The twenty year conflict in the north of Uganda between the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government almost ended recently. The tragedy is in the word "almost." Joseph Kony, the mysterious and brutal leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (image above), failed to attend a treaty signing with the Museveni government last month at Ri-Kwangba in the south Sudan near the remote Democratic Republic of Congo border that would have seen the end of a brutal civil war that has displaced tens of thousands of and killed millions of Ugandans. "Ugandan religious and cultural leaders ... ventured into the bush in an attempt to find him," according to The Guardian. Kony, however, was nowhere to be found.

The LRA is often spoken of in frightful whispers in the north of the country, mostly because their methods of torture include cutting off the ears and lips of their intended victims. The chaotic situation within Sudan - which also unofficially supports the janjaweed in Darfur - contributes to the general thorniness. The Sudanese government has been a supporter - the only supporter - of the LRA since 1994, after the Ugandan government allegedly supported the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). While unofficially sanctioned by Sudan, the terrorist group has made gruesome innovations under the theme of war. Captured children, for example, are turned into child soldiers and girls made concubines of the fighters. Charmed, I'm sure.

After September 11, 2001, the LRA was declared a terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of State. This might have been a pivotal development in the conflict. Unfortunately, logic doesn't appear to govern the actions of Kony, who draws strength from fighting asymmetrical wars against larger powers. In many ways, Kony's idiosyncratic war is against logic itself. Kony, for example, believes he communicates directly with "the holy spirit." And he directs the child soldiers to go into battle claiming that they are immune to bullets if he blesses them.

According to Legal Brief Today, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC), recently lamented the fact that Kony was still free and not incarcerated in the Netherlands. Kony and several of his soldiers are wanted in The Hague for crimes against humanity.

"I will communicate with Museveni through the holy spirits and not through the telephone," Kony is said to have once said. One wonders if that is why he failed to show up for the signing of the treaty last month. Was he "communicating" with the Ugandan government through the spirits? The alternative otherwise would be too sad to contemplate.

Human Rights Watch On The Conflict In Northern Uganda (Here)