Understanding the Lord's Resistance Army Insurgency

The following sections are included:

• Preface
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Tables and Figures
• Acronyms

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• Roots of Conflict in Northern Uganda
  • Evolution of Insurgency in Northern Uganda
    • The Uganda People’s Democratic Army Rebellion (1986–1988)

The outcome of the Battle of Kilak Corner and the signing of the Pece and Addis Ababa peace agreements presented significant challenges for rebel groups that emerged after UPDA. Kilak Corner showed that a hasty conventional war against the NRM government was untenable. To avoid the fate that had befallen UPDA, rebel outfits in the north had to adopt a different strategy. The peace accords had also partly addressed the grievances of the north. In this case, it was going to be challenging for emerging rebel groups to convince the population that there was still a basis for fighting the government.

In this chapter, we look at how rebel groups attempted to mystify the conflict in northern Uganda in order to make themselves politically relevant in the post-UPDA era. This phase was significant in the sense that rebel groups in the north started finding fault with their natural support base and directing attacks towards it thereby stifling the progressive evolution of guerrilla warfare as an effective strategy for contesting the authority of the NRM government.

The following sections are included:

• Securing External Support
• Loss of External Support

The transnationalization of the LRA rebellion and the partial ineffectiveness of Operation Iron Fist exposed the untenability of the military approach to ending it. With UPDF failing to rein in Kony, there was a surge in international diplomacy pressurizing the GoU to talk to LRA. While yielding to these emerging dynamics, the government at the same time sought to narrow the rebels’ room for manoeuvre by pursuing the international criminalization of their activities…

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…

Chapters 1–5 examined the transitional phases of the LRA insurgent campaign. The failure to decisively settle the armed confrontation between the Ugandan state and LRA led to the expansion of the theatre of the conflict. In terms of organization, the longevity of the rebellion and the balance of military capabilities tilted in favour of the state progressively pushed LRA to deepen its use of asymmetric warfare. This chapter looks at how this philosophy shaped the evolution of the group’s identity. It is argued that the state of relations between LRA and the population in its theatre of insurgent activity has impacted on the evolution of the group’s ideology, popular support, propaganda, esprit de corps and recruitment methods.

This chapter examines those attributes of LRA that allow the group to prepare and confront the state-military apparatus. It looks at training, organizational structure, bases, funding and external support, strategy and tactics, weapons and weapons acquisition. Given the start-up imbalance of confrontational capabilities tilted in favour of the state, it is argued that LRA attends to these requirements within the framework of a serialized insurgent campaign.

The following are sections included:

• Longevity of the LRA Rebellion
• Termination of the LRA Rebellion

Since the end of the colonial era, the Ugandan military has emerged as the most decisive instrument for the reconstruction of the postcolonial state. This development has in turn precipitated a scramble to rearrange the balance of confrontational capabilities in the country. To that effect, the emergence of NSAGs contesting the authority of the state has been underpinned by the drive to employ strategies that progressively undercut the start-up superiority of the statemilitary apparatus. Although the NRM takeover underscored the effectiveness of guerrilla warfare as a strategy, its subsequent and indecisive use by UPDA, HSM I, HSM II and LRA coupled with the state’s indecisive response to the activities of these groups combined to prolong the conflict in northern Uganda…

The following sections is included:

• Index