The US is deploying more troops and aircraft to help capture the elusive LRA rebel leader.

The days of the fugitive Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA rebel leader, Joseph Kony, might now be numbered after the United States of America announced on Monday, March 24, 2014 that it was sending at least four CV-22 Ospreys and refuelling planes. Some 150 Air Force Special Forces personnel will also be sent to Uganda this week to help capture him.

The BBC said the additional troops are to join 100 other Special Forces who were deployed in 2011 to help thousands of African troops track down the rebel leader. The LRA first emerged in Uganda in the 1980s, but its fighters now roam between the Central African Republic, CAR, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC. Kony is wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges. US authorities have offered a ransom of 5 million Dollars (about FCFA 2.4 billion) for information leading to his arrest.

The New Vision newspaper yesterday, March 25, 2014, reported that the Uganda People’s Defence Force, UPDF has so far been unable to locate the LRA’s leader’s hideout because he has changed tactics. Kony decided not to raid civilians because he was losing his fighters. He and his men now survive on wild yams while others have taken to fishing for survival, explained Col. Joseph Balikuddembe, Commander of ‘Operation Lightening Thunder.’

In addition, the vast jungles of CAR are home to nomadic tribes like the Ambororo, the Janjaweed from Sudan and other cattle keeping nomads from Cameroon and Nigeria.  "Sometimes we pick a trail and follow, knowing they could be rebels, only to land on the herdsmen,” explained another UPDF army commander. The operation's main logistical base is at Nzara in South Sudan. Not less than 26 squads are hunting for Kony day and night.

Because the targeted area in CAR is dry, the hunt for rebels is concentrated along all major rivers like Vovodo and the crocodile-infested Chinko. The LRA leader and his men fled the onslaught against their bases in Garamba Forest in DRC to CAR in 2008 when the UPDF launched ‘Operation Lightening Thunder.’ Some scattered deeper into the DRC where they are still abducting people after the UPDF pulled out of the country last year.