The last time the Ugandan army tried to engage Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) warlord Joseph Kony in a decisive battle in the Garamba forest in the DemocraticRepublic of Congo, the elusive rebel fighter is said to have just escaped, leaving senior commanders of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) to pose for pictures with jerricans, cups, saucepans and other household items they “captured” from Kony’s base.

During the nearly 30 years that Kony has fought against the government of President Yoweri Museveni, he has mastered the art of escaping just in time.

In that time, all that UPDF has managed to “arrest” is an assortment of personal and household items, including a guitar and a Kaunda suit.

In fact, Kony has been so adept at eluding his adversaries that he created a legend among his followers of a man who receives messages from spirits about when the enemy is about to strike.

Besides keeping his military adversaries at bay for the past three decades, Kony has eluded International Criminal Court (ICC) indictments for eight years.

He has also eluded a multinational African Union military force propped up by 100 American Special Forces commandos. The United States, which has labelled Kony a global terrorist, has placed a $5 million bounty on Kony’s head.

Born in 1961 in Odek village in northern Uganda, Kony came into prominence as LRA leader in the late 1980s, when the former altar boy inherited the fighters of his aunt Alice Auma Lakwena’s Holy Spirit Movement, which was facing defeat at the hands of the Museveni-led National Resistance Army.

Kony said his group, which followed a strict Christian doctrine, was fighting so that he could govern Uganda according to the 10 commandments.

While he preached leadership by the word of God, Kony sowed enough terror in northern Uganda to scare the devil. The LRA masterminded massacres of people in the Acholi region, accusing them of supporting the government.

He abducted young men to replenish his fighting force and young women to serve as sex slaves for his fighters. According to the United Nations — whose Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs andEmergency Relief, Jan Egeland, described the war in northern Uganda as “the world’s worst forgotten humanitarian crises” — the LRA abducted more than 30,000 children during the more than two decades it was active in northern Uganda.

Additionally, the LRA war caused the displacement of more than 2 million people, many of whom are now resettled in their homes, if not fully rehabilitated.

In 2005, the Uganda government agreed to hold peace talks with the LRA in Juba. However, Kony refused to turn up for the signing ceremony, saying he would only do so if the ICC rescinded the arrest warrantsagainst him and his top commanders.

Since then, Kony has lived as a fugitive in the Democratic Republic of Congo, parts of South Sudan and the Central African Republic, where he continues to use the same brutal tactics that earned him notoriety in northern Uganda.

A 2012 effort by the US organisation Invisible Children to inform the world of the atrocities committed by Kony earned him worldwide recognition and compelled the US to join a manhunt for one of Africa’s most savage killers.

However, like the proverbial cat of nine lives, Kony has continued to evade capture. If Kony is indeed ill and intends to surrender, then, perhaps, finally, the man who has turned into a transcontinental architect of terror has reached the end of his tether.

But until he actually shows up waving the white flag, it is tempting to think this could be yet another stalling tactic to help him recuperate and live beyond his nine lives.