Joseph Kony: As the US ends its hunt for the warlord, what next?

The US's six-year search for Africa's most wanted warlord, Joseph Kony, is at an end, with the notorious warlord still at large. CNN reports that the 100-strong taskforce of troops will no longer focus on the hunt for the Ugandan war criminal – a hunt that has so far cost some $780m (£600m) – and instead concentrate on broader security concerns.

So what is the story of Joseph Kony and where is he now?

Who is Joseph Kony?

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Kony is the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which began as a rebel movement in Uganda's ethnic Acholi communities against government persecution in 1986. Initially popular, it lost support as it grew increasingly violent, killing and mutilating civilians, according to Human Rights Watch.

Headed by Kony, the "nightmarish cult", in the words of Quartz has murdered 100,000 people, displaced 1.9 million and abducted 30,000 child soldiers. From Uganda, the LRA spread to Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic.

In 2005 the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Kony and four other senior LRA figures. Of these, only Kony and another commander, Dominic Ongwen, are still alive.

In 2006, the LRA and the Ugandan government agreed to a ceasefire but weeks later the rebel group accused the government of attacking one of its camps and walked out.

Over the course of 18 months there were a series of talks, military incidents, apologies and then talks again, but in 2008 Kony rejected a deal with the government and refused to sign a peace agreement.

There has been little trace of him since, although he is allegedly hiding in the Kafia Kingi region of Sudan, Quartz says.

What about that Kony 2012 campaign?

The hunt for Kony reached fever pitch in 2012, when California-based advocacy group Invisible Children created the Kony 2012 viral video.

The creators said they wanted to "make [Kony] famous" but "not to glorify him, but so that his crimes would not go unnoticed". The film, with its "slick Hollywood production values", writes The Guardian, racked up over 100m views in six days.

However, the organisation was criticised for factual inaccuracies and concerns it was wasting donors' money, not to mention concerns by African activists that it reinforces "the old idea, once used to justify colonial exploitation, that Africans are helpless and need to be saved by Westerners", wrote the New York Times.

What has happened since?

Efforts by African and Western forces have sapped the strength of the LRA, which has gone from almost 2,000 fighters to about 150, according to Human Rights Watch. That weakness has contributed to The US's decision to pull out of the search for Kony himself.

Still, last year the organisation kidnapped 563 people – a drop from the 737 abducted the year before but nevertheless significant, The Guardian notes.

Former LRA commander Dominic Ongwen surrendered to US forces in 2015 and is now standing trial at the ICC in The Hague. Among the charges against Ongwen, who was abducted by the LRA aged 10, are murder, torture, rape and sexual slavery, The Guardian reports. Ongwen is said to have handed himself in because he feared being murdered. The trial is a lengthy, expensive process and, in a sign of the divisions on how to handle the LRA, some former abductees have even said he should be pardoned, Quartz reports.

What happens now?

With America losing interest, some people have been more critical of the West's aims in going after Kony in the first place.

"Much of the West’s interest in his case is less about a war criminal and more about an adventure mystery in the tradition of El Dorado," Quartz says. "Kony is everywhere, but more importantly, he is nowhere. The hunt is a performative space, a void into which his pursuers can insert themselves."

The money splurged on hunting Kony, Quartz argues, could better have gone to rebuilding the areas ravaged by LRA activities.

Other groups, including Invisible Children, argue that leaving Kony at large "leaves the LRA with an opening to ramp up recruitment of child soldiers and resume large-scale massacres", CNN says.

There is also a risk that key "defection sites", set up to encourage LRA members to leave, will be dismantled. The LRA has turned its attentions to stealing gold and diamonds and poaching elephants, which, The Guardian notes, could keep it armed – and therefore dangerous – for years.