OBO, Central African Republic — The night is inky, the helicopters are late and Cmdr. Patrick Opiyo Makasi sits near a dying cooking fire on a remote army base, spinning his thoughts into the darkness.
“It was either them or me,” Commander Makasi said of the countless people he has killed. “Them or me.”
The Lord’s Resistance Army, a notoriously brutal rebel group, snatched him from a riverbank when he was 12 years old, more than 20 years ago, and trained him to burn, pillage and slaughter. His name, Makasi, means scissors in Kiswahili, and fellow soldiers said he earned it by shearing off ears and lips.
But now he has a new mission: hunting down his former boss.
In an unorthodox strategy that could help end this seemingly pointless war, the Ugandan Army is deploying special squads of experienced killers to track down the L.R.A.’s leader, Joseph Kony, one of the most wanted men in Africa, who has been on the run for two decades.
To read the rest of this article please visit: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/world/africa/11lra.html?scp=1&sq=kony&st=cse