Chapter 5: De-Escalation of the LRA Insurgency

With the collapse of the Juba peace process, diplomacy was rendered an ineffective approach to ending the conflict in northern Uganda. Over two decades, peace talks between LRA and the GoU had assumed an all too familiar pattern: Whenever the rebels were on the back-foot, they sent peace overtures to the government; the GoU was always cautious in welcoming these initiatives because it did not want LRA to use them to regroup; negotiations always collapsed because of a simultaneous increase in rebel reorganization and government belligerence during peace processes. In order to end this cycle, the GoU and the wider international community felt that military action presented perhaps the best approach for terminating the rebellion…