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The Lord's Resistance Army and African International Relations

ABSTRACT For the past two decades, the Lord's Resistance Army has waged a devastating war against the central government and the local population in northern Uganda. It is estimated that tens of thousands of civilians have been killed or kidnapped so far. In recent years, Lord's Resistance Army forces led by Joseph Kony have moved beyond the confines of northern Uganda, turning what was a relatively localized civil war into a larger regional conflict. Media and scholarly attention to the conflict has been limited, with most coverage typified by sensationalism, focusing on the brutality of the Lord's Resistance Army and its practice of kidnapping children. Western political scientists, particularly working within the field of international relations, have given the conflict short shrift even though it provides an important case for understanding the complexities and contradictions of African international relations. This article focuses on the evolution of the Lord's Resistance Army conflict, with particular attention to recent events that have broadened the geographic scope of the war. This article explores how the Lord's Resistance Army case critically challenges some of the assumptions traditional IR makes about conflict, security, the sovereign state, and regionalism.