40 Years On, Uganda’s LRA Leader Kony Could Be Eating Nyama Choma Beside the Men Hunting Him Forty years ago, in late August 1986, government forces (the National Resistance Army's 35th Battalion) and rebel factions clashed in Kitgum District, northern Uganda, killing dozens of civilians in what became known as the Namokora Massacre. It ignited regional dynamics that gave rise to Joseph Kony's brutal Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). The LRA, and the NRA (renamed the Uganda People's Defence Forces, UPDF, under the 1995 constitution), were both blamed for atrocities against civilians. One of the LRA's most notorious late-August massacres occurred exactly eleven years later, in late August 1997: the Lokung Massacre, in which over 60 civilians were killed. By 2002, after 16 years of war, the LRA had largely been defeated by the UPDF and driven out of northern Uganda. It fled into South Sudan, then into northeastern DR Congo, where it established bases in Garamba National Park from September 2005, operating heavily until around 2011 before being scattered. By early 2008, the LRA had also spread into the Central African Republic (CAR), with its first major raids there hitting the town of Obo in February 2008. Ugandan forces followed the LRA into both the DRC and CAR, and the pursuit made international headlines in 2011 when US President Barack Obama deployed American Special Forces to assist African Union troops, effectively the Ugandan army, in the effort to capture or kill Kony. The hunt wound down when Uganda and the US withdrew their forces in early 2017. To date, it remains unclear whether Kony is alive or dead. His LRA now surfaces only occasionally, mostly in eastern DRC, to slaughter civilians. It remains to be seen whether Yoweri Museveni, in his 42nd year ruling Uganda, will write Kony's obituary, or whether Kony, if he's still alive, will write his. But there's a curious twist to the hunt for Kony. A friend who works as a human rights researcher, and who has documented the LRA's atrocities in eastern DRC and CAR, tracked the Ugandan and American pursuit of the rebel leader closely, particularly in CAR's eastern and southeastern prefectures of Haut-Mbomou, Mbomou and Haute-Kotto, where the LRA operated. He came across several roadblocks manned by CAR troops set up specifically to catch Kony. He showed the soldiers photographs of Kony. Not one of them recognised him. He had a similar experience in DRC, though there he occasionally met officers who did. It raises an odd possibility. If Kony is alive and hiding out in CAR, he could well be eating nyama choma at a joint in some small town right now, with none of the patrons, or the soldiers looking for him, any the wiser.