Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 19:47:50 +0200
Africa's forgotten scourge: Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army
In the past year, Joseph Kony is said to have been responsible for killing
76 civilians and abducting 467. Despite the lack of international coverage,
an African operation to kill or capture him continues. Martin Plaut talks to
its leader, Brigadier General Sam Kavuma.
by <http://www.newstatesman.com/writers/71605> Martin Plaut
24 October, 2014 - 13:06
Once they were at the top of the African crisis agenda, but ebola, civil war
in South Sudan and the atrocities of Boko Haram have driven them out of the
headlines. It is hard to find a single mention of Joseph Kony or his
murderous Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in the international media.
Yet they have not gone away. The charity Invisible Children,
<http://www.lracrisistracker.com/> which tenaciously tracks the LRA says
that it killed two people in the last month and abducted 26 more. In the
past year Kony is said to have been responsible for killing 76 civilians and
abducting 467. Behind these cold statistics is a trail of shattered lives:
of villages living in terror and women too frightened to go to the fields to
plant or harvest.
Kony, and his killers, are now hunted across a vast area of Central Africa.
"There are probably no more than 100 fighters with Kony," says Brigadier
General Sam Kavuma, who is leading the African operation to kill or capture
him. But the general is under no illusion about the scale of the problem.
The LRA is dispersed over South Sudan, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of
Congo and the Central African Republic. It is an area approximately the size
of western Europe and General Kavuma has only around 1,500 troops at his
disposal.
Despite this, the general is optimistic. "Kony is no longer fighting - he's
hiding and trying to survive," he told the New Statesman in a phone
interview.
The General's Regional Task Force should be far larger. The African Union
mandate provides for a brigade-size operation of 5,000 troops,
<http://www.peaceau.org/uploads/psc-rpt-lra-380-17-06-2013-2-.pdf> drawn
from Uganda, the Central African Republic, South Sudan and Congo (pdf).
But the civil war in the Central African Republic has meant it has provided
General Kavuma with not a single soldier, while the fighting that erupted in
South Sudan last December has also reduced its support. One of Uganda's
three battalions was also withdrawn to prop up South Sudanese President,
Salva Kiir, in
<http://www.enoughproject.org/files/Counter-LRA%20Mission%20Challenged%20by%
20Regional%20Turmoil.pdf> his dispute with his rival, Riek Machar (pdf).
Joseph Kony - once a Ugandan church choir boy - has been the scourge of
central Africa for more than two decades. Drawn from the Acholi people of
northern Uganda, the LRA has used abduction and murder to further its ends
and maintain its operations. Kony himself is notoriously canny and wary -
characteristics that have allowed him to survive all these years despite the
international efforts to kill him.
President Obama established the elimination of Kony as one of his African
goals and
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/world/africa/obama-is-sending-more-resour
ces-for-joseph-kony-search.html?_r=0> recently increased the support given
to this operation. Several CV-22 Osprey long range, high speed helicopters,
plus 150 Air Force Special Operations troops and airmen joined the search.
In the end, though, the problem of the LRA is likely to require a political
solution. "We know that 80 per cent of LRA fighters have been abducted
themselves," says General Kavuma. Talks have been tried in the past, but are
ruled out for the present. Kony has used previous negotiations and
ceasefires to regroup and re-arm his forces. "The Acholi leaders have sent
messages to their people to defect and come home," the general says and this
is paying dividends. "Two months ago we had over fifty defectors, including
women and children."
This strategy has American backing
<http://www.armytimes.com/article/20141013/NEWS/310130052/Army-Messaging-lea
ds-mass-defections-from-Kony> from the 7th Military Information Support
Battalion. Radio stations have been established to broadcast appeals to the
fighters; half a million leaflets have been dropped from the air. Even
aerial loudspeakers have been deployed to try to persuade LRA fighters to
lay down their weapons and come out of the bush.
This has been a long and a deadly war. Ugandan troops serve for up to two
years before going home. General Kavuma has a good reputation and is said to
have transformed the African troops into an effective fighting force. But
divisions in South Sudan and the Central African Republic have sapped the
operation. The LRA is said to be hiding in Kafia Kingi, one of the areas
claimed by both Sudan and South Sudan. Kony may still receive backing from
Khartoum, although the General says he has no evidence of this.
The fighting is unlikely to end soon. It is simply too low on the
international agenda to receive sufficient resources. As one well-informed
observer put it: "The LRA is a forgotten force in a forgotten part of the
world."
Joseph Kony, photographed in Southern Sudan in 2006. Photo: Stuart
Price/AFP/Getty
Joseph Kony, photographed in Southern Sudan in 2006. Photo: Stuart
Price/AFP/Getty
(image/jpeg attachment: image001.jpg)