Joseph Kony

Joseph Rao Kony (born c. 1961) is a Ugandan guerrilla group leader, head of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a group engaged in a violent campaign to establish theocratic government based on the Ten Commandments throughout Uganda. The LRA is a militant group with a syncretic Christian extreme religious ideology. They are known for the extreme atrocities they commit against civilians, including murder, mutilations, rape, and in some accounts even cannibalism.

Directed by Kony, the LRA has earned a reputation for its actions against the people of several countries, including northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and Sudan. It has abducted and forced an estimated 66,000 children to fight for them, and has forced the internal displacement of over 2 million people since its rebellion began in 1986. In 2005 Kony was indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, but has evaded capture.

Early Life

Kony was born c. 1961 in Odek, a village east of Gulu in northern Uganda. A member of the Acholi people, The son of farmers, he enjoyed a good relationship with his siblings, but was quick to retaliate in a dispute, and when confronted he would often resort to physical violence. His father was a lay catechist of the Catholic Church and his mother was an Anglican. Kony was an altar boy for several years, but he stopped attending church around the age of 15. As a teenager Kony apprenticed as the village witch doctor under his older brother, Jamie Brow, and when his older brother died, Kony took over the position. He did not graduate from high school. Kony first came to prominence in January 1986 as the leader of one of the many premillennialist groups that sprang up in Acholiland in the wake of the wildly popular Holy Spirit Movement of Alice Auma (also known as Lakwena), to whom Kony is thought to be related. Their relative loss of influence after the overthrow of Acholi President Tito Okello by Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Army (NRA) during the Ugandan Bush War (1981–1986) spurred resentment among the Acholi, which boosted Joseph Kony's popularity.

From : www.wikipedia.org

Yoweri Museveni

Yoweri Kaguta Museveni (born c. 1944) is a Ugandan politician who has been President of Uganda since 26 January 1986.

Museveni was involved in the war that deposed Idi Amin Dada, ending his rule in 1979, and in the rebellion that subsequently led to the demise of the Milton Obote regime in 1985. With the notable exception of northern areas, Museveni has brought relative stability and economic growth to a country that has endured decades of government mismanagement, rebel activity and civil war. His tenure has also witnessed one of the most effective national responses to HIV/AIDS in Africa.

In the mid-to-late 1990s, Museveni was lauded by the West as part of a new generation of African leaders. His presidency has been marred, however, by invading and occupying Congo during the Second Congo War (the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo which has resulted in an estimated 5.4 million deaths since 1998) and other conflicts in the Great Lakes region. Rebellion in the north of Uganda by the Lord's Resistance Army continues to perpetuate one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. Recent developments, including the abolition of presidential term limits before the 2006 elections and the harassment of democratic opposition, have attracted concern from domestic commentators and the international community.

Earlier Life and Career

Born in Ntungamo, Uganda Protectorate, Museveni is a member of the Banyankole ethnic group and his surname, Museveni, means "Son of a man of the Seventh", in honour of the Seventh Battalion of the King's African Rifles, the British colonial army in which many Ugandans served during World War II.

Museveni gets his middle name from his father, Amos Kaguta, a cattle herder. Amos Kaguta is also the father of Museveni's brother Caleb Akandwanaho, popularly known in Uganda as "Salim Saleh", and sister Violet Kajubiri.

Museveni attended Kyamate Elementary School, Mbarara High School, and Ntare School. It was while at high school that he became a born-again Christian. In 1967, he went to the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. There, he studied economics and political science and became a Marxist, involving himself in radical pan-African politics. While at university, he formed the University Students' African Revolutionary Front activist group and led a student delegation to FRELIMO territory in Portuguese Mozambique, where he received guerrilla training. Studying under the leftist Walter Rodney, among others, Museveni wrote a university thesis on the applicability of Frantz Fanon's ideas on revolutionary violence to post-colonial Africa.

In 1970, Museveni joined the intelligence service of Ugandan President Dr. Apolo Milton Obote. When Major General Idi Amin seized power in a January 1971 military coup, Museveni fled to Tanzania with other exiles, including the deposed president. The power bases of Amin and Obote were very different, leading to a significant ethnic and regional aspect to the resulting conflict. Obote was from the Lango ethnic group of the central north, while Amin was a Kakwa from the northwestern corner of the country. The British colonial government had organized the colony's internal politics so that the Lango and Acholi dominated the national military, while people from southern parts of the country were active in business. This situation endured until the coup, when Amin filled the top positions of government with Kakwa and Lugbara and violently repressed the Lango and their Acholi allies.

From : www.wikipedia.org