Joseph Kony

NAIROBI — Ugandan and American troops have suspended their joint hunt for war crimes suspect Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army, delivering a major setback to efforts to capture a notorious warlord accused of abducting tens of thousands of children . The Ugandan military and the U.S. State Department separately announced Wednesday that they had temporarily halted the search because of political turmoil in the Central African Republic,...

AFRICA Group: Sudan's army aided warlord Kony The fugitive African warlord Joseph Kony recently found refuge in territory controlled by Sudan, a watchdog group said Friday, accusing the Sudanese military of offering aid to commanders of the Lord's Resistance Army. The U.S.-based group Resolve said in a new report that Kony recently directed killings from an enclave protected by Sudanese soldiers. Until early this year, according to the report, Kony and some of his commanders were operating in Kafia Kingi, a disputed area along the...

W hen President Obama announced last week the deployment of 100 U.S. military advisers to aid in the pursuit of Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), reaction was swift. Michele Bachmann criticized "unnecessary foreign entanglements," while admitting, "I do not know enough about it to comment on it. " Rush Limbaugh called the LRA "Christians" and accused Obama of sending American troops "to wipe out Christians in Sudan, Uganda," before promising to do some "research on it. " In both cases, it is remarkable that...

NAIROBI — Ugandan and American troops have suspended their joint hunt for war crimes suspect Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army, delivering a major setback to efforts to capture a notorious warlord accused of abducting tens of thousands of children . The Ugandan military and the U.S. State Department separately announced Wednesday that they had temporarily halted the search because of political turmoil in the Central African Republic,...

DUNGU, Congo Francoise, age 16, talks quietly, revealing a shy smile only after praise for her tight cornrows. While walking to school four years ago, she and some classmates were captured by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). The girls were distributed to soldiers as "wives. " In the mornings, Francoise cooked. In the afternoons, she carried packs on the march. When she tried to escape, the soldiers melted a water container and poured the plastic on her shoulders. Once, when the fighters saw two infants along the path, they crushed...

OBO, Central African Republic — Six months after President Obama ordered 100 elite troops to help capture the messianic warlord Joseph Kony, U.S. military commanders said Sunday that they have been unable to pick up his trail but believe he is hiding in this country's dense jungle, relying on Stone Age tactics to dodge his pursuers' high-tech surveillance tools. Kony and his brutal militia, the Lord's Resistance Army , have slowed their pace of rapes, abductions and killings in recent months.

"Don't worry, my clothes are staying on tonight. And they will stay on for the rest of my public life," Jason Russell joked in his first public appearance since last month's telecast of a tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey. Russell, the visionary behind the viral video "Kony 2012" and co-founder of the nonprofit Invisible Children, addressed an audience of about 300 students Tuesday at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium. Russell was in town...

OBO, Central African Republic — Behind razor wire and bamboo walls topped with security cameras sits one of the newest U.S. military outposts in Africa. U.S. Special Forces soldiers with tattooed forearms and sunglasses emerge daily in pickup trucks that carry weapons, supplies and interpreters — as well as the expectations of a vast region living in fear of a man and his brutal militia. "The Americans have captured Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein," said Bassiri Moke, a tribal...

AFRICA Group: Sudan's army aided warlord Kony The fugitive African warlord Joseph Kony recently found refuge in territory controlled by Sudan, a watchdog group said Friday, accusing the Sudanese military of offering aid to commanders of the Lord's Resistance Army. The U.S.-based group Resolve said in a new report that Kony recently directed killings from an enclave protected by Sudanese soldiers. Until early this year, according to the report, Kony and some of his commanders were operating in Kafia Kingi, a...

A particularly savvy media campaign by a nonprofit group called Invisible Children has pushed a debate about Uganda and rebel leader Joseph Kony into a very bright spotlight. Without getting into the arguments about the political motivations of the nonprofit and the consequences of its campaign — check out coverage from The Washington Post's Elizabeth Flock for more information on the situation and its history — it's astonishing that the group's members have been able to draw this much attention now to a conflict...

"Don't worry, my clothes are staying on tonight. And they will stay on for the rest of my public life," Jason Russell joked in his first public appearance since last month's telecast of a tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey. Russell, the visionary behind the viral video "Kony 2012" and co-founder of the nonprofit Invisible Children, addressed an audience of about 300 students Tuesday at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium. Russell was in town preparing for...

ENTEBBE, Uganda — U.S. surveillance operations in Africa are dependent on permission from countries willing to host bases for the spy planes. In exchange, those countries usually insist that the Americans share intelligence gleaned from the skies. Such arrangements have the potential to go awry, especially in Africa, where many countries have poor human rights records. U.S. officials said they take care to withhold intelligence that could enable their African partners to target political opponents instead of terrorist...

OBO, Central African Republic — Six months after President Obama ordered 100 elite troops to help capture the messianic warlord Joseph Kony, U.S. military commanders said Sunday that they have been unable to pick up his trail but believe he is hiding in this country's dense jungle, relying on Stone Age tactics to dodge his pursuers' high-tech surveillance tools. Kony and his brutal militia, the Lord's Resistance Army , have slowed their pace of rapes, abductions and killings in recent months.

This is the land of mangoes. Everywhere you go in this forested nation in the heart of Africa, you see mango trees. But what you won't see are boxes of mangoes being packed for export to Europe or the United States, where they can sell for $3 a piece — a 500 percent profit. Nor will you see locally boxed mango juice. There is no juice factory here. Here in the Central African Republic, life is a constant struggle for its 4.4 million people. Despite its vast natural wealth, including uranium, gold, diamonds and crude oil,...

OBO, Central African Republic — Behind razor wire and bamboo walls topped with security cameras sits one of the newest U.S. military outposts in Africa. U.S. Special Forces soldiers with tattooed forearms and sunglasses emerge daily in pickup trucks that carry weapons, supplies and interpreters — as well as the expectations of a vast region living in fear of a man and his brutal militia. "The Americans have captured Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein," said Bassiri Moke, a tribal...

When Jeanne Boliza looks at her 3-year-old child, she remembers. He is the product of her ordeal as a sex slave for a soldier in the Lord's Resistance Army, a brutal militia led by a self-proclaimed prophet, Joseph Kony. Boliza, who was a child when she was raped, named her son Dieu Donné, "God Given. " But her neighbors refer to him by a different name. "They call him ‘Son of Tonga Tonga,' " said Boliza, now 17. It means "Son of the LRA. " In the jungles of this vast region of central Africa, villagers...

THE PRODUCERS of an Internet video about the African warlord Joseph Kony have already proven one of their main points. Social media, the film's narrator proclaims at the outset, are "changing the way the world works. The game has new rules. " True enough: In the first seven days after its posting on March 7, " Kony 2012 " was viewed more than 112 million times, according to the Visible Measures blog — making it the most explosive viral video phenomenon in history. An extraordinary amount of fresh attention has been focused on the...

Military action against the Lord's Resistance Army could plunge northern Uganda into another nightmare of fear and misery, the leader of the tribe most affected by the insurgency said Thursday during a visit to London. Uganda's army says it has agreed with Sudan and Congo to jointly fight the cultlike rebel group if peace talks with its elusive leader, Joseph Kony, do not succeed. Rwot David Acana, paramount chief of the Acholi tribe of which Kony and his fighters are also members, said the gains of 18 months of fragile peace were too precious to...

THE PRODUCERS of an Internet video about the African warlord Joseph Kony have already proven one of their main points. Social media, the film's narrator proclaims at the outset, are "changing the way the world works. The game has new rules. " True enough: In the first seven days after its posting on March 7, " Kony 2012 " was viewed more than 112 million times, according to the Visible Measures blog — making it the most explosive viral video phenomenon in history. An extraordinary amount of fresh attention has been focused on the...

A particularly savvy media campaign by a nonprofit group called Invisible Children has pushed a debate about Uganda and rebel leader Joseph Kony into a very bright spotlight. Without getting into the arguments about the political motivations of the nonprofit and the consequences of its campaign — check out coverage from The Washington Post's Elizabeth Flock for more information on the situation and its history — it's astonishing that the group's members have been able to draw this much attention...