The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is certainly and understandably hesitant to devote significant effort to countering the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) . In fact, the very day after the BBC article was published, the BBC printed a story titled: “DR Congo will not help fight LRA.” Reasons behind the DRC’s reluctance include the nature of the LRA’s threats, the DRC’s other militant threats, and the DRC’s relations with its neighbors. In short, since 1998, the DRC’s neighbors and militants alike have ignored its eastern boundaries at their leisure, and government forces only just now are beginning to assert some control with the assistance of UN troops over the outer reaches of its frontier.

The LRA ranks among the most brutal and arguably non-ideological groups of Africa and, perhaps, the world. For 19 years as leader of the LRA, Joseph Kony has converted remnants of the Ugandan government forces, defeated in the 1980s civil war, into a quasi-mystical cult of personality possessing little regional support and lacking clear political or even ideological goals. The effect has been a regional reign of terror, kidnapping, indoctrinating, and conscripting some 20,000 children as well as killing and maiming civilians with machetes and other weapons in an effort to “cleanse” the population. Since only a small fraction of the known LRA is operating across the Uganda border from the DRC frontier, Congo government authorities are loathe to anger LRA factions who might redirect their attacks against the DRC communities.