Holy Warrior

(Sudan Tribune)

Sam Childers is a modern-day hero. Everything from his name and his background read like a masked-avenger biography. He has even overcome a rather checkered past, after spending the 70s and 80s dealing hard drugs in a motorcycle gang in Florida.

Now he spends his days hunting in Sudan. But Childers is no mere safari tourist (though he used to hunt gators while living in Florida), he now hunts game of an entirely different sort - murderers and rapists.

You may be familiar with these murderers and rapists, they are a millenarian group led by a man named Joseph Kony and are called the Lord's Resistance Army, and for several years now, Childers has been fighting them.

Yes, much of his fighting has involved building fortified villages for the children he has rescued and the civilians he has defended, and indeed this rebuilding of the infrastructure has probably met with considerably more success than his other efforts, but make no mistake: Childers has personally liquidated many LRA rebels.

Driving across the countryside with a shotgun across his lap, Childers' ultimate goal is the execution of Joseph Kony. Though Childers is sanctioned by local authorities to do this task, he is not without opposition, even from beyond the LRA (who promise to make his death very painful). Recently, Kony has suggested that he is simply "fighting for peace" and that he has no desire to continue his campaign of rape and murder. Ostensibly discussing this with Sudanese VP Riek Macher, Kony was given a large amount of US cash, and sent on his merry way to continue his regime of terror. Nonetheless, the offer of amnesty for Kony is still very much in effect, and Childers hopes to take him out before Kony accepts it. He says, "He should never be negotiated with or given amnesty, because he needs to pay for his crimes. When you look at his crimes, it is not against just adults, it’s against little children. I mean raping little children and chopping them up. This stuff is unreal."

Joseph Kony, you're a millenarian, you know how justice works. If Childers doesn't manage to get your head on pike, someone else will. There's no hiding place down here.