Abstract
Nearly forty years after its emergence, and despite a range of international efforts, Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) continue to evade capture. This briefing examines how the group has managed to survive, even in extreme decline, within the remote borderlands of the Central African Republic (CAR), Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Drawing on fifteen years of interviews with former combatants, local actors, and policymakers, it analyses the LRA’s evolving strategies of endurance since 2011—a period that has received little scholarly attention. The analysis highlights how the group embedded itself in local and transnational border economies, engaging in both licit and illicit trade and cultivating ties with a range of armed and state actors. Yet these same borderlands have also produced new vulnerabilities, from disrupted trade networks to growing defections. The briefing argues that the LRA’s persistence reflects not only its adaptive embeddedness in these peripheral regions but also fluctuating regional and international political will, which has repeatedly undermined efforts to bring the group to an end.
