The LRA was a formidable and terrifying force when it was based in northern Uganda in the 1990s. But it was chased out of Uganda in 2006 and is now increasingly weak and desperate, constantly on the run from U.S. and African military pursuers.
Sheltering deep in the remote jungles of the Democratic Republic of Congo, it operates mostly in small groups of five or six, raiding villages for food and sometimes abducting one or two villagers to work as porters, reports say.
The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, keeps track of the LRAs impact on civilians. It says the rebel militia has launched 20 attacks in northeastern Congo this year but most of the attacks were low-level raids with little impact.
In total, the LRA killed just one person in Congo this year, while abducting 17 people and displacing about 3,000 people, according to the UNHCR. Those numbers are far less than the toll it inflicted at its peak in the 1990s or even as recently as 2008.
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The attacks by the LRA in Congo this year are the last gasp of a dying organization, says Mounoubai Madnodje, spokesman for the UN peacekeepers in Congo.
They used to control villages and take hostages, he told the Reuters news agency. Right now it looks more like people trying to survive.
Its small-scale attacks.
The LRA perpetrated massacres of civilians in Congo in the Christmas period in 2008 and 2009, but more recently those attacks have been halted. In the second half of last year, its attacks began to decline dramatically.
