A number of armed groups with a presence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have attacked Ugandan cities and citizens over the past few decades. The Lord's Resistance Army, an Acholi rebel group, attacked northern Uganda heavily in the mid-2000s but has hardly been a threat since. Between 1998 and 2004, the Allied Democratic Forces, an Islamic rebel group, conducted numerous attacks in the central Rwenzori Mountains before being largely driven out of Uganda by the Ugandan military. Uganda's two-part strategy to counter these rebels has been to push them out of Uganda and into the Congo or beyond and to support opposing rebel groups and the Ugandan military, especially against the Lord's Resistance Army. This strategy has been relatively successful, pushing the Lord's Resistance Army well into the Congo and the Central African Republic. Still, the threat from the rebel groups has not completely subsided. There have been recent rumors that the Allied Democratic Forces have been rebounding over the last year or two. Kampala has even claimed that the Islamic group has attacked police, churches and schools in western Uganda in 2012, though these claims may be false. In the Congo, there is much more evidence of the Allied Democratic Forces' apparent recovery. In October 2012, for example, three priests were kidnapped, allegedly by the Allied Democratic Forces, in the Rwenzori Mountains region in Beni, the Congo.
