Talk:Lord's Resistance Army insurgency

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Lord's Resistance Army insurgency is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.

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January 26, 2005	Peer review	Reviewed
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Peer Review Process

I've only helped a little, but I hope it's a start. I changed the wording of the opening sentence around, changed the "Ugandan government" to link to Politics of Uganda, fixed some grammar, and changed the heading "Chronological List of Reported Incidents" to "Recent incidents involving the LRA," it's more descriptive. Mtrisk 03:56, 5 January 2005 (UTC)

The "Ten Commandments" reference is almost certainly incorrect. While often quoted in the media (I guess because it makes for interesting reading), it seems to come from a line in an Amnesty Internation report published in 1997: "Breaking God's Commandments", which states "Neither the Holy Spirit Movement of Alice Lakwena nor the LRA of Joseph Kony have presented political programs that are readily understandable to outsiders, beyond calling for Uganda to be ruled according to the biblical Ten Commandments". HSM certainly presented political programs, for example Alice (or Lakwena) gave an interview with reporters just before the battle at Jinja where she said that they were "fighting to depose the Museveni government and unite all the people in Uganda" (source: Behrend). Since the first half of the statement is wrong, the second half probably is too. (Amnesty do not know who their source was, or whether the source for the first half of the statement is the same as the second, or whether the second half refers to HSM or the LRA). The 'Ten Commandments' stuff is probably confusion with HSM's 'Holy Spirit Safety Rules'. The article should probably reflect some of this, but exactly how much needs to go into it is difficult to answer. Alun Harford 22:48, 14 January 2005

Yeah, I've been cautiously changing the intro. The "based on the Ten Commandments" line found in nearly every news article about the LRA is a pet peeve. The 1997 Amnesty report appears to oversimplify the syncretism of Acholi religion, e.g. the melding of spirit medium and Christian prophet in the figure of the nebbi, as opposed to the ajwaka. And I don't agree that the HSM had a clear political program. The UPDA was the only Acholi rebel group that was clearly led by people who thought in political rather than religious terms, which is why they realized that the insurgency was hopeless and negotiated a peace on favorable terms. An escaped abductee stated that Kony "always told us that he spoke with the angel who told him that he would one day be president of Uganda and the young people he has abducted and the children born in captivity would take over the country." (HRW), which appears to be about as political as the Auma quote above. Insane, but still vaguely political. I'm sure that the article has some of my personal bias on what is important and what is not, so additions by others to it and the related pages can only help. Cheers, BanyanTree 00:03, 15 January 2005 (UTC)

I understand that "Lakwena Two" doesn't make a lot of sense in Lwo, and given that Kony left HSM when he got laughed out of the room by 'Lakwena' (source: Mike Ocan and Behrend) this seems like old (NRA?) propoganda to assosiate the popular HSM with the attrocities of the LRA. Alun Harford 22:48, 14 January 2005

It's very well might be an anachronism. The first source that I remember mentioning "Lakwena Part Two" is Allen, T. 1991. “Understanding Alice: Uganda’s Holy Spirit Movement in Context.” Africa 61 (3). I also vaguely recall it being mentioned in another more recent article, possibly Doom and Vlassenroot. Since the first reference is from 1991, when the LRA still had a decent amount of popular support (at least compared to post-1994), I don't know why the NRA would have used it as propaganda. However, Allen makes a couple of mistakes that are later mentioned and corrected by Behrend, and this appears to be the only work he published on the LRA, so I'm a little leery of his work. I have modified the relevant sentence in the article. Tell me what you think. BanyanTree

I've read through this as an SME on the region and the LRA, the content is good - the main comment is on the 'meted out atrocities' in the background by the NRA. These should be defined - what atrocities are we talking about, how many people affected? Ngo-analyst (talk) 14:06, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

References

I'd call the 'Other sources' section References. Or maybe make 'References' a main section, with 'Bibliography' and 'External links' as subsections. What do you think? — mark ✎ 09:30, 8 January 2005 (UTC)

I still consider myself a newcomer, but isn't the term "references" used for the (rarely done) footnotes that direct to the bottom of the page, rather than externally? I may be completely wrong about this. Feel free to change stuff around to whatever seems most logical.

As I take it, 'References' are the sources (printed and online) referred to in the article and/or used in writing the article. 'Bibliography' can be the same, but can sometimes mean something like 'Further reading' (i.e. related things you should read that haven't necessarily been used in the article). I have never seen 'References' referring to footnotes. What you see mostly in academic works is a Notes section (footnotes/endnotes) followed by a References section (sources used). But I must admit that my own Wikipractice is not consistent either; compare Gbe languages and Force Dynamics. — mark ✎ 18:45, 8 January 2005 (UTC)

After browsing through Misplaced Pages:Cite sources, I think you're right. I'll go change it. BanyanTree 20:26, 8 January 2005 (UTC)

Looks good! — mark ✎ 21:51, 8 January 2005 (UTC)

"Recent incidents involving the LRA"

This section is sort of dangling on the rest of the article right now, I think it needs some work. What defines an incident involving the LRA? News coverage? Victims? Something else? At present, it's a little stubby — only two items, both dating from February 2004. If it's unstubbyfied (i.e. updated to include all recent events), will it add to the quality of the article? Or would it be so big that it would have to split off to List of recent incidents involving the LRA? In short, what is it's purpose? — mark ✎ 21:35, 8 January 2005 (UTC)

If you look at an older version of the article, the two incidents make up a significant part of its length. I assume that's from someone who read about the attacks, found the article, and added them in. When I inserted the historical sections, I threw the incidents into their own section as it didn't make sense to leave them in the intro section. Frankly, I always skip over it when I skim the article.

Since so many attacks are on isolated villages, I would be surprised if the majority had been documented. Acholipeace.org (which is incredibly badly structured) has some historical month-by-month accounts that are mind-blowing in illustrating how many raids, ambushes, abductions and attacks are carried out. Even an attempt to document them all would require a separate page. And I'm not sure that lists like "1 January: UPDF supply truck ambushed, three soldiers injured, 3 January: Village X looted, 6 civilians reported abducted but 4 released two days later" would add something significant that would be worth the effort of trying to find all that info. Even the Ugandan national newspapers put LRA attacks on inside pages because they are/were so commmon.

So the easy solution, as far as I can see, is to just add the incidents into the relevant section of the text body. What might be useful is to make a list of major incidents, using the "signal events" list in the Gersony PDF link as a baseline. Comments? BanyanTree 22:09, 8 January 2005 (UTC)

See this and this for some recent AcholiPeace lists. And this is just one local NGO operating in the north. Like I said, mindblowing. Looking at these actually makes me thinks I'm not emphasizing the violence of the insurgency enough... BanyanTree 22:29, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Bad Things. I hadn't realized it was that violent. Comments: I think adding relevant incidents to the text body is the best way to do it — for the most part it's already done that way. I agree with you that a list of major incidents makes more sense than a list of recent incidents. — mark ✎ 01:02, 9 January 2005 (UTC)

Where the hell is the international outrage against the LRA? I completely understand the problems people have with the Arabized Muslims and non-Arabized Muslims killing each other in Darfur, but where the hell is the outrage against the atrocities being committed by the LRA? Is Uganda not worth a "Save Uganda" campaign? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.48.19.93 (talk) 23:11, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

IDP map

Currently looking for a map of Uganda that includes all of the places mentioned in 'Prominent incidents', in order to create another map, marking the locations of those incidents (red stars or something). Or maybe you know a better purpose for yet another map; or maybe you think it's enough already; or that pictures would be better. (I tend to agree with that last one — I'm inclined to draw another map just because there's so much text, but some pictures would solve that problem as well). Let me hear your thoughts! — mark ✎ 19:34, 9 January 2005 (UTC)

Another map couldn't hurt, but I think we may be running into diminishing marginal returns at this point. The distances are so small that a rebel band can move from the Sudanese border to central Pader, for instance, in one day, so pointing out a couple locations in e.g. Kitgum district may give the false impression that the other regions are safe. What might be more useful, perhaps as a replacement for the "districts affected" map, would be a map with the number of displaced as a raw number and percentage of the total district population such as this one, possibly updated with more recent figures from September on the 87th page of this CAP. I'm definitely keeping my eyes open for pictures at this point. Otherwise, what do you think of putting the nitty-gritty details of attacks at the end of the article? I'm wary of getting into details of attacks in the middle of the article as they are so disturbing it may throw people's train of thought off, but that may just be my perception... -- BanyanTree 03:22, 10 January 2005 (UTC)

No, I agree with you there. I think keeping a list at the end is a good idea. As for the map, I'll look into it. Haven't got much time this week, so I shouldn't be working on these things — but I'm addicted... — mark ✎ 10:43, 10 January 2005 (UTC)

I can't find the right figures in the PDF referred to above. The map on page 87 reports the number of IDP's benefiting from relief food as of September 2004, and omits the number of IDPs in some districts that lack food assistance. I'll use the figures of the older map to draft a map, as they can easily be changed; from the filename I guess those are numbers from a year ago. — mark ✎ 13:57, 5 February 2005 (UTC)

Draft, using the old figures: . Comments? — mark ✎ 14:30, 5 February 2005 (UTC)

It appears that Adjumani district, northwest of Gulu, also counts as "affected" but has no IDP count. Perhaps both Adjumani and Apac could be "affected with unreported IDP populations" or something similar. I can't figure out the source of the older map. If it was done by the World Food Program or something similar, it's probably an estimate of people they are providing aid to, rather than an estimate of absolute numbers. So it's not that Adjumani and Apac are "affected with no IDPs". The lines between districts appear a bit faint. Throw on a legend and label Sudan and it looks good to go. Great job!

It looks like the article is about to fall off the edge of peer review... - BanyanTree 15:28, 5 February 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the directions! New draft, including Adjumani, less faint district borders and a legend: . Districts borders are still not too dark because otherwise district names that cross borders look messy. The Sept 2004 WFP CAP doesn't include figures for Katakwi and Soroti, what do you think of my solution for that?

Do you think this map should replace the earlier Ugandan districts affected by...-map, or should I rather update that one to include Adjumani? The drawback of this new one is that the figures are unreadable at a width of 400 px or less. So maybe we should go for both, the old one serving to give a quick impression of affected districts and the new one providing detailed figures.

As for Peer Review — well, this article is on my soon-to-submit-to-FAC-list anyway, so I guess it's about time :). On a more serious note, I don't think you will get much more comments there. Peer Review doesn't seem to work well these days for articles from the csb-corner. — mark ✎ 17:15, 5 February 2005 (UTC)

I like it, and your solution for the two different sources. The only thing I can see now is to make explicit the meaning of the numbers and percentages. Maybe in the title of the legend? - "Number of IDPs, and IDPs as a percentage of total population". There must be a less awkward way of phrasing it...

We should keep both maps. The mention of the Juba-Torit red-line is only useful when the towns are on the accompanying large map; and the article certainly isn't crowded with images. - BanyanTree 19:15, 5 February 2005 (UTC)

Here it is! As for the meaning of the numbers, I think the caption of the image is the best place for that (just like the other maps), although I agree that we should find a less awkward wording. I'll update the other map to include Adjumani. — mark ✎ 19:37, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

And the older map is updated, lose your browser cache if you don't see it. — mark ✎ 20:04, 5 February 2005 (UTC)

Looks good! Do you want to do the honors of inserting somewhere into the latter part of the article? - BanyanTree 21:16, 5 February 2005 (UTC)

:) I inserted it. Don't hesitate to reposition it though if you see a better place. — mark ✎ 21:48, 5 February 2005 (UTC)

No news in timeline for 4 years now

Does this mean that the LRA is so diminished that it's mostly dormant now? 82.37.67.151 (talk) 13:57, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

The LRA hasn't featured in any attacks for several years, it isn't considered in any counter-insurgency threat models at present. The most recent relevant news from 2021 is the reintegration of LRA captives in 2021 from invisible children which is cited in the article with the statement about this on the link here: https://invisiblechildren.com/who-we-are-today/ -- the inclusion of this might help add to the article on the groups dormancy, but also that their impact is still felt today. Ngo-analyst (talk) 14:05, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Proseline

The 2008-present section suffers from some of the worst WP:PROSELINE I have ever seen. Willbb234 21:39, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

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