Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), remains at large two decades after the International Criminal Court issued its first arrest warrants against him and four of his commanders.
The LRA framed its struggle as resistance to President Yoweri Museveni and the sidelining of the Acholi, the dominant ethnic group in northern Uganda. However, over time violence ceased to be merely a strategy. It became the organising logic of the movement itself.
The YouTube video Kony 2012 , produced by the American advocacy organisation Invisible Children, went viral in 2012. It turned a long war into a global cause célèbre . In 2013, Washington followed with a US$5 million bounty , which remains in place.
The International Criminal Court arrest warrants were for war crimes and crimes against humanity between 1 July 2002 (when the court’s jurisdiction took effect ) and July 2005 (when the arrest warrants were issued).
Today, the LRA is no more than a small, mobile group (possibly 12 to 20 fighters) living off trade, agriculture and protection in one of Africa’s least governed border zones. It operates within the remote borderlands of the Central African Republic (CAR), Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The LRA may now be small, but its survival matters.
Kony’s continued evasion of arrest – despite two decades of warrants, bounties and military operations – exposes the limits of both regional security cooperation and international justice. Recent intelligence and defector accounts suggest he is still alive, operating in the Sudan-CAR borderlands.
As long as he remains at large, the International Criminal Court’s first arrest warrants risk becoming a symbol – not of global justice, but of its limits.
I have been researching the LRA for more than 20 years and in a recently published article , I answer the question: how has the group survived, even in extreme decline?
Drawing on interviews with former combatants, local actors and policymakers, my analysis looks as the LRA’s evolving strategies of endurance since 2011.
Borderlands – particularly between Sudan and the CAR, and to a lesser extent with the DRC – have offered Kony and his LRA members a way to disappear, to trade and to buy protection.
At the same time, the shifting political priorities of the states tracking Kony have repeatedly undermined their own goals.
Given their weak state presence, borderlands are often described as peripheral, marginal or forgotten. But in much of Africa, they are not empty spaces. They are active political and economic zones , shaped by cross-border networks of trade, migration, armed mobilisation and patronage.
For rebel groups, borderlands offer a particular set of advantages : access to sanctuaries across borders; rough terrain and low population density; cross-border trade routes ; and opportunities to link into alternative centres of power.
For roughly two decades, between 1987 and 2006, the LRA was primarily fighting a Ugandan war. The conflict produced vast civilian suffering, including the displacement of nearly two million people into camps – what has been described as “social torture ”.
From 1994 onwards, southern Sudan became crucial to the war, as Khartoum offered the LRA sanctuary and weapons. Further, before peace talks began in 2006 between Uganda and an LRA delegation, the rebel group crossed into the DRC and established itself in the dense and (at the time) mostly ungoverned Garamba National Park.
Following the collapse of negotiations, Uganda launched Operation Lightning Thunder in late 2008. The operation failed, and the LRA retaliated with massacres in north-eastern DRC in 2008-10.
Anticipating further offensives, the LRA began moving into the remote borderlands between the CAR, Sudan and South Sudan.
By 2010, it was operating around the contested Kafia Kingi enclave – a strip of territory that is, in principle, part of South Sudan but has long been controlled by Sudan.
From this point onward, Kony’s strategy shifted: the group reduced attacks, limited abductions and tried to become less visible.
It was no longer trying to win a war, but trying to avoid being found.
As looting declined, the LRA needed income streams that attracted little attention. Trade and agriculture became central. In the Sudan-CAR borderlands, established routes for licit goods like bamboo intersect with trade in cannabis, gold, ivory and diamonds.
The LRA did not only participate in this economy, but also taxed it. It set up checkpoints along trading routes. It also cultivated a variety of crops on a large scale and was active in the trade of honey .
All of this allowed the group to survive quietly from around 2010 onwards, and become part of the border landscape. Its relationships included nomadic cattle herders, armed groups in the CAR and elements of the Sudanese military.
Kony also bought protection with the proceeds of illicit trade. Armed groups provided warnings about military threats and information about who was moving where. When necessary, Kony could move across borders quickly.
They still operated under the LRA banner (in the CAR-DRC borderlands), but were no longer under Kony’s command. In 2023, through the work of the Dutch NGO PAX and Congolese NGO APRU , and amid growing insecurity, these groups demobilised in the largest LRA defection ever.
The outbreak of war in Sudan in 2023 disrupted the borderland economy. Trade slowed dramatically , increasing hardship and fuelling more defections.
The politics of the chase
The group operates far from capitals, poses little direct threat to state power and is expensive to pursue.
It has largely disappeared from the American political horizon. Advocacy networks that once kept the issue alive have faded .
The end game that never arrives
The LRA’s survival reflects the sanctuary offered by borderlands, and uneven and inconsistent political will, shaped by shifting interests that often have little to do with justice for victims.
The ICC hearings in November 2025 that confirmed war crimes charges against Kony underline this paradox. While the court has built a legal case against him, the conditions that have kept him alive remain largely intact.
By Kristof Titeca – Professor in International Development, University of Antwerp
