Free Republic

He's like a phantom. Of course, thousands have seen him, tens of thousands have died because of him, and hundreds of thousands have suffered thanks to him and his supporters. But the people on his trail haven't been able to catch him. The man is 49-year-old Joseph Kony, the self-appointed general of God, guerrilla fighter and mass murderer. For more than two decades, he and his Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) have terrorized people living in an area of roughly 100,000 square kilometers (40,000 square miles) of jungle in Uganda, the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of the Congo...

... But the country's oil wealth is in the Christian-dominated south and little has reached the long-neglected north, which has fanned regional resentment. Boko Haram's growing expertise in terrorist attacks, in which hundreds of people have been killed, has deepened suspicions it has developed links with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, the jihadists' North African arm. In November, it was disclosed that the U.S. Army has sent 100 Special Forces soldiers to Nigeria to provide counter-insurgency training for national troops engaged against Boko Haram, the country's largest military deployment since the 1967-70 Biafra war. This opened up a new front...

Kampala - Ugandan and US military officials are confident the end is nigh for the brutal Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a group that has been avoiding head-on battles for over a quarter of a century while leaving carnage in its wake. The two countries have teamed up to tackle the LRA, a rebel movement that originated in Uganda during the country's civil war in the 1980s. After suffering defeats in Uganda in recent years, remaining LRA forces have moved into the poor and often dysfunctional Central African Republic (CAR), still carrying out attacks that often employ a scorched earth policy,...

BANGUI — US special forces have set up a base in the Central African Republic as part of their regional hunt for fighters from the Ugandan-born Lord's Resistance Army group, military sources said Monday. "The deployment of this contingent, the size of which is unknown, was carried out very discreetly with Ugandan military aircraft," a Central African military official said on condition of anonymity. The US elite troops set up a base in Obo and are expected to coordinate their efforts with local government forces and Ugandan soldiers. US President Barack Obama in October announced he was sending 100 special...

SECURITY: US advisers limited to "support" role in tracking down LRA NEW YORK, 22 November 2011 (IRIN) - The main stated aim of the US deployment of 100 military advisers to central Africa is to improve coordination among the armies of countries affected by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to avoid repeating the fiasco of the 2008 multinational offensive against the group. They “are not directly involved in the operation to find members of the Lord's Resistance Army”, said Major James Rawlinson of the US Special Operations Command, Africa, in a statement to IRIN. While they will be “working and...

BANGUI — US military personnel deployed to help track down Lord's Resistance Army rebels have met officials in the Central African Republic to co-ordinate an impending operation, a source told AFP Thursday. The military source said that six US special forces troops met with local leaders at Obo, near the border with South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the LRA are believed to be roaming through the region's sparce, thinly populated forests. US President Barack Obama in October announced that he was sending about 100 troops to train and advice the African forces looking for the remnants...

<p>Washington (CNN) -- The Afghanistan battle that resulted in a rare fatality for a classified Army unit pitted U.S. troops against waves of insurgents who attacked from bunkers and caves, a U.S. military official said Wednesday.</p> <p>American forces had to be reinforced several times during the two-day firefight in southeast Afghanistan's Paktika province, said the official, who declined to be named because he was discussing the Army's Special Operations Command. The sole U.S. fatality in the attack was Army Master Sgt. Benjamin A. Stevenson, a highly decorated member of one of the Army's special mission units.</p>