In March 2012, a documentary detailing accusations of violent acts committed by Joseph Kony spread like wildfire on social media, prompting international outrage and a groundswell of support for the capture of the Ugandan warlord.
In the documentary, “Kony 2012”, which was posted online by the US-based group Invisible Children, the tales of atrocities are horrifying: armed supporters force abducted children to kill their own parents, brutal mutilations include the hacking off of lips and limbs, and the sexual slavery of young girls stolen from their families. The group says its aim is to raise awareness and bring Kony to justice.
While some critics question whether the film captured the full scope of the conflict, one matter is without debate: Kony now ranks as one of the International Criminal Court’s most wanted men, facing arrest on charges of crimes against humanity after his campaign of brutality in his failed bid to overthrow the Ugandan government.
Kony was a spiritual leader, known as a healer among the Acholi people. He inherited a powerful support base from Alice Lakwena, a spirit-medium.
Lakwena’s followers would “daub themselves in shea butter crosses which they believed would protect them from bullets and they believed that stones would explode like grenades”, explains Matthew Green, author of “The Wizard of the Nile — The Hunt for Africa’s Most Wanted”, about Kony.
Lakwena fled to Kenya after President Yoweri Museveni’s forces launched a brutal attack on her and her followers.
Staying in northern Uganda, Kony rallied Lakwena’s remaining supporters and recruited more with a powerful mix of mythical claims, charisma and unconscionable violence.
Green describes being one of the few journalists to ever meet Kony when the rebel leader briefly emerged from his jungle hideout in 2006.
“Although he was surrounded by phalanxes of child soldiers with Kalashnikov rifles and bayonets fixed to them, he actually looked terrified of meeting strangers,” Green said.
Despite Kony’s apparent fear and paranoia, Green says the rebel leader was charismatic and clearly a “very powerful orator” when speaking to his people. “He had an almost musical voice as he spoke in his Acholi language and you could see that the people listening were completely captivated.”
If Kony attracted supporters through his “mystical powers” and charisma, he kept them through fear.
Kony’s forces are believed to have abducted thousands of children to join his cause — however, the exact number is unconfirmed. At the height of the violence during the mid-2000s, parents tried to protect their children from harm by sending them to sleep in towns, away from Kony’s ruthless kidnappers.
Brutal punishments were inflicted on those who were accused of disloyalty by an increasingly paranoid leader. “Kony once gave an order that anyone caught riding a bicycle should have their legs cut off. Bicycles were a very common means of transport in rural areas and he was worried that informers, if they saw the rebels, would rapidly pedal away and alert the nearest army post.”
And similarly he would cut off people’s arms as a kind of warning not to oppose the rebels.
Kony created the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) with the intention to lead, based on his version of the Ten Commandments. Since then it has grown into a “disciplined fighting force”, says Green, explaining that its members occupy a rank and are rewarded for loyalty.
Kony has been able to maintain his hold over them with his mix of self-proclaimed spiritual powers and military strategy, Ned Dalby, Central Africa researcher with the International Crisis Group, said in a 2011 interview with CNN.
“He cultivates this image of himself as a medium for the power of the spirit and at other times, he presents himself as a ruthless military leader. So he’s able to maintain cohesion as a group and maintain the loyalty of his fighters,” Dalby said.
He noted that some former LRA fighters from northern Uganda have given clues as to why some outside the group stayed loyal to Kony. “They expressed the feeling that because they were given a rank, they were given a certain purpose, and respect and authority,” Dalby says. “And then, once they’re outside the LRA, they find they’ve become just another poor person, trying to survive.”
Kony has created an aura of fear and mysticism around himself and his rebels follow strict rules and rituals.
“When you go to fight you make the sign of the cross first. If you fail to do this, you will be killed,” one young fighter who escaped from the LRA told the US-based Human Rights Watch. “You must also take oil and draw a cross on your chest, your forehead, and each shoulder, and you must make a cross in oil on your gun. They say that the oil is the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Kony appears to believe that his role is to cleanse the Acholi people.
A few years ago, Kony broke his silence and was interviewed on camera in his jungle base at the time in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
He was surrounded by some of what he estimated were his 3,000 heavily armed fighters, and insisted he was not the monster he was portrayed to be. “Let me tell you clearly what happened in Uganda. Museveni went into the villages and cut off the ears of the people, telling the people that it was the work of the LRA. I cannot cut the ear of my brother; I cannot kill the eye of my brother.”
He gave the interview at the start of a delicate peace process brokered by the authorities South Sudan. But the negotiations saw splits in LRA ranks and Kony’s deputy, Vincent Otti, who played a key role in the talks, died under mysterious circumstances.
An unprecedented alliance of troops from those three countries and Uganda, now assisted by US military advisers, is hunting him down in order to arrest him and hand him over to the International Criminal Court.
Kony was the first man the Court charged, and he faces indictments on 33 crimes including murder, sexual enslavement, rape and attacking civilians.
He is understood to be in the Central African Republic now.
–Compiled from CNN, BBC and the Telegraph.
This column aims to profile personalities who made the news once but have now faded from the spotlight.
What he said:
“God can confirm that I am an embodiment and the personification of the Holy Spirit.”
“[LRA is] cleansing his people so that only the pure ones would remain.”
“God made me to dream for the application of Ten Commandments, I started to fight for his cause.”
“I want the rule of the government to be based on the Ten Commandments prescribed by God.”