Born August 1961 (age 54)[1]
Odek, Uganda[2][3]
Nationality Ugandan
Ethnicity Acholi
Known for Leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA)
Height 1.80 m (5 ft 11 in)[4]
Weight 82 kg (180 lb)
Religion Holy Spirit Movement
Spouse(s) 88 wives as of 2007[5]
Children 42 children as of 2006[6]

Joseph Kony (pronounced IPA: [koɲ];[7] born August 1961)[1] is the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a guerrilla group which used to operate in Uganda. While initially purporting to fight against government suppression, the LRA allegedly turned against Kony's own supporters, supposedly to "purify" the Acholi people and turn Uganda into a theocracy.[2] Kony proclaims himself the spokesperson of God and a spirit medium and claims he is visited by a multinational host of 13 spirits, including a Chinese phantom.[He is considered by some as a cult of personality. Ideologically, the group is a syncretic mix of mysticism, Acholi nationalism, and Christian fundamentalism, and claims to be establishing a theocratic state based on the Ten Commandments and local Acholi tradition.

Joseph Kony took over The Holy Spirit movement – a militaristic and spiritual rebel movement seeking to free the north of Uganda from government oppression – in 1986. Kony changed the name of the group to the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA.

Joseph Kony wasn’t able to maintain the group’s numbers or regional support, so he started abducting children to fill the ranks of his army. What had started out as a rebel movement to end the oppression of the north became an oppression of the north in itself.

[b]Joseph Kony’s tactics were – and remain – brutal. He often forced children to kill their parents or siblings with machetes or blunt tools. He mutilated those who stood in his way, or those simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, cutting off innocent civilians’ noses, lips, and hands. He abducted girls to be sex slaves for his officer[/b]s.

It’s highly likely that Kony, with a small group of LRA, is currently hiding in Kafia Kingi, a Sudanese controlled ‘enclave’ bordering South Sudan and the Central African Republic. It’s a place which Kony has been able to return time and time again to take refuge, and from where he’s
Kony has been accused by government entities of ordering the abduction of children to become sex slaves and child soldiers. 66,000 children became soldiers. 2 million people were displaced internally from 1986 to 2009.He has been able to continually direct his fighters to attack civilians in neighbouring countries; it is an area where African Union-led forces (assisted by U.S. advisers) cannot go.

Kony was indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, in 2005 but has evaded capture.[22] Kony has been subject to an Interpol Red Notice at the request of the ICC since 2006.[4] Since the Juba peace talks in 2006, the LRA no longer operate in Uganda. Sources claim that they are in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or Central African Republic or South Sudan. In 2013 Kony was reported to be in poor health and Michel Djotodia, president of the Central African Republic, claimed he was negotiating with Kony to surrender."

Profile of Nigeria’s Boko Haram Leader Abubakar Shekau-BBC

Nigeria’s Boko Haram Leader Abubakar Shekau
By BBC News website
Abubakar Shekau is the leader of the militant Islamist group Boko Haram, which has carried out a series of deadly attacks across northern Nigeria. Abdullahi Tasiu Abubakar from the BBC Hausa service looks at Nigeria’s most wanted man.

The leader of the militant Islamist group Boko Haram is said to be a fearless loner, a complex, paradoxical man - part intellectual, part gangster.

Fondly called imam or leader by his followers, Abubakar Muhammad Shekau was born in Shekau village in Nigeria’s north-eastern state of Yobe.
Some say he is 34 or 35, others that he may be 43 - the uncertainty adds to the myths surrounding Nigeria’s most wanted man.
Radical theology student

Mr Shekau was once thought to have been killed by security forces in 2009 - only for him to reappear in videos posted on the internet less than a year later as Boko Haram’s new leader.

The group’s founder, Muhammad Yusuf died in police custody, and hundreds of others were killed during that massive crackdown - which many blame for making the group even more violent.

Mr Shekau has not been seen in public since.

Instead, still images and video clips of him are released from time to time, mostly online, by the group’s faceless “public enlightenment department”.

Mr Shekau is said to have met his predecessor in Maiduguri, capital of Borno State and now Boko Haram’s headquarters, through a mutual friend, Mamman Nur.

Nigeria’s authorities say Mr Nur masterminded the August 2011 bombing of the UN office complex in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.

All three were theology students - and Mr Shekau was seen as the quietest and perhaps the most radical of them.

“He hardly talks, he is fearless,” says Ahmed Salkida, a journalist with such good access to Boko Haram that, at one stage, he was suspected of being a member.

A screengrab taken from a video released on You Tube on April 12, 2012 apparently shows Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau © sitting flanked by militants Under Mr Shekau, Boko Haram has become more radical and carried out more killings

He says he only escaped summary execution by Maiduguri police after an intelligence officer intervened.

“He is one of those who believes that you can sacrifice anything for your belief,” Mr Salkida says.

Mr Shekau is fluent in his native Kanuri, Hausa and Arabic languages - he does not speak English.

“I used to joke with him that he should teach me Arabic and I would teach him English,” Mr Salkida says.

When Yusuf was killed, Mr Shekau is said to have married one of his four wives and adopted their children - perhaps, say sources who do not want to be named, to preserve Boko Haram’s cohesion or “purity”.
‘Chilling message’

The group has a highly decentralised structure - the unifying force is ideology.

Mr Shekau does not communicate directly with the group’s foot soldiers - he is said to wield his power through a few select cell leaders, but even then contact is minimal.

“A lot of those calling themselves leaders in the group do not even have contact with him,” Mr Salkida says.

Mr. Shekau has neither the charismatic streak nor the oratorical skills of his predecessor - but he has an intense ideological commitment and ruthlessness, say people who study the group.

“He is the leader of the more militant wing of the group as testified by his aping of Osama Bin Laden in his video appearances,” says Abubakar Mu'azu from the University of Maiduguri.

Mr Shekau issued a chilling message in one of those appearances - which provides an major insight into what his leadership of the group will bring.

“I enjoy killing anyone that God commands me to kill - the way I enjoy killing chickens and rams,” he said in the video clip released just after Boko Haram had carried out its deadliest attack so far, killing at least 180 people in Kano, northern Nigeria’s largest city.

Mr Shekau is also the group’s spiritual leader - and, judging by video footage, he seems equally comfortable delivering sermons to his followers.

“He has a photographic memory and is well versed in theology,” Mr Salkida said.

He is nicknamed “Darul Tawheed”, which translates as a specialist in Tawheed. This is an orthodox doctrine of the uniqueness and oneness of Allah, which is the very cornerstone of Islam.

But Nigeria’s mainstream Muslim clerics do not regard Mr Shekau as a scholar and question his understanding of Islam - and regularly condemn the bombings and drive-by shootings committed by his followers against anyone who disagrees with them.

BOTH MEN HIDE UNDER THE CANOPY OF RELIGION.

Kony's child soldiers: 'When you kill for the first time, you change'
The children forced to fight for Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army have seen and done terrible things. But what happens when they grow up and go home?When I meet him in the village in which he grew up, Norman Okello leads me to a quiet space beneath two mango trees, far enough away that his mother and father and children won’t hear the stories he’ll tell. We’re in the north of Uganda and the scene around us is of a kind of pastoral paradise: huts of earth and thatch; the green shoots of sweet potatoes in the dark earth; hills in the distance. It’s hard to imagine this place as it was on January 1 1994, with a Ugandan army helicopter flying low, AK47s firing, and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), somewhere out there, whispering among the tall grasses.
On that day, Norman was 12, which was around the age at which the LRA liked to recruit its fighters. Led by the warlord Joseph Kony, the LRA’s child soldiers were notorious for their acts of creative evil. Local leaders would be warned off reporting their location to the Ugandan army by having their lips speared and padlocked; individuals caught riding bicycles – an act forbidden by Kony – would have their legs and buttocks cut off; people would be forced to torture one another. Norman spent two years fighting with the LRA. He saw these things.
[img]http://www.newtimes.co.rw/files/photos/1334961362Child-soldier-3.jpg[/img]

BOKO HARAMCHILD SOLDIERS
It is common knowledge that the military were preparing a comprehensive onslaught on the Boko Haram terrorists in an operation meant to rid the entire region of insurgency in time for the February general elections.

According to a source, weekend’s multiple strike by the insurgents was meant to slow down or even prevent and divert the attention of the military from commencing the determined operation against them.

The source added that the pattern of the attack was also common to the terrorists who embark upon such desperate and unlikely to succeed attacks just to create room for terrorists’ commanders to escape from their camps in view of impending military raids in the areas.

The source said: “The increasing use of child fighters and women in their campaign of terror in the recent encounter is quite baffling. They used animals, armed children and occasional women to confront the soldiers while their commanders operate from the back and mostly in the armoured vehicles”