For over twenty years Joseph Kony, a former alter boy, has been waging war against his native Uganda, demanding that it be ruled according to the Biblical Ten Commandments. His tools toward accomplishing that end have been wholesale pillaging combined with the kidnapping of all of the children in any village he encounters. The boys are indoctrinated to become soldiers. The girls are raped and forced to bear the next generation of soldiers.
Young abductees, who have escaped from the LRA, say that Mr Kony would tell them he got his instructions from the Holy Spirit and would often preach in tongues.
He has created an aura of fear and mysticism around himself and his rebels follow strict rules and rituals.
From Wired:
Obo was just one of hundreds of communities terrorized by the LRA. Many simply wither and die afterward.
Young abductees, who have escaped from the LRA, say that Mr Kony would tell them he got his instructions from the Holy Spirit and would often preach in tongues.
He 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 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."
The village of Obo has mobilized to protect itself after one such raid by the LRA.
From Wired:
Obo was just one of hundreds of communities terrorized by the LRA. Many simply wither and die afterward.
But Obo didn’t.
Instead, Obo’s surviving villagers raised their own volunteer scout force (depicted above), armed it with homemade shotguns, and began disseminating intelligence on the LRA’s movements using the village’s sole, short-range FM radio transmitter.
The results of this do-it-yourself approach were encouraging. Since the attack three years ago, Obo has not suffered another major LRA invasion. Noting Obo’s successful strategy, Invisible Children, a California-based aid group, in March traveled into Central African Republic to help another American group, Interactive Radio for Justice, upgrade the town’s radio to a much longer-range model, further boosting the community’s self-defense capability.
Invisible Children’s goal is to increase by 30 times the area the town could keep on alert, while also plugging Obo into a radio-based “early warning network” that Invisible Children has been building in Congo since last year. The network of high frequency and FM radios allows communities across the LRA-infested region to share intelligence and warn each other of impending rebel attacks.
Much more at:Danger Room.
More on the LRA and Joseph Kony at BBC News
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