OBO, Central African Republic —Six months after President Barack Obama ordered 100 elite service members to help capture warlord Joseph Kony, U.S. military commanders said Sunday that they have been unable to pick up his trail but think he is hiding in this country’s dense jungle, relying on Stone Age tactics to dodge his pursuers’ high-tech surveillance tools.
Kony and his militia, the Lord’s Resistance Army, have slowed their pace of rapes, abductions and killings in recent months. Under renewed international pressure, LRA fighters have slipped deeper into the bush, splintering into smaller bands to avoid detection, and are literally covering their tracks, according to U.S., African and U.N. officials who are collaborating on the hunt.
Kony, a Ugandan guerrilla who began his uprising in the 1980s, long ago ordered his followers to stop using radios and cellphones to avoid leaving an electronic trail. Nowadays, officials said, his 200 or so fighters rely on foot messengers and preset rendezvous points to communicate.
Kony’s methods have proved effective against the U.S. military’s satellites, sensors and other forms of surveillance. Commanders warn that it could take years to find him.
“They’re on the run,” said Capt. Kenneth Wright, a Navy SEAL who leads the overall U.S. search effort. “This is not going to be an easy slog. Knock wood, maybe we get lucky. But by experience, this is going to be a persistent engagement.”
Since October, U.S. troops have fanned out to five outposts in four countries, advising thousands of troops from Uganda, the Central African Republic, South Sudan and Congo who are hunting Kony across a territory the size of California. In Obo, the terrain is so remote that it took the U.S. military four months to carve out a jungle camp.
The U.S. government declared the LRA a terrorist organization a decade ago and has given the Ugandan military equipment and advice for years.
Obama raised the stakes of American involvement in October by ordering troops into the field, even though the LRA does not pose a direct threat to U.S. interests. The military operation has broad support in Congress and among human-rights groups, which say American intervention is necessary to prevent LRA atrocities.
