Sources of Resilience in the Lord’s Resistance Army Pamela Faber April 2017 Select a caveat DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT A. Approved for public release: distribution unlimited. CNA’s Occasional Paper series is published by CNA, but the opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of CNA or the Department of the Navy. Distribution DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT A. Approved for public release: distribution unlimited. PUBLIC RELEASE. 4/10/2017 Other requests for this document shall be referred to CNA Document Center at
[email protected]. Photography Credit: Flag of the Lord’s Resistance Army led by Joseph Kony. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord%27s_Resistance_Army#/media/File:Flag_of_Lord%27s _Resistance_Army.svg Approved by: April 2017 Dr. Jonathan Schroden, Director Center for Stability and Development Center for Strategic Studies This work was performed under Federal Government Contract No. N00014-16-D-5003. Copyright © 2017 CNA Abstract The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by Ugandan national Joseph Kony, has survived for over three decades despite a concerted effort to defeat it. The LRA was formed in the late 1980s in response to the historic marginalization of the Acholi people, inequitable treatment by the Ugandan government and uneven development across the country. The LRA became a powerfully destructive force in northern Uganda, with thousands of combatants killing over 100,000 people. Since 2006, the group has been largely degraded to less than 150 core combatants, and is currently in survival mode on the borders of the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, and South Sudan.