The Lord's Resistance Army is a Christian fundamentalist terrorist/insurgent group which operates in northern Uganda and southern Sudan. Its chief concern is the overthrow of the Ugandan government and the establishment of a new government which would have its basis in the Eleven Commandments. These consist of the Mosaic Ten Commandments, and an eleventh, revealed directly to the LRA leader Joseph Kony; to wit, "Thou shalt not ride a bicycle." Sounds a bit surreal, but people found riding bicycles in LRA-controlled territory have their feet forcibly amputated.

Above and beyond this, the LRA is something of a mobile human rights disaster; most of their soldiers are forcibly conscripted and brainwashed children, and their are widespread reports of other atrocities, including slavery and sexual exploitation, again mainly of children; one of the LRA's favorite recruiting tactics is simply to attack a school and kidnap all the children.

Weirdly enough, this Christian fundamentalist army seems to be largely funded and armed by the Islamic government of Sudan, who seem to view them as a check on both domestic insurgents, the SPLA, in the south of Sudan (who are supported, symmetrically enough, by the Ugandan government), and as a direct assault on local rival Uganda.

Numerous UN committees, NGOs, and religious groups have condemened the LRA, and the conditions in this particular chunk of the world, extensively, but any sort of effective intervention in East Africa is notoriously difficult to carry out. American citizens may be relieved to note that this is one group your tax dollars and CIA operatives are not supporting, as they're aligned with the Sudanese government, which was on the Unfriendly Dictatorships list last anybody bothered to check.

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