To Stop a Warlord

To Stop a Warlord Plot Summary

Introduction

For over two decades, a brutal warlord named Joseph Kony terrorized central Africa, abducting more than 30,000 children and forcing them to become child soldiers or sex slaves in his Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Despite international outrage and the first-ever arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court, traditional diplomatic and humanitarian efforts failed to stop the violence that left over 100,000 people dead and nearly two million civilians displaced. This remarkable story chronicles an unprecedented partnership between a private philanthropic foundation, military contractors, the Ugandan army, and humanitarian organizations in their mission to stop Kony's reign of terror. It challenges conventional thinking about peacemaking, examining what happens when traditional advocacy proves insufficient and more direct intervention becomes necessary. Through this journey, we witness how ordinary individuals stepped beyond traditional roles to confront extraordinary evil, ultimately demonstrating that there is no fence around the human heart when confronting injustice. The narrative raises profound questions about moral responsibility, explores the complexity of bringing perpetrators to justice while helping victims heal, and illustrates how innovative partnerships can address seemingly intractable conflicts.

Chapter 1: The Rise of the LRA: Origins of a Devastating Conflict

The Lord's Resistance Army emerged in northern Uganda in the late 1980s, during a time of intense political turmoil following decades of colonial division and post-independence instability. Uganda had been artificially unified by British colonizers in 1894, with southern groups like the Baganda elevated to elite status while northern populations such as the Acholi were marginalized. This north-south divide persisted after independence in 1962, creating cycles of revenge and mistrust that dominated Uganda's early statehood through disputed elections, military coups, and bloody dictatorships. Joseph Kony, an ethnic Acholi born in the early 1960s amid this chronic poverty and political marginalization, initially showed spiritual rather than militaristic aspirations. He served as an altar boy in a Catholic church before becoming a traditional healer and spirit medium at age fifteen. His status as a trusted spiritual adviser gained him influence, particularly among rebel soldiers hiding in northern Uganda. When Yoweri Museveni took power in 1986 by overthrowing an Acholi-dominated government despite having signed a peace agreement, northern bitterness intensified. A militaristic spiritual group called the Holy Spirit Movement, led by Alice Auma "Lakwena," emerged to unify rebel fighters against Museveni. This movement nearly toppled the government before being defeated just sixty miles outside the capital in November 1987. With Lakwena in exile, Joseph Kony recruited her former soldiers to build the Lord's Resistance Army, adopting many of her mystical practices along with her military ambitions. For the first eight years, the LRA fought against the government, ostensibly to protect the Acholi from retribution. By 1994, however, the civil war had fizzled out, and northern Ugandans were ready for peace. As the LRA lost local support and its forces dwindled, Kony made a pivotal and devastating shift: he began abducting Acholi children to fill his ranks. The group that had been created to protect northern Ugandans now turned against its own people, initiating a brutal campaign that would last for decades and spread across multiple countries. This tragic transformation from a rebel movement into a predatory force marked the beginning of one of Africa's longest-running and most brutal conflicts, one that would eventually require an unprecedented intervention to stop.

Chapter 2: A Private Foundation's Unconventional Response (2009-2011)

In January 2009, Shannon Sedgwick Davis, CEO of the Bridgeway Foundation, read a disturbing report from Human Rights Watch describing "Christmas Massacres" by the LRA that had killed 620 civilians in northeastern Congo. These attacks came after a failed military operation against Kony's camp, which had only scattered LRA fighters across a region spanning three countries. Despite having over 16,000 United Nations peacekeepers in Congo, only 200 were deployed in LRA-affected areas, leaving villagers unprotected as Kony's forces committed atrocities with impunity. The brutality of these attacks was shocking – LRA rebels tied up villagers with bicycle tire strips and cords, placed them face down, and crushed their skulls with heavy sticks. In some cases, they would stay among the bodies, eating food the women had prepared and drinking their beer. This pattern of extreme violence continued across dozens of villages, with victims as young as three years old. The crisis was worsening, yet traditional diplomatic and advocacy efforts had proven ineffective despite years of work. During a Bridgeway Foundation board meeting in 2009, while discussing budget cuts due to the recession, Davis raised a profound challenge: "We're not being true to our mission statement." The foundation's stated purpose was to prevent genocide and mass atrocities, yet they were merely "putting Band-Aids on bullet holes" rather than stopping conflicts. She proposed focusing resources on stopping the LRA, reasoning that compared to other global conflicts, this should be relatively straightforward – there was global consensus that the LRA was wrong, they weren't state actors, and the conflict was active rather than historical. After consulting with experts and visiting LRA-affected communities, Davis identified two critical gaps in counter-LRA efforts: military training for tracking and hostage release, and improved communications among vulnerable villages. When the U.S. State Department couldn't accept private funding to address these needs, Bridgeway made a momentous decision to step beyond traditional philanthropy into direct intervention. This meant potentially partnering with military entities – a concept initially foreign and deeply uncomfortable to the foundation. This shift marked an unprecedented move for a private humanitarian organization. Rather than simply addressing the symptoms of violence through refugee aid or rehabilitation programs, Bridgeway decided to target the source of suffering directly. The foundation was entering uncharted territory, raising complex ethical, legal, and practical questions about how private citizens could engage in stopping mass atrocities when traditional mechanisms had failed.

Chapter 3: Forging Military Partnerships: Training the Ugandan Special Forces

By mid-2010, Bridgeway Foundation had made the difficult decision to pursue military training for Ugandan forces as part of their counter-LRA strategy. After careful consideration, they selected Eeben Barlow's company STTEP (Specialised Tasks, Training, Equipment and Protection) International to conduct the training. Barlow, often referred to as the grandfather of private military contractors, had experience with LRA-type organizations and had conducted a threat assessment of the LRA back in 1996. Despite concerns about his background working for the apartheid government, Barlow agreed to Bridgeway's non-negotiable terms: no extra fees beyond basic expenses and salaries, vetting of soldiers for human rights abuses, and operational costs borne by the Ugandan military. In February 2011, Operation Viper began at Camp Bondo in northwestern Uganda. The training was physically demanding and psychologically intense. From an initial pool of 1,200 applicants, 280 Ugandan soldiers were brought to undergo selection, with fewer than half eventually passing to complete the four-month program. The curriculum covered all aspects of hostage release in a rural environment: operational design, tactics and techniques, tracking, physical training, and most importantly, target discrimination to avoid harming captives and civilians. Life at Camp Bondo was challenging. Soldiers and trainers lived in tents or metal-roofed barracks, used pit latrines, and endured intense heat. The training included practical exercises like river crossings, where soldiers had to learn to swim across deep waters carrying ammunition, backpacks, and weapons—a crucial skill in the river-dense jungle where the LRA operated. Some soldiers had never swum before, and the instructors had to teach them while navigating the dangers of hippos and crocodiles. The South African trainers established rapport by living in the same conditions as the Ugandan troops, sharing the same hardships rather than isolating themselves in comfortable quarters. This approach built trust and created a brotherhood among people from vastly different backgrounds united by a common goal. When 136 Ugandan soldiers graduated in June 2011 to become the Special Operations Group (SOG), there was a palpable sense of hope and determination. As General Katumba Wamala of the Uganda People's Defense Force told the graduates: "We have high hopes for you. High hopes that through your hard work, the solution to the Kony problem has finally been found." The training mission represented a radical departure from traditional humanitarian work, requiring military expertise and operational capabilities typically reserved for governments. It demonstrated how private citizens could fill crucial gaps when traditional institutions failed to protect vulnerable populations. However, the true test of the program's effectiveness would come when the newly trained forces deployed to the field to pursue the LRA in some of Africa's most remote and dangerous terrain.

Chapter 4: Operation Merlin: The Failed Attempt to Capture Kony (2013)

By early 2013, the pieces had finally fallen into place for the most promising opportunity to capture Joseph Kony in the mission's history. A series of intelligence breakthroughs had pinpointed Kony's hideout in Kafia Kingi (K2), a disputed territory between Sudan and South Sudan. The trail to this discovery began when Okello, one of Kony's former bodyguards, defected and provided a hand-drawn map of the LRA camp. Then, Lieutenant Colonel Binany, a feared LRA commander, was killed in a firefight, and his GPS device revealed a location where he had remained stationary for several weeks – highly unusual for the constantly moving LRA. Finally, drone surveillance confirmed the location of what appeared to be an established LRA camp, dubbed "Camp Merlin." The intelligence painted a clear picture: approximately 125 women and children and 40-60 combatants were living in the camp. Drone footage had even captured someone believed to be Kony threatening one of his commanders and later executing an officer. The time seemed perfect to launch Operation Merlin, a coordinated assault to capture Kony once and for all. U.S. Special Forces, now actively collaborating with the mission, provided intelligence and planning support, while Bridgeway scrambled to secure additional helicopters needed to transport troops. Preparations were meticulous. The Special Operations Group built a replica of Camp Merlin to conduct full rehearsals at night. Five Mi-17 helicopters – two from the Ugandan military, one provided by Bridgeway, and two more chartered from a contractor – were ready to carry sixty Ugandan special operations soldiers to a location near Kony's hideout. The plan called for the soldiers to split into nimble groups, cross a mountain range at night, and launch a dawn assault on the camp. The operation seemed poised for success. Everyone from General Katumba Wamala to Admiral Brian Losey, the special operations commander for U.S. Africa Command, expressed optimism. The years of training, intelligence gathering, and partnership building were about to culminate in Kony's capture. Troops would be dropped across a mountain range from Camp Merlin, bed down during daylight to avoid detection, then march twenty miles over two nights to make a dawn assault. Yet when the Special Operations Group reached Camp Merlin two mornings later, they found nothing but a ghost town: empty rings of circular thatch huts, rectangular drying platforms for simsim seeds, a few pumpkins, and some marijuana. The camp appeared to have been empty for at least a week. Kony had somehow received warning of the impending assault and escaped. This devastating outcome mirrored the 2008 Operation Lightning Thunder, when Kony had also been tipped off before the attack. The mission had gotten tantalizingly close, only to see their target vanish once again into the vast Central African wilderness.

Chapter 5: Cutting the Snake Off the Head: Targeting LRA Commanders

The failure of Operation Merlin forced a fundamental reconsideration of strategy. Colonel Michael Kabango, the Ugandan military's counter-LRA commander, proposed a pivotal shift: "All of this time we've been chasing Kony. What if stopping the LRA isn't about catching Joseph Kony?" Instead of focusing exclusively on capturing the elusive warlord, the mission would now target Kony's key officers and encourage defections to dismantle the LRA from within – "cutting the snake off the head" rather than trying to capture the head itself. This new approach recognized that Kony had become increasingly isolated, hiding in Kafia Kingi while his commanders did the day-to-day work of maintaining the LRA. These commanders, especially those who had fallen out of favor, were vulnerable to both military pressure and defection messaging. Instead of one high-value target, the mission now pursued multiple targets simultaneously while amplifying efforts to convince LRA members to surrender peacefully. The strategy began showing results in early 2013 when Captain Charles's squad tracked and engaged Okot Odhiambo, the LRA's second-in-command and an International Criminal Court indictee known as "the Butcher." During the firefight, radio communications reported a "big man wounded." For weeks, there was no confirmation, but eventually evidence emerged that Odhiambo had been shot in the stomach and died from his wounds. His body wouldn't be recovered and identified through DNA testing until 18 months later, but the mission had succeeded in removing one of the LRA's most brutal leaders from the battlefield. Defection messaging became increasingly sophisticated, moving beyond general appeals to targeted communications addressing specific commanders by name. When Lieutenant Colonel Okello Okuti, one of Kony's trusted commanders who had fallen from favor, defected with his entire group of 19 people in December 2013, he recorded personalized messages for the radio and helicopter loudspeaker systems: "I reached safety and I am well. Nothing bad has happened to me. Each and every one of you should think about the value of your life and come back home." This combination of military pressure and innovative defection campaigns continued to yield results. Opio Sam, who had spent 24 years in the LRA, surrendered after hearing Okuti's messages calling him by name. When Sam defected, he immediately volunteered to help others come out: "I want to help the others come out. I heard those voices in the jungle—now I want them to hear my voice calling them home." The cascade of defections culminated in January 2015 with the surrender of Dominic Ongwen, the last remaining International Criminal Court indictee besides Kony himself, who would eventually face trial at The Hague. By focusing on the organization's structure rather than just its leader, the mission had effectively dismantled the LRA's command capabilities. Even without capturing Kony, they had removed his ability to wage war effectively, demonstrating that sometimes the most effective way to defeat an organization is not by targeting its figurehead but by systematically dismantling its operational capacity.

Chapter 6: Defection Strategy: Encouraging Combatants to Come Home

The evolution of the defection strategy became one of the mission's most effective innovations. Initially, the approach consisted of simple flyer drops with basic "come home" messages, but it soon developed into a sophisticated, multi-channel campaign informed by defectors themselves. The team realized that the problem wasn't necessarily that LRA members didn't want to go home; rather, they no longer thought they could. For years—even decades—they had been controlled through fear, lies, and propaganda: they were told Uganda had been ravaged by AIDS, their families were dead, defection flyers were poisoned, and they would be prosecuted or killed if they escaped. Drawing inspiration from Colombia's successful efforts against the FARC rebels, the mission employed increasingly creative tactics. High-frequency (HF) radio broadcasts featured testimonials from recent defectors describing their safe return. Helicopter loudspeaker systems flew over areas of known LRA activity, broadcasting personalized messages from former commanders directly to their comrades still in the bush. Flyers showed photographs of defectors in different outfits and situations to demonstrate the passage of time and depth of their reintegration, countering Kony's propaganda that escapees were killed after a single photograph. Perhaps most powerful was the personal touch added by David Ocitti, himself a former LRA abductee who had escaped after six months in captivity. David traced the families of LRA members still in the bush and recorded their voices calling their loved ones home. One mother's message was simply: "Dwag paco. I have never stopped waiting for you." These authentic voices from home pierced through years of indoctrination, reminding fighters of the lives they once had. The mission discovered that effective defection messaging wasn't about commanding LRA members to surrender but empowering them to reclaim their freedom. Rather than showing drawings of defectors with their arms raised in surrender—a posture seen as weakness in Acholi culture—materials depicted them being welcomed by Ugandan soldiers and embraced by their families. The language shifted from orders to invitations: "My brothers and my sisters, come home." Results proved the strategy's effectiveness. Seven LRA combatants living in Kafia Kingi planned and attempted the first-ever assassination of Kony from within the organization, then defected to Obo. Multiple groups of women and children were released by commanders feeling pressure from both military pursuit and defection campaigns. By targeting specific disgruntled commanders and creating wedges between Kony and his officers, the defection strategy accelerated the LRA's internal collapse, reducing its fighting force by at least 14% after Operation Merlin, with defections of long-term members increasing by 81% following Odhiambo's death. This innovative approach demonstrated that sometimes the most effective weapon against an armed group isn't more arms but rather strategic communication that offers a viable path to peace. By addressing the human elements of conflict—fear, hope, family ties—the defection campaign succeeded where purely military solutions had failed, bringing hundreds of captives to freedom without firing a shot.

Chapter 7: Justice and Reconciliation: Healing Communities After War

The journey toward justice and reconciliation in the aftermath of the LRA conflict revealed the complex nature of healing in communities fractured by decades of violence. The mission had initially focused on bringing Joseph Kony to justice at the International Criminal Court, viewing retributive justice as the primary goal. However, as survivors and perpetrators alike returned to their communities, different forms of justice emerged as equally important. In northern Uganda, traditional Acholi reconciliation mechanisms played a crucial role alongside Uganda's Amnesty Act, which allowed non-indicted LRA members to receive legal amnesty. When LRA defectors returned home, they participated in ceremonies like stepping on an egg at the threshold of their mother's home—symbolically breaking from their old path—and drinking bitter root tea (mato oput) with community members in a shared acknowledgment of pain and forgiveness. These practices recognized that for communities to move forward, they needed more than legal justice; they needed cultural and spiritual reconciliation. The mission also confronted the blurred lines between victims and perpetrators. Many LRA commanders like Dominic Ongwen had themselves been abducted as children before becoming perpetrators of violence. David Ocitti, who escaped after six months of captivity, faced painful rejection upon returning to school: "You killed my father," a classmate accused him. This ambiguity challenged simple notions of guilt and innocence. As David later explained while helping reintegrate former combatants: "Coming out is just the beginning. Going home seems like the end of the struggle, but it's not going to be easy." Physical security and legal amnesty proved necessary but insufficient for true healing. Returnees needed psychosocial support, vocational training, and a sense of purpose. Through Peace Clubs established across northern Uganda, David created spaces where survivors could share their experiences and rebuild trust. "We are the same," the boy who had once blamed David for his father's death eventually acknowledged. "We share the same path." This recognition that all were victims of the LRA became a message of hope rippling through communities: together, they could repair the wounds of war. The mission itself evolved in its understanding of justice. While capturing Kony remained an aspiration, success came to be measured differently: the 90% reduction in LRA killings since 2011, the liberation of over 700 captives, the safe return of commanders like Acellam, Okuti, and Opio Sam, and Ongwen's trial at The Hague. Each instance of amnesty and retribution forced a grappling with the humanity of perpetrators and revealed multiple paths to justice. By the mission's end, its participants had witnessed how communities could move forward not by forgetting the past but by acknowledging it, creating spaces for truth-telling, and forging new identities beyond the categories of victim and perpetrator. The experience demonstrated that lasting peace requires not only holding perpetrators accountable but also rebuilding the social fabric torn apart by decades of violence, suggesting that the hardest and most important work often happens after the guns fall silent.

Summary

To Stop a Warlord reveals a central paradox of confronting mass atrocities: traditional diplomatic, humanitarian, and advocacy approaches are often insufficient to stop determined perpetrators, yet more direct interventions carry significant ethical complexity and risk. Throughout this narrative, we witness the evolution from a single-minded focus on capturing Joseph Kony to a more nuanced understanding that dismantling the organizational structure of the Lord's Resistance Army and addressing the human elements of the conflict proved ultimately more effective. The mission demonstrates how unconventional partnerships between private foundations, military contractors, government forces, and humanitarian organizations can fill crucial gaps when traditional institutions fail. This journey offers profound lessons for addressing contemporary conflicts. First, effective interventions must be flexible enough to evolve as circumstances change, combining military pressure with psychological operations, defection messaging, and community-based reconciliation. Second, we must recognize the humanity in both victims and perpetrators, understanding that many participants in conflicts exist in the gray area between these categories. Finally, the story reminds us that individuals have more power to affect change than we often believe. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu articulated with the concept of ubuntu – "I am because we are" – our shared humanity compels us to stand together against injustice, regardless of where it occurs. The mission ultimately demonstrated that while we cannot eradicate all shadows, we can indeed hold our share of the night when we recognize that we are the ones we've been waiting for.

About Author

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Shannon Sedgwick Davis

Shannon Sedgwick Davis is the CEO of Bridgeway Foundation, a philanthropic organization dedicated to ending and preventing mass atrocities around the world. As an attorney, activist, and passionate advocate for social justice, Shannon has guided Bridgeway Foundation in pioneering solutions to these seemingly intractable issues. Prior to joining Bridgeway Foundation in 2007, Shannon served as Vice President of Geneva Global, and was the Director of Public Affairs at the International Justice Mission (IJM). Shannon is an honors graduate of McMurry University and Baylor Law School. She sits on the board of several organizations, including The Elders, Humanity United, TOMS, and charity: water.

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