DHD: Reposted without permission

One of my fellow AIM AIR pilots put this on his blog. It's well written and worth pasting here:

On slight addition I have to throw in, I understand that when the LRA was started, they were told if they followed the ten commandments, they would be invincible. How they justified their barbaric actions in light of this is beyond me. But it's always amazing how any group of people trying to satisfy an old Law can justify their sinful actions and believe they deserve a reward for doing so.

Also, last year, two of our pilots attended the first graduation of seminary students from a Bible school in an Ugandan refugee camp. Because of the LRA presence, citizens have relocated to refugee camps to be protected by the Ugandan defense force. While their lives remain on hold, they decided to start a Bible school, and the first four pastors graduated last year.

(You can read more about the US troops coming here).

OK, here goes. Sit down and enjoy:

In the wake of Rush Limbaugh’s bone-headed characterization of the Lord’s Resistance Army as Christians fighting Muslims, I thought I would present some basic info on the history of this group. AIM AIR (out of our Entebbe base) does a considerable amount of flying for organizations working in areas in northern Uganda, DRC, CAR and South Sudan that are consistently terrorized by the LRA. A while back, I spent three days in Congo as we delivered tons of relief supplies to villages that had just suffered the horrors of LRA attacks.

First and foremost, the LRA is not a Christian organization. It is more correctly a militarized Satanic cult. The group began as a rebel group made up of northern Ugandans fighting oppressive regimes of the main (southern) Ugandan government. The group ended up being led by Alice Lakewenya, best described as a witch doctor, who told her followers she had cast certain spells that made them invincible, which was shortly proved false as they were utterly defeated by Ugandan forces. The group then became led by the now infamous Joseph Kony in the late 80′s. At best, Kony is insane, but I suspect he is possessed, with some of the defected LRA soldiers still being convinced he has special powers.

The LRA’s technique of gaining foot soldiers by abduction, usually of small boys who are often immediately forced to kill their parents, has been going on for over two decades now. This as well as other horrific things take place routinely to the people in these villages that are completely unprotected by their own governments, which all cannot control these far corners of their countries. The result is a huge area in the heart of Africa where death and horror has become common place. The spiritual oppression in some of the villages I was in was almost palpable.

Obama recently offered the help of military ‘advisers’ to try and capture Kony and shut down these LRA cells (which is why Limbaugh made his ignorant claim). The US has tried to help before (shutting down Kony was a personal goal of the Bush administration). However, the operation was botched by bad weather and bad timing and Kony escaped after potentially being tipped off as he monitored his short-wave radio. It is hard to image just ‘advisers’ can turn the tide against a wild man who has lived in the bush for almost 30 years. The troops of the countries involved are under-trained, under-armed and often ill-motivated to fight such a notorious, and elusive enemy. I’m not sure what prompted Obama to act now or in this way, but I guess we’ll see how effective it is.

Please keep this part of the world in your prayers. Pray that the Church would be a bright light in this overwhelming darkness. Pray that evil will be thwarted and the suffering of all of these people will end.

Resources:

Below is a tracking map that gives an idea of the scope of these attacks both in time and geographically: