into violence, and turned against the communities they came from. The Lord's Resistance Army's insurgency spanned decades and multiple countries, leaving a displacement crisis of roughly two million people in its wake. His invocation of religious authority gave the movement an ideological veneer that complicated both opposition and outside intervention.
From Wikipedia
Joseph Rao Kony (born September 1961) is a Ugandan militant and warlord who founded the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations Peacekeepers, the European Union, and various other governments including the United Kingdom and United States.
An Acholi, Kony served as an altar boy in his childhood. After the Ugandan Civil War, Kony participated in the subsequent insurgency against president Yoweri Museveni under the Holy Spirit Movement or the Uganda People's Democratic Army before founding the LRA in 1987. Aiming to create a Christian state based on dominion theology, Kony directed the multi-decade Lord's Resistance Army insurgency. After Kony's terror activities, he was banished from Uganda and shifted to South Sudan largely between 2005 and 2006 due to intense military pressure from the Ugandan army and a peace deal between Sudan and southern rebels.
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.
- Last updated on .