Skip to main content

Hunt for Brutal African Warlord Joseph Kony Ends

Share This article

The hunt for one of the world's most notorious fugitives has ended.

After chasing Joseph Kony for 6 years, Uganda says its mission to capture the warlord has been "successfully achieved" even though he remains at large.

"Joseph Kony with less than 100 armed fighters is now weak and ineffective," Uganda's army said in a statement. "He no longer poses any significant threat to Uganda's security and northern Uganda in particular."

Kony founded the group known as the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda more than two decades ago. He's accused of killing thousands of people and kidnapping children to use as soldiers in his army.

Sam Childers has seen the devastating impact of Kony's evil up close.

"I've seen what he's done to children and families," Childers told CBN News in an interview from Uganda.

Since 1988, Childers has been rescuing children from becoming child soldiers in Uganda and Sudan. In 2011, Childers' story was turned into a Hollywood movie, "The Machine Gun Preacher," starring Gerard Butler.

He founded Angels of East Africa in 1988 with the goal of providing care for orphan children in Africa. The organization's website claims it "has rescued over a thousand orphaned children from starvation, disease and enslavement by the brutal Lord's Resistance Army."

Childers says the trauma of Kony's brutality will sadly live on for years.

"What he has done in northern Uganda, in South Sudan, people are still being rehabilitated from what has happened," Childers said. "This is going to go on for the next 20 years to rehabilitate the people that were victims of this war."

Kony's aim was to overthrow the Ugandan government and introduce a rule of law based on the Ten Commandments.

Over the years, CBN News has done several reports documenting Kony's reign of terror.

In 2011, CBN News International Correspondent Gary Lane said portraying Kony's group as a Christian organization was misleading.

"It has nothing to do with Christianity. It is a cult," Lane said.

Kony "has a very twisted sense of the Bible, the Ten Commandments and so forth," Lane warned. "He is not a good guy. He has been wreaking havoc on this area for about 20 years now."

The United States joined the hunt for Kony in 2011, sending 100 troops to track the fugitive in the jungles of Africa.

But after spending $780 million, the Pentagon announced recently that it too was pulling out of the mission.

"The bottom line is, this operation, although not achieving the ability to get to Kony himself, has essentially taken that group off the battlefield and for the last several years, they've really been reduced to irrelevance," Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the commander of Africa Command, told reporters at the Pentagon in March.

But groups like Invisible Children that have highlighted Kony's abuses, say failure to "capture or kill" the rebel leader will only embolden his group.

"The LRA will pose a serious risk to civilians as long as Kony is allowed to roam freely across central Africa," Paul Ronan, director of research and policy at Invisible Children told CNN.

According to the LRA Crisis Tracker, last year was the group's most violent campaign in years, with 500 abducted in 104 attacks.

Five years ago, Invisible Children launched the documentary "Kony2012" exposing the LRA's alleged atrocities. It video went viral drawing more than 100 millions of views on YouTube.

The United Nations says over the last three decades, more 66,000 children have been kidnapped by LRA forces, more than 100,000 killed and some two million people displaced.

"What Joseph Kony has done and these other rebel leaders that backed him...is going to take many years to rehabilitate the people of northern Uganda," Childers told CBN News.

In 2005, the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Kony's arrest for crimes against humanity. The U.S. State Department followed up with an offer of up to $5 million for information on his whereabouts.

Share This article

About The Author

George Thomas Headshot
George
Thomas

Born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and of Indian descent, CBN News’ Senior International Correspondent and Co-Anchor, George Thomas, has been traveling the globe for more than 20 years, finding the stories of people, conflicts, and issues that must be told. He has reported from more than 100 countries and has had a front-row seat to numerous global events of our day. George’s stories of faith, struggle, and hope combine the expertise of a seasoned journalist with the inspiration of a deep calling to tell the stories of the people behind the news. “I’ve always liked discovering & exploring new