Project

The Lord's Resistance Army: The Hunt for Africa's Most Wanted

The rebel Lord's Resistance Army and Joseph Kony, its messianic leader, have waged a campaign of massacres, torture, and abduction on civilians across Central Africa since the mid-1980s. Their 20-year bush war against the Ugandan government, which aimed to establish a theocracy based on the Ten Commandments, killed thousands and forced the displacement of around 2 million people.

Notorious for disfiguring its victims and kidnapping tens of thousands of children for use as child soldiers and sex slaves, the LRA now operates in the remote border region straddling the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and South Sudan, where, since late 2008, it has stepped up its attacks on local villagers.

On May 24 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law the Lords' Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, making it U.S. policy "to protect civilians from the Lord's Resistance Army, to apprehend or remove Joseph Kony and his top commanders from the battlefield...and to disarm and demobilize the remaining LRA fighters."

In early August, journalist Joe Bavier and photographer Marcus Bleasdale set out on a journey to Congo, Central African Republic, Sudan and Uganda on the trail of Kony's rebels. They want to understand how this mystical mass murderer still manages to evade capture despite an International Criminal Court arrest warrant and an ongoing Ugandan-led multinational military operation. The questions they answer are all the more pressing as the United States plots its new strategy, attempting to succeed where so many others have failed.

This project is made possible through a collaboration with Human Rights Watch.

September 10, 2010 | Pulitzer Center

Waiting for the Americans: Dungu

Joe Bavier, for the Pulitzer Center, Dungu, Democratic Republic of Congo

Expectant Congolese regard new American legislation as a harbinger of turning tides in a stubborn war.

September 10, 2010 | Pulitzer Center

Between Two Streams: Ngilima

Joe Bavier, for the Pulitzer Center, Ngilima, Democratic Republic of Congo

Trapped between two streams and surrounded by the LRA, routine tasks such as seeking food have become increasingly dangerous for villagers of Ngilima.

September 07, 2010 | Pulitzer Center

Abandoned Homes: Democratic Republic of Congo

Throughout Bas Uele, we were greeted by mile after mile of previously occupied farmland and villages. They lie abandoned, the forest slowly reclaiming the land as its own. We could easily estimate the dates of the attacks by the LRA by the amount of land that had been reclaimed. These eery and empty places pay testimony to the devastation these attacks have had on the Congolese community.

September 07, 2010 | Pulitzer Center

Abandoned People: Democratic Republic of Congo

The voices in the darkened homes tell us when they were taken, they explain to us what they were forced to do and how that made them feel. There is no response to the horror of their words. The is no hope to understand what these children have been through and what goes through their minds at night when they lie alone in theirs rooms. The only response we have is to make it stop.