Peter Eichstaedt

Congolese: Uganda not serious about Kony

2011-10-22T13:56:00.007-06:00

A blog posted this week by writers of the Economist, one of the world's leading news magazines, quoted a Congolese army commander as accusing the Ugandan army of being "not serious" about the capture of Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army.

The blog is titled Baobob, which is a majestic and extremely long living tree in Africa, and focuses on the plight of an unnamed army lieutenant who has the unenviable mission of leading his men against the LRA as it roams the remote northern jungles of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The officer bemoans the fact that his men have not been paid or resupplied for months, yet they continue to slog after the battle-hardened child soldiers of Kony's LRA.

What makes the army unit's situation all the more depressing is that the Ugandan units that are in the region are well-supplied and well-equipped, but aren't doing anything.

"It's a crooked war the Ugandan are fighting with the LRA," the officer tells the Economist blogger. "They have all the weapons in the world, but they're not serious."

This commander's frustrations parallel my own when it comes to Uganda's abortive efforts to track, capture and/or kill Kony and the minions of his murderous cult. As I have argued in my book, First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and his army have a vested interest in keeping Kony alive.

As I discuss in my latest book, Consuming the Congo: War and Conflict Minerals in the World's Deadliest Place, Museveni focused his army in the DRC starting in early 1996 when he teamed up with Rwandan President Paul Kagame to topple the regime of Mobutu Sese Seko. Mobutu was replaced with their hand-picked commander, the late Laurent Kabila, whose son Joseph will most likely be re-elected president of the DRC next month.

After Laurent Kabila tried to kick the Ugandans and Rwandans out of his country in 1998, they launched a second war in the DRC that stalled. But Uganda and Rwanda stayed in eastern Congo until 2003, allowing them to plunder the gold, diamonds, timber, as well as untold tons of what has become known as "conflict minerals": tin, tungsten and tantalum.

Meanwhile, back in northern Uganda, Kony continued to fight, wreaking havoc against his own tribe, the Acholi who dominated all of northern Uganda. Museveni let his generals inflate the number of soldiers actually fighting in the north, which became know as the "ghost soldiers." The generals were eventually relieved of their rank, but not until after they'd been able to pocket millions of foreign aid dollars meant to put an end to Kony and the LRA.

Although Kony decamped northern Uganda in 2006 for the remote jungles of northern DRC, he continued as he had done for the prior 20 years, killing, looting and kidnapping, no longer able to justify his criminal behavior by claiming to fight the Museveni government.

In 2008, former President Bush sent US military advisers to Uganda, and with the Ugandans, they devised an attack on Kony's camp, which failed miserably when Kony was apparently tipped off and fled with army. He then went on a murderous rampage, killing nearly 1,000 innocent people in the region.

Because of these past failures by the Bush administration, and armed with a congressional mandate, President Barack Obama has sent yet another bevy of US military adviser to Uganda to see if they can convince Museveni and the Ugandan army to get the job done once and for all.

While some influential commentators, such as the perennially bizarre and woefully confused Rush Limbaugh, have said that Obama is trying to wipe out Christians in Africa, other more knowledgeable ones have said that these advisers will actually be armed and accompany Ugandans into the jungle.

With US forces on the ground, this gives hope that finally something might be done about Kony, but wait! Last Sunday, shortly after Obama made the announcement, Uganda's Museveni says that no, US advisers will NOT be on the ground, and according to reports, "will not participate in actual fighting."

Museveni's comments only reinforce my long-standing belief, which is now shared by that poor Congolese lieutenant, that Uganda does not want Kony captured. Rather, what we can see is more foreign money and arms lavished on Uganda, but to no other purpose but to enrich and empower the Ugandan elite.

Advisers to Uganda is nothing new

2011-10-15T09:29:00.005-06:00

President Obama's decision to send 100 military advisers to Uganda to help kill or capture renegade militia leader Joseph Kony is nothing new.

The same thing was done in 2008 by then President George Bush, just three years ago, and with disastrous results.

As those who track events in east Africa know, a bevy of military advisers was sent to Uganda in early 2008 with loads of advice and bundles of cash.

The idea was to kill and or capture Kony and his band of hardened child soldiers who comprise the Lord's Resistance Army, in their long-time camp in the Garamba National Park in the northern jungles of the DR Congo.

The U.S. advisers came up with a surprise attack plan that involved an air strike at dawn on December 14, 2008, followed by a devastating ground attack. The U.S. even handed over $1 million to pay for the logistics.

The attack was completely botched. It was an embarrassment all the way around and exposed the corruption and incompetence of the Ugandan army. And sadly, it raises serious questions whether Obama is simply throwing good money after bad.

First of all, Kony and his men were apparently tipped off that the surprise attack was coming and by the time the bombs were dropped, only kidnapped women and children were left in the camp.

The air attack was grossly delayed, according to the Ugandan army, because Kony's camp was shrouded in fog. This seems hardly likely, since the area is too warm for significant fog to develop, although drifting mist is more than possible.

This four or five-hour delay, it was speculated, allowed the Kony and his soldiers to monitor the radio traffic of the Ugandan army, and allowed them to escape.

Meanwhile, the Ugandan ground forces were still two days away from Kony's camp, and by the time they arrived, they found only a few abandoned laptops, radios and a handfull of mobile telephones.

Enraged by this abortive attack, the psychotic Kony divided his force into three groups, and each when on a rampage of revenge, brutally killing an estimated 800 to 1,000 innocent villagers in the region, some in the Central African Republic and others in South Sudan.

While Uganda has continued to track the Lord's Resistance Army, they have done little but keep Kony and his cutthroats on the move. Uganda's enthusiasm for the killing or capture of Kony has waned as he continues to roam one of the most remote regions in the world, killing and kidnapping with abandon just as he's done for decades.

The U.S. has tolerated Uganda's failure to find Kony, who is undoubtedly Africa's most wanted man, having been indicted by the International Criminal Court nearly eight years ago, because of other regional issues.

Uganda has the bulk of the African Union forces currently occupying Mogadishu, Somalia, and are the only thing that protects the U.S.-backed regime in Somalia, providing a thin barrier between Somalia and total chaos.

The question now is whether this second round of advisers will be able to generate a result that is any different from the disastrous attack on Kony's camp three years ago.

Chances are that it won't. Unlike the previous attack, Kony's forces remain largely scattered and mobile. Tracking and finding Kony and his various units of the LRA will be more difficult than ever and will require the cooperation of three countries.

While that cooperation can be bought with wads of U.S. dollars, coming up with a successful result is quite another matter.

Al-Shabaab's deadly strike

2010-07-12T09:54:00.006-06:00

It was only a matter of time.

Some 74 innocent people are now dead in the Ugandan capital of Kampala in the wake of two vicious suicide bombing attacks by the al-Shabaab militia, which controls almost all of southern Somalia.

This is the kind of deadly disaster that I feared would happen in my forthcoming book, Pirate State: Inside Somalia's Terrorism at Sea. Sadly, it won't be the last.

Although Pirate State is ostensibly about Somalia's pirate horde, the pirates and the al-Shabaab militia have emerged from the smoldering chaos that has gripped Somalia for the past two decades.

Remember Black Hawk Down? Al-Shabaab does. But they're not waiting for another invasion of U.S. marines. They've exported their war. Expect it to get worse.

That al-Shabaab attacked two locations in Kampala, Uganda, is no surprise. Uganda provides the bulk of the African Union's 4,000 or so troops now hunkered down in the Somali capital of Mogadishu.

These Ugandan soldiers, accompanied by a much smaller contingent of soldiers from Burundi, are all that prevents a complete take-over of southern Somalia by the fundamentalist al-Shabaab militia.

The Ugandan soldiers are kept alive by a life-line of military and logistical support from the U.S. and protect the fragile and pro-western Transitional Federal Government that is holed up in corner of Mogadishu.

This is not the first time that Uganda has been hit by al-Shabaab. On September 17, 2009, al-Shabaab militants, some of whom were reportedly American converts, drove a couple of stolen UN vehicles into the Ugandan's compound and detonated themselves, killing more than 20 people.

Because of the notorious Black Hawk Down debacle, the U.S. has been more than happy to let the Ugandans hold out as the final bulwark of defence for the teetering transitional government.

But clearly there is a price to pay, while Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni relishes his role as the pro-western posterboy for the few African governments that still claim to be "democratic."

After altering the constitution to allow himself unlimited terms, Museveni faces yet another re-election bid in early 2012. Uganda's presence in Somalia has already been challenged, and this bloody tragedy will certainly rouse Museveni's opposition.

The suicide bombing at the private club in Kampala where hundreds had gathered to watch the World Cup final only underscores al-Shabaab's fundamentalist doctrine, which has forbidden such entertainment as anti-Islam.

The attack on an Ethiopian restaurant was also a reprisal, since Ethiopian forces, with U.S. help, defeated the Islamic Courts Union and occupied much of southern Somalia for a couple of years after.

Al-Shabaab, which means "the youth," grew out of the former Islamic Courts Union, which controlled southern Somalia for most of 2006 and at the time was the only law and order the country had known in 15 years.

Al-Shabaab was the ICU's militia. When the ICU was defeated in the opening weeks of 2007, the al-Shabaab scattered, licked its wounds, and regrouped.

Despite the defeat, the militia had established strong ties with the militant and deeply fundamentalist Islamic network that grips the region, including Yemen, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Using suspected links with the Somali pirate clans that control the coasts, al-Shabaab has been supplied and staffed by a cadre of seasoned militants who serve as instructors and mentors for the al-Shabaab recruits.

These recruits have included disenchanted American converts, some from the Minneapolis area, but also many from Nairobi, Kenya's sprawling Somali neighborhoods.

I spoke at length with a former al-Shabaab soldier in September of last year. The man had volunteered, been trained by al-Qaeda- and Taliban-linked commanders, then fought for more than a year against the Ugandans in Mogadishu and other towns in Somalia.

Seeing the futility of the killing, he had left, and was on the run in Kenya, convinced that al-Shabaab agents, bent on revenge, would soon kill him.

He told me that al-Shabaab militants permeated Kenyan society and it was only a matter of time before the would begin to strike.

At the time, it was widely rumored that Kenyan authorities has barely been able to foil an al-Shabaab plot to strike hotels in downtown Nairobi during Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit in August 2009.

The attack on Uganda shows that al-Shabaab has a long reach that extends through Kenya, Uganda's strongest ally and neighbor. Is Burundi next? Or is Kenya?

Why Kony will never be captured

2010-03-27T07:55:00.006-06:00

When I was reporter covering government, I learned that to understand what was behind any particular bill being debated in Congress, one should find out whose cow was being gored.

It was a gruesome, but clear depiction of what propels most government action.

In the case of Uganda's fugitive militia leader Joseph Kony, no one's cow is being gored by his continued existence. On the contrary, Kony's continued existence has been beneficial for Uganda and President Yoweri Museveni.

For the duration of the war in northern Uganda from 1986 to 2006, Museveni used Kony and the LRA to keep the north in a virtual state of war. As I explain in my book, First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army, Museveni applied a limited number of soldiers to fight the LRA.

Museveni was distracted by a much more lucrative proposition: toppling the Mobutu regime in neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo. Beginning in 1996, Uganda took control much of northeastern DRC and plundered gold, diamonds and timber until 2003, when Uganda was forced to withdraw from eastern DRC due to international pressure.

This has been well documented by Human Rights Watch, the United Nations and forced a judgement against Uganda by the International Court of Justice.

As Museveni applied just enough pressure to control the LRA, he rounded up all of the Acholi people in northern Uganda, his traditional opposition, and put them in refugee camps.

As long as the LRA was alive and well, Museveni controlled and isolated the north, leaving him to plunder the eastern DRC.

Additionally, the LRA irrationally attacked, killed, and mutilated the Acholi people, the same ones who Kony said he was fighting for, claiming that the Acholi were being punished for not joining the LRA's rebellion.

As long as the LRA was alive and fighting, Museveni and Uganda received millions of dollars in foreign aid, with much of the money going to his generals, not soldiers or equipment.

Meanwhile, hundreds of private aid groups from the US, EU, and UN dumped time and money into caring for the people in the camps. This relieved Uganda of its responsibility to care for these Ugandans, who had been put in the camps under the guise of solving the situation in the north.

The LRA has been a cash cow for Museveni and Uganda.

When Kony left northern Uganda, and Uganda failed to kill or capture Kony in the DRC in December 2008, Museveni and Uganda repeated past behavior.

Their failures allowed Museveni to ask for yet more money to fight the LRA, which the US and EU countries continue to give happily.

While humanitarian aid continues to flow into northern Uganda, the latest incarnation of financial support, to the tune of $10 million a year, is in a bill that recently passed the U.S. Senate titled, "The Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009."

Many of the bill's supporters think it means an end to Kony and the LRA, despite the fact that bill only calls for the developing of a multi-lateral "strategy" to bring Kony to an end.

The reality is that as long as Kony remains in remote and inaccessibly places, he will never be killed or captured.

The LRA's brutality affects people who neither control valuable resources nor are connected to events or issues of concern on the world stage. This is not heartless. It is a fact. No one's cow is being gored by Kony.

The only reason anyone knows about Kony is because of the outrages he continues to commit, which continue to shock the world. But to a limited extent.

While the International Criminal Court has indicted Kony and LRA commanders, nothing concrete has been done in five years to bring an end to the LRA. This is the fault of Uganda, not the international community, and certainly not the U.S.

Yet, the international community perpetuates the situation by giving Uganda money and relieving Uganda of doing what it should be doing to capture Kony and help rebuilt the north.

The international community should force Museveni and Uganda to capture Kony and put an end to the LRA using the millions of dollars that Uganda has already received, most of which have disappeared due to corruption.

But, we all know this will never happen.

The international community will not act against Uganda because Uganda is very useful in other ways.

Uganda provides the bulk of the troops for the African Union force in Mogadishu, Somalia, that protects the weak transitional federal government there, and the only line of defense against the rising tide of militant Islam there, embodied in the al-Shabab militia.

For the US and the EU, Somalia is much more critical to regional security than Kony will ever be. Since Uganda is willing to fight in Somalia, the international community is willing to forgive and forget about Kony and the LRA.

The ring of truth

2010-03-21T09:42:00.008-06:00

The widely publicized report from Enough that a unit of the Lord's Resistance Army had found safe haven in south Darfur as guests of the Sudan government, may be in doubt.

A story last Friday by Nairobi-based reporter, Alisha Ryu of the Voice of America radio, titled, "Reports That LRA's Kony is Hiding in Darfur Alarm South Sudan," quotes an Enough researcher as saying no one really knows where LRA leader Joseph Kony is.

As I and others have warned for several years now, officials in South Sudan are worried that Kony is being equipped and preparing for attacks in advance of the south's elections next month and next year.

Additionally, as reported in this blog last week, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said that his military intelligence officials suspected that Kony, who had fled the Central African Republic, had joined LRA units in south Darfur.

However, when Ryu contacted Ledio Cakaj, the Kampala-based researcher for Enough, Cakaj said Kony's whereabouts is unknown.

"Kony could be anywhere," Cakaj told Ryu. "Having spoken to the Ugandan military intelligence services, I have found out that the military intelligence is not sure what happened to Kony," said Cakaj.

"There was a belief that he tried to go into south Darfur," the researcher added. "But it is very likely that he turned south. And we have heard - I would say fairly credible reports - he might have even crossed into Congo last week, close to Bas-Uele in Province Orientale," Cakaj added.

If Kony had crossed into the Congo when Cakaj suggests, it was within days of when Enough announced that it had confirmed the LRA's presence in Darfur.

As I showed last week, the Enough announcement was very old news. But more worrisome is that the announcement raises questions about both Kony's and the LRA's locations.

However, comments made by Enough's Cakaj have the clear ring of truth.

Assuming that Cakaj's comments are correct, it means trouble is on the move. If Kony has already "moved south," and could be in northeastern Congo, he and his army mostly likely have been resupplied.

If that is true, it would make sense for Kony to return to the Congo and regroup his scattered forces there for strikes into South Sudan. These strikes could come as early as the next couple of weeks and certainly by next month's general elections.

This eventuality is sadly the worst, but most likely of all.

Deja-vu, all over again

2010-03-14T12:19:00.003-06:00

The famous New York Yankees baseball player Yogi Berra once said, "It's like deja-vu all over again," the kind of statement that makes you pause, clear your throat, then chuckle.

That was my reaction to last week's flurry of statements from various corners that Joseph Kony, the notorious leader of the vicious Lord's Resistance Army, was settled somewhere in south Darfur.

Curiously, that information has been published and commented on for about six months, going back to an attack first reported last October: "Ugandan rebels attack Darfuris, kill five - army."

The story was reported by intrepid journalist Skye Wheeler, a Reuters correspondent in Juba, who rips around the gritty capital of South Sudan on a dirt bike.

The LRA attack was in the border regions of South Sudan and Darfur, targeting displaced Darfuris, and quoted South Sudan's army spokesman Kuol Diem Kuol.

Subsequent reports fueled speculation, including mine, that Kony had taken up refuge inside Dafur, helping himself to Sudan's hospitality just as he had done a decade earlier while fighting in northern Uganda.

Then Uganda President Yoweri Museveni said Friday that Kony had apparently "disappeared into Darfur," quoting his military sources.

Museveni then made his typical bravado comments about how the Uganda army has all but eliminated Kony, again revealing a short-term memory of his army's botched attack on Kony's camps in the Congo in December 2008.

That failed operation is largely why the world is still dealing with the Kony problem.

Museveni went on to say that while Kony may be in Darfur, the LRA has divided into three independent factions, one headed by Dominic Ongwen, who like Kony is wanted by the International Criminal Court. Leadership and location of the third unit is unknown.

Just a day before Museveni spoke, the tireless people at Enough, also announced that Kony had found a safe haven in Darfur.

Now doing something about Kony and the LRA has only become more difficult due to the inexcusable delays to a bill regarding Kony that was finally acted on this past week by the U.S. Senate.

These needless delays in the bill, which requires the Obama administration to develop a plan to stop Kony, are the kind of inaction that has allowed Kony to survive and keep on killing, looting, abducting and mutilating.

With Kony now in Darfur, any overt action against him becomes all the more complicated, unless and until Kony decides to venture from his safe haven into South Sudan to disrupt the country's coming elections.

It will require constant pressure from groups like Invisible Children, Enough, and Resolve Uganda to keep up the pressure and insist that a plan and then action be taken to capture Kony and his marauding rebels.

Sudan's reversal ... or election ruse?

2010-03-06T14:12:00.009-07:00

The campaign swing last week through South Sudan by Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir was remarkable in many ways and signals a dramatic change in the policies of Khartoum government.

That al-Bashir would set foot in the region and campaign for his and his party's election to the Sudan's top office can be seen as an acknowledgement that the south is a legitimate partner in the country's future.

The national elections, which are expected to take place next month, will help set the tone for the government in the coming year, but also for the future of the country.

One would have expected that al-Bashir and company would have preferred to send in troops or better yet, use their favorite tactic: arm and employ proxy militias under the guise of quelling a rebellion.

This is how al-Bashir and the National Congress Party have tragically dealt with Darfur, and more recently, the heavily contested and oil-rich Abyei region that straddles the border between South Kordofan state and South Sudan.

One can't forget that the Khartoum government and South Sudan fought a bloody civil war for 23 years that killed an estimated 2 million people and displaced about twice that number. The war ended in 2005 with the signing of a Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The South is far from recovery.

Also in the past month, the Sudan government has negotiated a ceasefire with Darfur rebels, also signaling an end to a war that has displaced 2 million people and killed an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 people.

Now al-Bashir is in the south campaigning for a position he took by force in a coup in 1989 when he led a group of officers who ousted Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi.

Yet, there is al-Bashir, the only sitting president in the world who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, campaigning in the backyard of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army, which he once sought to destroy.

Among the statements al-Bashir made while speaking in Maridi, a place I have stayed when in Western Equitoria state, was to end the attacks in the region by the brutal Lord's Resistance Army.

The LRA, as most know, was attacked in December 2008 by the Ugandan army in its camps in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and has been on the run ever since.

But that hasn't stopped the army's brutality. Though broken into smaller groups, the LRA units continue to attack remote villages throughout the region, including western South Sudan and eastern Central African Republic, killing, raping, abducting and plundering.

Al-Bashir's vow to break the LRA is ironic in that his government and elements with in the NCP have long been accused of supporting, supplying, and equipping this now-aimless militia.

A story in the on-line Sudan Tribune (http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article34305) of last week seems to contain an admission by al-Bashir of this support. Written by Richard Ruati, the story quotes al-Bashir as saying, "the National Congress Party is to work towards ending insurgent attacks by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in the south."

The quote hints at an on-going relationship with the LRA, a relationship that would allow the government "to work towards" ending the attacks. However, it could also be little more than a campaign promise that addresses the innocent victims in the region who continue to suffer from LRA attacks.

Al-Bashir's comments also cast doubt on the frequent assertions that that al-Bashir and the NCP plan to covertly use leader Joseph Kony and his LRA to disrupt the April national elections.

That disruptive use of the LRA is still a possibility, however, given the history of al-Bashir and the NCP, especially if they see the coming election as a threat to their rule.

We can only hope that al-Bashir will keep his word.

Joseph, where are you?

2010-01-30T18:53:00.004-07:00

Joseph Kony and his LRA have not been seen or heard in the past month?

In a story by Uganda's government-owned New Vision daily newspaper, written by Raymond Baguma, the statement was made that Kony was thought to be in an area that includes portions of Central African Republic, south Darfur (Sudan) and the western Bahr-el-Ghazal province of South Sudan.

“It is almost a month with no reported LRA activities in the Central African Republic and Southern Sudan,” according to Chief of Defense Forces, Gen. Aronda Nyakairima.

Is Kony dead?

Probably just laying low.

Some have speculated that Kony and his LRA are being re-armed for a possible assault on South Sudan ahead of this year's regional and national elections. That remains a distinct possibility.

But nothing in a month? No attacks? No looting? No abductions?

While these facts stir thoughts that Kony may be approaching the end, I recall my many interviews with northern Ugandans victimized by Kony's atrocities.

They said be careful when it's quiet. Kony is preparing to strike.

We wait.

These nuggets of information came at the end of the New Vision story about the Ugandan soldiers FINALLY getting paid for the dangerous and thankless work they are doing in Somalia.

Uganda provides the bulk of forces battling fanatical Islamic militants in Somalia, and these soldiers are the thin line of defence against the total takeover by militants in Somalia.

Despite the blatant and obvious threat that militant Islam presents to the African continent, the increasingly useless African Union agreed to pay the massive outstanding balances owed the Ugandan troops who now are the bulk of the "peacekeeper" in Somalia.

The troops have not been paid since May 2009. That's nearly a year.

Ugandan defence minister Crispus Kiyonga attempted to clarify the situation when he told the press: “More than six months ago, the African Union secretariat got problems and payments could not continue. But about a month ago, the flow of payments began. The arrears are being paid and all the soldiers will be cleared.”

The AU "got" problems?

In reality, what this means is that the money went missing, or most likely, did not exist because it had not been paid.

Enter the international community, specifically the U.S.

According to the article, each "peacekeeper" gets $750 a month, which is a good wage in Uganda. In the event of death, the soldier’s family receives $50,000, which is huge!

Burundi is the other country contributing troops.

A total of 37 Ugandan peacekeepers have been killed since 2007.

There are six battalions of totaling about 5,200 Ugandans and Burundians, which is far below the agreed upon 8,000 peacekeepers.

“We (are) waiting for friends of Somalia to come,” Nyakairima said, adding that Uganda was considering deploying more forces to the war-torn country.

Let's hope they're not holding their breath.

Another year for Kony and the LRA

2009-12-26T08:52:00.003-07:00

Although too early to know, it seems that the feared repeat of the horrific killing of hundreds of innocent Congolese by fighters of the Lord's Resistance Army on Christmas day last year did not take place.

But that does not mean Joseph Kony and his LRA have been quiet. Far from it. Instead, Kony and the LRA are looking at their 24th year of existance as perhaps the most ruthless band of killers in Africa.

The LRA's future, in fact, is bright.

While reports continue to emerge of sporadic attacks by the LRA in the Central African Republic, the most worrisome are coming out of western South Sudan.

A Dec. 21 article in the Sudan Tribune, written by Manyang Mayom, reports the killing of four LRA fighters in the Boro-Al-Madina village of Raja County in the Western Bahr-El-Ghazal state.

Western Bahr-El-Ghazal borders the CAR on the west and South Darfur on the north, which is the region where Kony has been operating most recently.

Although details of the story cannot be independently verified, they appear to confirm earlier reports that Kony and the LRA are receiving training and supplies from the Sudan government in Khartoum.

This underscores what I have been predicting for nearly two years now, that Kony is being positioned by the Sudan government to wreak havoc in the region and disrupt not only the tentative national elections in 2010, but also the pending independence referendum for South Sudan in 2011.

According to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) official spokesman Major General Diem Kuol, South Sudan forces struck LRA fighters on Dec. 19 when they "attacked the hideout of the LRA."

When the dust settled, four LRA fighers were dead, along with one SPLA soldier. The SPLA recovered "a large quality of food, most of which are Dak, made in North Sudan," Kuol said.

The LRA apparently fled to the west and toward the Central African Republic.

Of course, it is to the South's advantage to demonize the Khartoum government, but the opportunities to do that are plentiful.

"In fact, (the) LRA is re-grouping and gaining intensive training in Sudan," Kuol said. "They are training in Dimo in Southern Darfur. This is fact is known to the intelligence community - in the area of Kaskagi in the northwest of Darfur."

Kuol added that, Kony "is still alive (but) I don’t know where he is now."

One might suspect that the intelligence community to which Kuol refers might also include that of the U.S., which in the past has provided satellite imagery of suspected LRA locations to the Ugandan army currently in the CAR chasing LRA units.

Kuol went on to say that the SPLA forces in the region were being expanded for the purpose of chasing the LRA.

Strategically, this could be the beginnings of critical phase in the pursuit of Kony and the LRA, a classic hammer-and-anvil maneuver. With the Ugandan army pushing the LRA to the east and north from the CAR, and the South Sudanese pushing the LRA westward into the CAR, a trap is being set.

In such a scenario, the only means of escape would be to the north into the border area of Darfur and Chad, or south and east, in the direction of northeastern Congo.

A northern escape could only be with the help of the Khartoum government, which calls into question America's and the international community's dealings with Khartoum.

At last report, the U.S. envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, had convinced Congress that his nebulous carrot-and-stick approach was most productive. Does that include allowing Sudan to feed, equip and train the LRA?

Neither Gration nor the state department are saying.

Meanwhile, Kony and the LRA continue to run free and are looking at yet another new year in which innocent people continue to die at their hands.

The good, the bad, the ugly

2009-11-14T07:41:00.004-07:00

This past week, Norah Anek, the 86-year-old mother of Joseph Kony, the leader of the militia-cult Lord's Resistance Army, passed away. She was buried not far from where she gave birth to Kony in the town of Adek, about an hour's drive southeast of Gulu in northern Uganda.

According to the nurse who was present at her death, "Moments before dying she said, 'Tell Joseph Kony to make peace.'"

She earlier had said that Kony's problem, the thing that drives him, was that he is possesed by evil spirits.

One can only hope that she was able to find some peace, having been saddled with the unenviable fame of having given birth to perhaps one the world's most notorious and deadly cult leaders.

Norah Anek's explanation for her son's behavior, possession by spirits, contains a nugget of wisdom that apparently cannot be grasped by those who continue to think and advocate appeasement as a way to deal with Kony and his vicious militia.

The latest of these statements surfaced on November 6, titled, "Elements of a New Strategy to Disarm the LRA," written by François Grignon, Africa Program Director of the International Crisis Group.

While I agree with much of what Grignon proposes, it reflects an approach to solving the Kony problem based on weakness rather than strength. It fundamentally seeks to appease and reward evil, rather than eliminate it.

Rather than support the Ugandan special forces in their on-going search and destroy mission, Grignon suggests that, "The US should instead lead a coalition of the willing to provide... (regional governments with) ...the means and ability to restore state authority along their common borders, corner the LRA in progressively circumscribed areas of operation, and help Special Envoys of the UN and the region negotiate the disarmament of its commanders and combatants...."

(Why is it always the U.S. who is supposed to do the work? Why is it that the French are so quick to criticize the American "hyper-power" unless there is some fighting to be done? Why don't the Belgians and the French, who created the mess in Central Africa, clean it up rather than only helping themselves to the region's mineral wealth? What about the British, who controlled and occupied Sudan and South Sudan for a century or so? Where are they?)

As part of his solution, Grignon suggests that the Catholic aid group, Caritas, once again be enlisted to provide food and aid to those who are willing to abandon the LRA with their arms and abductees.

The concept is to entice the LRA, which has broken into five or six elements, into surrendering piecemeal, until Kony has no other choice but to sign a peace deal.
Grignon justifies this by saying, "Only two things have succeeded to contain Kony’s murderous campaigns in the past: food and talks."

This has already been tried and didn't work.

As I wrote in First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army, I was in Nabanga, South Sudan, in July 2006 when the first convoy of supplies was delivered to Kony and his LRA.

The gesture had doubtful merit even back then. Feed Kony as long as he stayed at the peace talks? It worked for a while, but it wasn't long before Kony and the LRA were back to killing, looting and abducting, even as food supplies were being delivered.

This aiding and abetting of an indicted war criminal, which was illegal, reached a depressing height in the spring of 2008 when Kony rounded up some 500 abductees from the Central African Republic, the DR Congo, and South Sudan. Yet, it continued.

It was done while Kony's opportunistic cheerleader, David Matsanga, proclaimed that Kony was going to sign the negotiated peace deal, which he did not, in April or May, and then again at the end of November.

The UN, meanwhile, was actively attempting to keep it all quiet because they were afraid that Kony would abandon the peace talks because of the logical outrage that would be generated. This was immoral.

The December 14 attack on Kony's camps in Garamba National Park failed, we all know.

It is clear that the LRA's capacity to intercept information about the pending attck, flee from it, and then go on an extended killing rampage had been enabled by the international community's "feed the lion" approach.

We should do something like that again?

When are we going to suck up our sagging guts, and do the right thing? No more appeasment. No more talk. Capture Kony and put him on trial at the International Criminal Court.

At least Uganda is trying and U.S. supports that actively. What is anyone else doing?

Kony, afterall, is an Africa problem, not one that needs to be dealt with by either the US or any European countries. Where are the leaders of the DR Congo and South Sudan? Why should the US have to call them up and hand them a pot of money so they will do their jobs?

Where are the African leaders who are so quick to condemn western nations who dole out aid with strings attached, such as insuring that aid money is spend for the purpose it was intended? Why do they shrink into the shadows when there is work to be done?

The citizens of the DRC and South Sudan are dying at the hands of the LRA. Why does the US or EU need to bribe these leaders into action?

Sudan, meanwhile, should further be held up to intense international ridicule if, as most suspect, it is once again aiding Kony, or elements of his army.

Certainly, the current process of Uganda chasing the LRA around the region is frustratingly slow and tedious. If any of the leaders of the affected nations had an ounce of integrity, they would already be in the chase. The sad reality is otherwise.

Forget more peace talks. Kony has more than humiliated the international community already with his lies, with his looting and killing.

Kony's mother had it right when she said her son was possessed. She knew, unlike some people, that we're not dealing with a rational person. Kony needs to be treated like the psychopathic killer that he is.

Maybe just once, finally, countries in the region (with EU and US support) can do the right thing: find and capture Kony, send him to The Hague, and end the madness.

See Grigin's posting at: http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=6381&l=1

A new chapter?

2009-10-17T08:37:00.007-06:00

After predicting more than a year ago that the now rebels-for-hire of the Lord's Resistance Army, led by their maniacal leader, Joseph Kony, eventually could be used against Darfur rebels, it appears to be coming a reality.

In a story published this Saturday in The Independent, and featuring the above photo by Reuters, Africa Correspondent Daniel Howden quotes a South Sudan military man as saying that LRA has entered South Darfur.

"We have confirmed that the LRA are there and they have clashed with the local population," said Major-General Kuol Deim Kuol.

South Sudanese officials are prone to saying such things based on extremely flimsy evidence. They eagerly make statements that call attention to the nefarious and always duplicitous dealings of the Sudan government in Khartoum.

That said, South Sudan knows what it's talking about since the south battled Sudan for more than 20 years. They know well that Sudan loves to use proxy militias, such as the janjaweed, to fight its bloody battles against defenseless civilian populations.

The LRA fits the Sudan ideal since it specializes in attacking, mutilating, raping and destroying the softest of civilian targets, just as it has done for 20 years in northern Uganda and for the past three years in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, two of which were during the farcical peace talks in with Uganda, held in Juba, South Sudan.

While I remain skeptical that the LRA will be actively involved in what remains of the war in Darfur, I think the LRA is being positioned for that possibility by the Sudan government, which may again be arming and supplying the LRA.

The region south and west of Nyala, south Darfur's largest town, and extending into southeastern Chad, has been the province of Darfur rebel groups such as the Justice and Equality Movement. The JEM remains a strong threat to the Sudan government, having conducted the wild raid on Omdurman in February 2008, an attack that shocked Khartoum and revealed its glaring vulnerabilities.

With Kony's militia-for-hire in the area, Sudan has a perfect foil to conduct attacks on civilian targets in south Darfur and southeastern Chad, which is where Darfur rebels have found refuge for regrouping and resupply.

This will allow Sudan to tell the world that the war in Darfur is over, when in truth it is not.

My stronger sense is that Kony's move into the Darfur region is more for him to obtain the weaponry and supplies he will need for Sudan's likely efforts to disrupt the coming elections in South Sudan in 2010.

This will be a prelude to what could be an all-out civil war with horrendous civilian casualties as South Sudan moves to its independence vote in 2011, as called for in Sudan's 2005 peace agreement.

Sudan has used the LRA like this before, having given the LRA aid and comfort in South Sudan during the long 20-year war with Uganda. Sudan used the LRA also to fight south Sudan's army, which to the delight of Khartoum, made the region a veritable hell-on-earth where four armies fought: the LRA, the Ugandan army, the Sudan army and the South Sudan army.

Likewise, a consensus is growing that the recent fighting in the eastern South Sudan province of Jonglei is much more than bloody ethnic clashes over cows that it is portrayed to be. Rather, it is part of a calculated effort by the Sudan government to destabilize the region and prevent the development of the region's oil, which South Sudan needs desperately.

While this is speculative, it is based on well-established patterns by Sudan and the horrific history of the LRA. One can only hope that people like the U.S.'s envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, is cognizant of all of this as he flies around the world trying to negotiate a "deal" with Sudan.

The sad reality is that while the world knows all too well the death and destruction that follows that LRA wherever it goes, nothing is being done about the LRA other than a lot of deep sighing and muttering.

As the numbers of dead and mutilated and raped continue to grow and as the LRA continues to grow increasingly malignant, those among the international community, such as the Dutch, the Danes, Scandinavians, and others who supplied the LRA from 2006 to 2008, saying that it was necessary for peace, should think again about the blood of innocent people that now covers their hands.

Boots on the ground

2009-10-12T07:29:00.004-06:00

I apologize for my long absence from this blog site, but I just recently returned from six weeks of research and travel in East Africa, collecting material for two new books.

The first concerns Somalia and its pirates and the second concerns the seemingly endless fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

You can expect to hear a lot more about these two topics in future postings.

Before we get there, however, there's an interesting article in The East African, written by Keven Kelley, about the joint military exercise in northern Uganda involving about 450 U.S. troops.

According to Kelley's article, total troops will be about 1,000, with Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi each sending 150 soldiers to join 450 US military personnel in Kitgum for the October 16-25 event.

Labeled as operation Natural Fire 10, it is reportedly the U.S.'s largest African exercise this year. While this is clearly an exercise loaded with significance, it is the not the first such military exercise. Such joint maneuvers began across Africa in 1998, hence the name Natural Fire 10 -- this being the tenth.

The US Army describes it as “a regularly scheduled training exercise, which offers an opportunity for East African partner nations and the US military to work together to increase regional capabilities to respond to complex humanitarian emergencies.”

What is most interesting is the location: northern Uganda. It is a message not only to Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army, but also Sudan.

That message being, of course, that a multi-national force of 1,000 -- an effective number for a fighting force anywhere in the world -- can be assembled in this strategic location with relative ease.

Such a force would be a huge problem for someone like Kony, should he think about a return to northern Uganda. It shows that Uganda has allies who are willing not only to donate moral support and money in the fight against Kony and his maniacal militia, but are willing to put boots on the ground.

This is an acknowledgement that Kony is much more than Uganda's problem, and has become a regional nightmare. Though Kony's precise whereabouts are not known, the latest information is that he has been operating in the remote eastern regions of the Central African Republic. Uganda's army has permission from the CAR to chase Kony and has been doing so with their typically limited results.

The biggest regional concern, however, is not the CAR, but widely-rumored support that Kony once again is getting from Sudan as we slowly but surely approach the coming election cycle in Sudan and South Sudan.

Since Sudan has effectively backed off its offensive in Darfur, this has freed up personnel and resources for coming confrontations in South Sudan, which is fully expected to vote for independence in 2011 -- an eventuality that Sudan does not want.

Preparing for an expected battle, South Sudan has been arming itself as we know from the famous shipment of weapons that was temporarily delayed off the coast of Somalia by Somali pirates last year. Feisty publications such as Jane's have been following the progress of the weaponry to Juba, South Sudan.

However, should Kony be added to the mix in any pending chaos in South Sudan, the Sudan People's Liberation Army will need some help. What better than an integrated, multi-national force from regional powers, aided and equipped by the U.S.?

There are strategic advantages for the U.S., of course, which has rarely had a good relationship with Sudan, ever since the militant and fundamentalist Islamic takeover of the government a couple decades ago.

We hardly need to mention Sudan's hosting of Osama bin Laden in the late 1990s or the U.S.'s condemnation of Sudan's so-called war in Darfur which the U.S. has labeled a genocide.

The U.S. quietly has been supporting South Sudan's drive for independence, knowing that a staunch ally in Sudan's back yard will give the U.S. a firm foothold in the region and first-hand chance to keep an eye on Sudan.

Among other things, the U.S. very much wants to see the expected revenues from South Sudan's vast and untapped oil reserves to fill the pockets of an ally, rather than antagonistic Sudan.

When push comes to shove in the next year or two, the current joint military exercise taking place just 30 miles from the South Sudan border shows how that support could take a very dramatic step.

Riots a dangerous distraction

2009-09-12T00:27:00.005-06:00

The rioting that has rocked Kampala is sad, not only for the needless loss of life, but because it is a dangerous distraction for a country that is in midst of two critical wars beyond its borders.

The last thing Uganda needs right now is a war inside its border or its capital.

One is the only recently acknowledged war against the Lord's Resistance Army which has moved from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the Central African Republic.

The second is in Somalia where the Ugandan army is the main component of the African Union's peace keeping mission and is the only thing that is keeping the Somalia's Transitional Federal Government from being wiped out by Muslim extremists of the al-Shabab and Hizbul Islami groups.

While Uganda certainly is the "pearl" of Africa in many ways, the recent riots have exposed the Achilles heel of the continent: ethnic conflict.

As noted scholars have said and as Africans confess, ethnic conflict is the basis of every major war and conflict on the continent. Rather than countries going to war to assert dominance, or ideologies clashing, Africa is continually mired in ethnic-based warfare that has no regard for political boundaries.

Look at the Rwandan genocide, the on-going conflict in Darfur, and the post election violence in western Kenya in 2008.

In Uganda, now, we have the Buganda tribe, the country's largest, clashing with the government forces directed by President Yoweri Museveni, who is part of a neighboring ethnic group from southwestern Uganda.

Museveni's excessive response to the Buganda's desire to conduct rallies was clearly uncalled for, but it also raises questions about the Bugandan motives.

There is historical precedent here. When Uganda first became independent in 1962, the constitution made the Bugandan king, the "kibaka," the constitutional president, while the prime minister was elected and ran the country. It was a variation of England's constitutional monarchy in which the prime minister is elected, but formally appointed by the ruling monarch.

The Ugandan experiment soon failed when the Bugandan king had a shoot-out with the late president Milton Obote and eventually fled the country, dying in exile in England.

When Museveni took power in 1986, he recognized the Bugandan king and "kingdom" but did not grant the king any power other than ceremonial.

When I lived in Uganda in 2005 and 2006, similar clashes occurred because the Bugandans, unfortunately, believe they have been robbed of their right to rule.

As difficult as it may be, most African countries will be unable to progress politically and economically unless they can transcend ethnic jealousies and begin to function as states.

The riots, meanwhile, are particularly troubling for Uganda which currently is fighting two wars.

The Ugandan mission in Somalia is critically important. Uganda is supported and supplied by the US and others in the international community who want to keep Somalia from becoming a safe haven for Muslim extremists.

The significance of this grows daily as Pakistan and the US put pressure on the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and their allies, forcing them out of Pakistan's lawless northwest province.

Increasing numbers of these fundamentalist fighters are fleeing to Somalia, bringing weapons and money that fuel a likely take-over of war-torn Somalia.

An extremist takeover in Somalia would have disastrous consequences for East Africa, the entire continent, and the world at large. The extremists are looking for their next new safe haven, and Somalia has been selected.

Uganda and the international community need to focus efforts on containing the terrorist threat in Somalia, as well as tracking down Joseph Kony and his militia.

Riots in Kampala, meanwhile, are a dangerous and needless diversion.

War of attrition

2009-08-29T02:05:00.003-06:00

While Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army continue to kill and abduct, most recently in region around Ezo in western South Sudan, their days may be slowly drawing to an end.

According to knowledgeable sources in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, pressure against the LRA by the Ugandan and Congolese armies continues to chip away at the rebel force.

The Ugandan forces are the same ones who supposedly withdrew from the northeastern DRC after last year's abortive attack on the LRA camps in Garamba National Park.

As I suggested several months ago, the so-called Ugandan "advisers" who stayed behind are in reality a fighting force that has been given licence to chase the LRA anywhere they need in the DRC, Central African Republic, and western South Sudan.

The LRA's recent attacks on the communities in and around Ezo are being interpreted by some as desperate moves by the LRA to loot badly needed supplies and abduct soldiers for their dwindling ranks.

Except for a core of Ugandan fighters thought to be from 200 to 300, the rest of his army are abducted child soldiers from the region.

As has been suggested, LRA leader Kony is steadily moving his force to the remote corners of eastern CAR where he hopes to bide his time. Speculation is that he is awaiting for war to erupt between Sudan and South Sudan in advance of, or around the coming 2011 independence for South Sudan.

As those of us who follow this know, South Sudan's shipment of heavy weapons, which were seized and ultimately released by Somali pirates, are making their way to their buyer: South Sudan.

Meanwhile, Sudan continues to arm Messeriya tribesmen in South Khordofan, and build up its forces in anticipation of an outbreak of war. Sudan would most like quickly move to defend it's vital oil supplies in the region.

Kony could benefit from this war by being backed by its former and long-time supporter, Sudan. His LRA could be yet another fighting force in western South Sudan, effectively opening up another front.

But in the meantime, Uganda does not intend to let up as it tracks Kony and the LRA. And, speculation is building that another attack on the LRA is in the planning by the Ugandans, again with the help of US advisers with Africom.

Uganda could get some additional help. The United Nations Security Council is slated to rethink the mandate for the UN troops in northeastern DRC, which have been expanding their presence there.

From their initial base in Dungu, the UN apparently now has about five bases, all of which are better able to help support and supply the Ugandan and Congolese fighters against the LRA.

The possible change in the mandate for the UN in the region, would put it in the position of aggressively imposing security in the region and could include active defense of the villages in the region against LRA attacks.

Such a policy shift would suit the political objectives of the US, which is under increasing pressure to do more to wipe out the LRA. While the US is reluctant to put boots on the ground to do that, supporting and pushing the UN forces is the obvious answer.

Meanwhile, people in the region continue to suffer from the LRA.
In southern Sudan's province of Western Equatoria, the rebels raided Ezo, a town close to the border with Central African Republic. They have also been accused of abducting 10 girls from a local church, according to the UNHCR.

As a result of the intensifying LRA attacks, the U.N. suspended all humanitarian activities in southern Sudan and evacuated 29 humanitarian workers, including seven UNHCR staff.

The U.N. estimates about 28,000 displaced people and refugees in Ezo and Yambio were left without protection or assistance, according to a story by Rueters Alertnet.

The rebels also attacked Bereamburu village, some 35 km from Yambio, the regional capital, burning the local church and a health centre and looting medical supplies, according to UNHCR.

Since the start of this year some 360,000 Congolese have been uprooted in successive LRA attacks in Congo's Orientale province, while some 20,000 others have fled to Sudan and Central African Republic, according to UNHCR estimates.

Lifting off tomorrow

2009-08-14T21:48:00.001-06:00

Heading to Africa for six weeks. I will be blogging about the trip for research for my upcoming book. Stay tuned!

Good governance in Africa?

2009-08-09T09:40:00.006-06:00

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's diplomatic swing through Africa comes on the heels of President Barack Obama's recent trip in which he chastised Africa and African leaders for their culture of corruption.

That, he said, was one of the major stumbling blocks for all of Africa, and Clinton is highlighting these issues as she visits seven countries in 10 days.

Her fist stop was in Kenya, which is unable to set up a tribunal that will explore and hopefully punish those who were behind the ethnic violence around its last election that left about 1,300 people dead.

While Kenya officially welcomed Clinton, the country's top leader commented that what he didn't needed from Clinton was a lecture on good governance. Apparently Obama's stinging criticism had hit home.

The reason the Kenya tribunal will never be formed is that those who are responsible for the violence are among the inner circles of the government, and shining a light on what actually happened will send the guilty scurrying for cover as the regime falters.

Clinton's public remarks in Kenya were sprinkled with the standard cliches used by most visiting dignitaries who struggle to find positive things to say. She resorted to praising the continent's great potential.

Inherent in such statements is that Africa's potential is far from realized. Unless there are major changes to how business is done and civil and social affairs are conducted, we can expect to hear the same pleasant phrases about Africa's potential spoken five, 10 and 20 years from now.

Clinton is due to set foot in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her presence will draw international attention to one of the continents' most complex and enduring problems. She will be highlighting the serious epidemic of rape in the region, which makes it probably the worst place in the world to be a woman.

I spent time in Goma meeting with victims, civil society experts and lawyers about the problem. The rape epidemic is the result of a general breakdown in society and its values.

But at the core of the problem is that perpetrators of rape were very much aware that they would never be punished, even if identified. Behind this was the fact that the judicial system, including the police, the military and the courts in the eastern DRC and everywhere else in the country were corrupted.

The situation is incomprehensible to most people, but the reality is that no one was or has ever been held accountable, no matter how horrific the crime. It's a free-for-all.

While most people would turn to the government for some help, people in the eastern DRC know better. The government is virtually non-existent, except as an institution that collects bribes and makes trouble for people.

The endless chaos in eastern DRC, which shows no signs of abating, raises the obvious questions of who is benefiting and how.

Among other things that Clinton will be mentioning while she's in Goma will be the illegal exportation of minerals from the region, which includes tin and elements such as coltan, a highly conductive metal used in high tech gadgetry.

The chaos in the eastern DRC means that those who run the region are the military units, who are virtually indistinguishable from the various warring militias that roam the region, killing, looting and raping as they please.

Clinton's visit to Goma will mostly likely bring about more heartfelt speeches about the problems and needs.

The reality, however, is that international agencies such as the UN, which now has a massive 17,000-member force in the country, is about the only thing that provides order in the eastern DRC.

Justice for the warlords who have and continue to control the region is not being imposed by Congolese courts, but by the The Hague-based International Criminal Court, which has people like Thomas Lubanga on trial and soon will hold several more regional militia leaders and their deeds up to public scrutiny.

And, it looks like the ICC will ultimately be court that will have to examine the chaos that sullied the Kenyan elections and which forced a coalition government to be imposed on the country.

While international pressure and presence may be the only thing that keeps a lid on full-blown mayhem in the many African hotspots, the only enduring solution to Africa's problems will be by Africans, not outsiders.

But can and will Africans take that step? Can and will Africans ever hold their leaders accountable for their actions? Can Africans confront corruption and take human rights seriously? Can democracy be implemented or is the continent doomed to be ruled by military juntas and psychopaths such as Robert Mugabe?

Clinton's visit raises these and other questions. Sadly, the answers are few and far between.

New school, same old problems

2009-08-02T08:07:00.010-06:00

Above, teacher and students at Abela school, attended by LRA leader Joseph Kony. At left, the sacred rock moutain visited each year by Kony and/or his soldiers, and the source of his magical holy water. Peter Eichstaedt photos.

The U.S. Army's Africa Command, AFRICOM, posted a a notice recently about the $180,000 renovation of a school in rebel leader Joseph Kony's home town of Odek.

The press release came via the U.S. embassy in Kampala, with a Gulu dateline, and featured photos Walter Ochora, a Gulu governmental official, some of the 750 children who attend the school.

I visited Odek when I was researching First Kill Your Family, and had a long talk with one of Kony's childhood friends. While Kony may have attended school in Odek, he also attended a school about 15 kilometers away called Abela, which I also visited more recently in 2008.

Abela was not far from Kony's sacred mountain, a place where gathered herbs as young witchdoctor, and which oozed "holy" water. Everyone said that Kony returned once a year to this rock outcropping, called a koppe and a typical feature of east Africa. If Kony didn't come in person, he send a small unit there to collect the sacred water and take it back to wherever he was.

No one knows precisely where Kony and his ruthless Lord's Resistance Army are these days, best guesses are he's in the forbidding forest in the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Kony and his army of child soldiers continues to kill and kidnap at will in that remote corner of the world, just has they have done for the past several years despite the failed attack on his forces last December.

That attack, as we all know, was the result of the combined efforts of America's AFRICOM and their best friend in the region, Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni and his Uganda People's Defense Forces.

Word of the renovated school in Odek points to the destruction that Kony left behind, and to the massive amount of work that needs to be done to rebuild northern Uganda -- if Uganda does not want to face yet another bloody rebellion.

While the Odek school is a sparking example of what can be done, there are hundreds and hundreds more across northern Uganda that need immediate attention. The Ugandan government has been painfully slow, if not intentionally so, in fulfilling its promises millions of dollars in aid for the north. The world is watching and northern Uganda is waiting.

There's a pattern here.

The Odek school reflects what else Uganda has failed to do regarding Kony and his murderous horde. The recent visit to Uganda by Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, was a sharp reminder of Uganda's failure to bring Kony to justice and to put an end to the LRA.

Museveni, after all, was the man who first went to the ICC way back in 2003, in an effort to garner international help in corralling Kony. While that help came, it did not relieve Uganda of its primary responsibility to capture Kony.

Moreno-Ocampo's visit also was well-timed since Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir was planning to visit Kampala days later -- and man who also has been indicted by the ICC.

Moreno-Ocampo's presence, if not this blunt words in private, warned Museveni that if he wanted to have any respect on the international stage, he has to show some backbone and live up to his commitments. This includes not only the capture of Kony, rebuilding of northern Uganda, but also the arrest of al-Bashir.

Al-Bashir quietly declined to travel to Kampala, and one can only imagine the back-channel phones calls that prompted al-Bashir's decision to stay home. One could almost hear Uganda's collective sigh of relief.

But life is never simple. And for Museveni, it's getting more complex. Look at Somalia. While playing regional power broker and darling of the West, he has about 2,000 soldiers trying to keep a lid on the chaos in Mogadishu as the primary force for the African Union there.

Uganda has wedged itself into tight place by in reality being the proxy force for the West (U.S), as the Somalia's Transitional Federal Government tries to hold off the surging fundamentalists fighters of the al-Shabab (The Youth) movement.

To say that Uganda is overstretched is probably an understatement. The problem is that Uganda seems to be everywhere, but not accomplishing anything no matter where it is. The question is, how long can Uganda maintain this charade before they're forced to produce results?

Uganda still pursuing LRA

2009-07-09T08:23:00.002-06:00

A new reports suggests that the Ugandan army may be in pursuit of units of the Lord's Resistance Army in the Central African Republic, despite its reported withdrawal from the region several months ago after the failed attempt to kill or capture the rebels fighters and their leader, Joseph Kony.

According to an article in today's Kampala weekly Observer by Edris Kiggundu, the Uganda army is hot on the heels of LRA forces led by Okot Odhiambo and Dominic Ongwen holed up in the Central African Republic, along with another LRA commander named Bok Abudema.

If the report is correct, it would fall in line with the government's suggestion that the fight is not over between Uganda and the LRA. And, it would support rumors that the contingent of advisers left behind in the DRC, supposedly to help the Congolese army finish the job, are more than that.

According to recent reports by escapees of the LRA, including one of Kony's top wives named Lily Atong, a significant LRA force retreated to the CAR. It makes sense that this would be the Odhiambo-Ongwen group, the apparent second and third top commanders of the LRA.

It would follow the tried-and-true tactic of the LRA to fragment and scatter, which allows it to operate in relatively independent groups and makes the LRA all the harder to effectively capture and/or eliminate.

Odhiambo and Ongwen were the two commanders who claimed they were willing to surrender earlier this year when the hunt for the LRA was in high gear with the Uganda's reportedly 3,000-strong force.

The two LRA commanders were in contact with an aid group that was working as an intermediary, but nothing came of it. The two commanders, along with their force of several hundred fighters, faded into the jungle.

According to the Observer, two units of the Ugandan army, the 301st and 309th brigades, have been given two weeks for the operation. At least one of these brigades is said to be composed of former LRA fighters, who are perhaps the only ones in the Ugandan army who have the stomach and endurance to effectively take on the LRA.

According to the article, the Ugandan army has also scored recent unreported victories against some scattered units of the LRA that have been wreaking havoc around Yambio, the capital of the Western Equatoria Province of South Sudan.

These attacks have been reported on a very limited basis, and sadly the only defense has been from poorly equipped local militia forces known as Arrow Boys. The name is apt because they are largely only armed with bows and arrows, and hardly a match for the LRA.

But what about Kony? The former wife of Kony said that the psychotic self-proclaimed prophet of his Acholi ethnic group, was frantic after the attack on his camps last December 14.

Apparently he is still in the vicinity of the Garamba National Park in northeastern DR Congo. If Uganda finds some success in the CAR, is Kony next?

Serious threat or convenient diversion?

2009-07-04T09:37:00.003-06:00

While the Ugandan government's recent arrest of some 17 people allegedly involved with a shadowy group called the Ugandan Patriotic Front (UPF) makes dramatic news, one is left wondering about the validity of this so-called threat.

Rather, it seems like yet another grand diversion for Ugandans from the serious problems it faces as the much heralded "pearl of Africa," to say nothing of the government's inability to stop the real threat: Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army.

Further, this recent arrest of alleged enemies of the regime underscores the often stated accusation that Uganda's strong man President Yoweri Museveni is first and foremost a military man, not a politician.

The rise of this apparent new threat to Museveni's government is very related to the Kony and the LRA and Museveni's lack of action in northern Uganda.

Kony has been camped out in the remote forest regions of northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo since early 2006 (advance LRA units were there in late 2005), leaving northern Uganda a relatively calm and safe place.

To most observers, this would have been the perfect time for Museveni to move in and begin rebuilding the region economically, socially and every other way. After all, the Acholi people who populate the north have been outsiders at best and enemies at worst of the Museveni government.

What better way to turn your former enemies into your staunchest allies than to help the Ugandans who have borne the brunt of 20 years of Kony's war than to quickly rebuild, roads, farms, schools and hospitals?

Instead of a massive reconstruction of the north, Museveni's government has done next to nothing, and what little it has been done has been riddled with corruption and theft.

It is now more than three years since Kony has vacated the north, yet little has been done to improve the north and even less is on the horizon.

The frustration in the north with Museveni's government grows every day as residents now face drought conditions in the north, which means fewer crops and higher food prices.

What else would any reasonable person expect to happen when news breaks that yet another rebel group may be forming in the north to challenge Museveni's government?

Rumors of this and other shadowy rebels groups are not uncommon in the north as well as other places in Uganda where citizens have been left out of the mainstream of Uganda political and economic life.

And also not uncommon is Museveni's reaction, which is to arrest the alleged conspirators and toss them in prison.

While it is certainly a concern for the government, the repeated surfacing of such groups, in particular this one in northern Uganda, should be seen as a wake-up call for Museveni, rather than a serious threat.

The question, however, is Museveni listening?

The Kony dilemma

2009-06-25T08:45:00.005-06:00

The address this past Monday by Phillip Carter III, of the State Department's Bureau of African Affairs, to activists who participated in lobby day in Washington D.C. shed no light on the festering problems surrounding the Lord's Resistance Army.

Carter recited what had been done by the U.S. over the past few years in terms of its involvement in the failed Juba peace talks between the Ugandan government and the LRA, and how the U.S. has supported the reconstruction of northern Uganda.

The address was a polite brush off to the thousands of activists affiliated with the Invisible Children organization, Resolve Uganda and the Enough Project -- all three of which are dedicated to ending the suffering caused by the LRA.

Sadly, and despite the vague comments by Carter to the contrary, the U.S. and most of the other so-called "players" in the region are not going to do much about the LRA.

As I have pointed out on prior occasions, LRA leader Joseph Kony is driven by his desire to survive, first and foremost, an impulse that overrides his megalomania.

Kony has situated himself and his band of bloody soldiers in one of the most remote regions of the world, and despite the abortive attack on his camps last December and the subsequent pursuit by the Ugandan army, he has survived.

By literally hiding out in the recesses of northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, he has successfully defied the will of Uganda, the DRC, and the whole of the international community to stop him.

As we saw from the debacle of last December, mounting an operation against Kony is a monumental undertaking. And, it is complicated by the fact that the LRA is accustomed to operating in small, fractured units, much like any other guerrilla army.

Destruction of several parts does not inflict enough harm to stop the whole.

While everyone seems to acknowledge the true tragedy that the continued existence of the LRA means, it has never been enough to generate the kind of resolve needed to end Kony and his army, which has relished killing innocent people by the thousands for 23 years.

The reason is simple. Kony has not caused enough problems for those capable of doing anything to stop him and his army.

In Iraq, huge oil reserves were lurking in the background as the U.S. invaded under the guise of fighting terror. Likewise, the war in Afghanistan has the Taliban and the background of 9/11.

Resolving the situation with Kony and his LRA or the fighting in Darfur suffer from the same dilemma, however. Definitive action in both instances would be based on moral principle alone, such as relieving human suffering and injustice where possible.

But it's clearly not enough to get the powerful to act. There has to be a monetary or material need as well, or at least a perceived threat to broader issues of safety, security and the "national interest."

While the lobbying in Washington DC is worthwhile and admirable, and the supporters of bills to heat up U.S. action in central Africa are to be applauded, it all won't result in much unless oil, gold, diamonds or some such wealth is suddenly found in these regions.

Or, as ridiculous as it seems, unless Kony and/or the Sudan government present a threat to the U.S. or European Union interests.

Only then would we see a rush to bring these tragedies to a swift and final end.

Good-bye, Joachim

2009-06-05T10:37:00.005-06:00

The United Nations Secretary-General's office this week announced that it's closing the Kampala office of Joachim Chissano, the special envoy to what is called the "LRA-affected areas."

The closing of the office comes as something of a surprise, since just last December, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon extended Chissano's mandate for a year. Now, the office is closing six months early.

He was initially appointed in 2006, not long after peace talks with the Lord's Resistance Army began. In truth, Chissano has been aloof, inaccessible and ineffective, having mostly tagged along as Ugandans and chief mediator Riek Machar did the work.

On one occasion, in an attempt to revive the sagging peace talks, Chissano made a publicized attempt to meet with Kony personally. Only Kony didn't show up, despite apparently have agreed to do so.

Clearly this signals that not only the UN, but most everyone else has given up on trying to reach a peace deal with the Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army.

The spokesperson for Ban Ki-moon, Michele Montas, took a question on the issue Thursday in her daily press briefing:

Question: "Yesterday it became clear that the Secretary-General was closing down the office in Kampala with Chissano, who is done six months earlier. Does that mean that the UN has resigned itself to believing that the arrest of [LRA leader Joseph] Kony is the only way to move forward?"

Montas: "Well, I think it’s a fact that, you know, what is happening on the ground… Mr. Kony has never shown up to sign the agreement, I think is definitely a factor. Mr. Chissano really cannot do much more than he has already done. We’re not resigning ourselves to the fact, but we’re just saying that there is no point in trying to keep the office open if nothing is happening."

Question: "Can’t the UN arrest him, or what…?"

Montas: "The UN does not have the power to arrest anyone."

So what's next? Chissano is probably headed back to Mozambique, which is where he is from and where he served as president.

And, Kony is still out there, roaming around the remote recesses of the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. While the severity and frequency of his attacks have diminished, they're still taking place.

Just this past week, there were fresh attacks by LRA fighters on communities in South Sudan, not far from Yambio, the regional capital of the Western Equatoria state. The people providing any resistance are the so-called Arrow Boys, who are a home-grown militia that is armed with only bows and arrows.

South Sudan President Salva Kiir has promised to send some of his Sudanese People's Liberation Army there, but it's too little, too late, since South Sudan failed in its mission to "seal" its border with the DRC and prevent the LRA from entering the country.

This closure comes in the wake of calls from such groups as Enough for regional forces, supported again by the U.S., to "finish the job" on Kony. And, a bill has been introduced into Congress that essentially calls for the same thing.

Unfortunately, a second effort against Kony would most likely be headed by the Ugandan army once again. And what would that result be?

Corruption rears its head

2009-06-02T14:31:00.003-06:00

Suspicion and allegations of corruption have surrounded the Ugandan army's failed search-and-destroy mission this past December-March against Joseph Kony, the renegade militia leader of the Lord's Resistance Army.

More than a few people have mentioned that the failure of the mission, planned and partially financed by the United States military, could have been tainted by compromised intelligence or corruption.

In order for corruption to make sense, a beneficiary has to exist. Now information in the form of a lawsuit has surfaced linking a member of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's extended family to a lucrative deal at the heart of the military operation.

According to the Kampala newspaper, The Observer, in a story written by
Hussein Bogere this Monday, a hefty portion of the fees paid to a private transport company that took supplies the battle zone in the Democratic Republic of Congo, went directly into a Museveni relative's pocket.

Much has been made in local news media about the high cost of the operation, about $200,000 a day, that sent several thousand Ugandan soldiers into a remote corner of the DRC to chase Kony.

Regardless, the Observer reports that a businessmen who profited from the operation has sued the government in a bid to recover about $2.3 million he claims he is owed for flying army supplies to the Congo.

According documents seen by The Observer, the company, Stream Aviation Ltd, is co-owned by Sami Harouna Eisa and Hiten Sharma. In December 2008 it was contracted by the Uganda army to fly cargo from Kampala to Dungu in northeastern Congo, at $70,000 per flight.

Sami claims his aircrafts made 27 trips which translates into $1,890,000 in outstanding bills, according to the Observer.

Sami claims that the Ugandan Ministry of Defence only paid part of the money, $1.1 million, to one Barnabas Taremwa, after he reached a deal with Hiten Sharma, the co-director of Stream Aviation, the Observer states.

Taremwa is a close relative of Jovia Saleh, the wife of Gen. Salim Saleh, who is the brother of President Museveni, the Observer reports. Saleh, by the way, has been implicated in numerous other questionable dealings, including the pilfering of millions of dollars in gold, diamonds and timber from the Congo when Uganda occupied the eastern Oriental Province from 1998 to 2003.

“He (Taremwa) together with Sharma, forged my signature and obtained $1.3 million from the Ministry in cash. This signature was scanned from a previous document and used with the help of a computer to be placed on the receipts. I never signed for the money,” Sami said, according to the Observer.

Sami reportedly met Taremwa in 2006 through Sharma after they decided to register the company. Sharma told him that Taremwa could get them an Air Operator’s Certificate.

For that, Taremwa was reportedly paid $80,000, but did not deliver, Sami claims. Another time, Sami alleges, Taremwa contracted Stream Aviation to airlift his furniture from Dubai at $50,000 (Shs112 million). “He has never paid for transporting the furniture.”

Underlying this lawsuit is a falling out by Sami and Sharma and allegations that Sharma and Taremwa formed a separate partnership.

Taremwa, meanwhile, told The Observer that he received the payments from the government as the sole representative of Stream Aviation of which Sami is no longer part.

He said Sami was just bitter after the fall out with Stream Aviation. “The people who appointed me are still with me. He is sour-grapping. It’s me on behalf of Stream Aviation and Ministry of Defence who signed the contract,” Taremwa said.

On his part, Sami says he is ready to prove to court that Taremwa, together with the government, colluded to defraud him by withdrawing $1.3m (Shs2.9 billion) from the Ministry of Defence, being cash meant for Stream Aviation.

Sami adds that he is ready to prove that Taremwa is colluding with elements in government to withdraw the remaining balance of $790,000 from the Ministry of Defence to the exclusion of Stream Aviation that carried out the charter services.

While the business dealings are sorted out, one must ask why Taremwa, as a member of the Museveni's extended family, is profiting so hugely from the failed military operation.

Could it be that keeping Kony alive and the LRA as a threat means more profits for the Museveni regime?

Rumblings from the north

2009-05-28T14:19:00.005-06:00

Word has spread quickly around Uganda about a possible regrouping of former rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda.

An article by Chris Ocowun, a reporter for the government's New Vision newspaper, says that a couple of top former LRA commanders reportedly have been meeting secretly with former rebels.

They are said to be Odong Kao and Santo (Sunday) Otto, and the government fears that they may be gathering for a return to the bush.

Otto came to the attention of Ugandan authorities when he defected in 2007 from the LRA in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Upon his return to Kampala, Otto provided graphic details of LRA leader Joseph Kony's execution of his long-time deputy, Vincent Otti. Otti had long been the man pushing Kony to sign a peace deal, and had clearly convinced at least half or more of the LRA that this was a good thing.

Instead Kony killed Otti, which forced an exodus of many other LRA fighters who had been aligned with Otti, including Sunday Otto.

So now what?

New Vision reported that the Ugandan army spokesman, Capt. Ronald Kakurungu, said: “These two former LRA commanders returned from rebel captivity and benefited from amnesty. However, they have been engaging in suspicious activities, which we, as security agents, are getting concerned about.”

It also reported that in 2006, security operatives netted Odong Kao with two wives of LRA chief Joseph Kony who were trying to return to Garamba, where Kony and his rebels were at the time.

Kakurungu also said the former deputy speaker of Gulu municipal council, Alex Okot Langwen, was recently arrested over security related crimes. He said Langwen was briefly detained at Gulu barracks before he was transferred to Kampala.

This is the second time Langwen is being arrested on allegations that he has connections with the LRA rebels. In 2006, he was arrested and charged with treason before he was released after receiving amnesty.

If nothing else, this could be symptom of the growing resentment in the north against the lack of redevelopment efforts by the government in the north. More and more often one hears comments that unless something is done quickly, another rebellion could begin.

Uganda does not need that.

In another concern, freelance journalist Patrick Otim who worked for the Gulu station Mega FM, was also arrested for unknown reasons and his whereabouts are unknown.

Winds of change

2009-05-23T09:20:00.005-06:00

Change promised by President Barack Obama is coming swiftly to Africa.

The change is in focus and approach: focus on finding a solution to festering problems and approaching the issues through collective action -- if possible.

Key areas are Sudan and Darfur.

This past week the State Department announced that U.S. special envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, will travel to China, Qatar, Britain and France to revive the sagging Darfur peace talks.

China clearly is a key to ending the nearly six-year war between the Khartoum government led by President Omar al-Bashir and the ethnic "African" majority of rebels fighting in Darfur.

Al-Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with Darfur, depends on the petro-dollars that flow into the country from China and other countries who buy Sudanese oil.

Getting China, which routinely turns a blind eye to Africa's turmoil as long as its investments turn profits, to help pressure Sudan to change its Darfur policy, would be a huge accomplishment. China has long denied responsiblity for arming or financing Sudan's role in the Darfur conflict.

But China is just the first stop.

Gration then meets with counterparts from Russia, Britain, France and the European Union in Doha, Qatar, which has been a broker of the Darfur peace talks.

He then travels to London to reconvene a Sudan diplomatic troika of the United States, Britain and Norway.

In London Gration sits down with the Contact Group on Sudan -- Canada, the European Union, France, Netherlands, Norway, Britain and the United States -- which is following up on the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

The agreement, as most know, ended 22 years of war between Sudan's north and south, the longest civil war in Africa that led to the deaths of around 2 million people and displaced millions more.

Critical to that deal was the sharing of oil revenues between Khartoum and South Sudan -- a source of conflict between the two entities.

Looming in the background of these talks are Sudanese national elections scheduled for February of next year and an independence referendum for South Sudan in 2011.

Whether either will happen is in doubt. Already the Khartoum government has pushed South Sudanese Dinka tribesmen out of the oil-rich Abyei region and is said to be behind ethnic clashes deeper in South Sudan which have killed at least 700 to 800 people in the past couple of months.

The Contact Group last met in Brussels in December. High on the agenda this time has to be what the international community can and will do to insure that the elections take place -- events that are critical to both peace in Sudan and stability in the region.

This will not be easy, and most likely will be resisted by al-Bashir and his National Congress Party in Khartoum which is loathe to let the south secede, just as they cling to the desire to remake Darfur into a pro-Khartoum ethnic "Arab" province.

A critical stop on the Gration tour will be his stop in Paris to meet not only with senior French officials, but with the leader of the Sudan Liberation Army, a rebel faction headed by Abdul Wahid Mohammed Nur, self-exiled in France.

As leader of one of the key rebel groups, Nur has refused to engage in peace talks with Sudan unless and until Sudan not only ceases hostilities in Darfur, but withdraws.

Considering the history of Darfur and the ICC charges against al-Bashir and two others in Sudan, a ranking cabinet minister and a janjaweed militia commander, the demands seem reasonable.

One of the major failures of peace talks for Darfur has been the fracturing of the rebels into some 20 groups. This has allowed Sudan to point fingers at the rebels as the primary impediment to peace and deflect blame from themselves.

Uniting or consolidating the rebels would be a major step forward. Gration will try to convince Nur to drop some of his demands and join the peace process.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly described the trip as an effort by the State Department to "align positions" in the international community on the Darfur peace process.

It is an interesting choice of words, but appropriate.

Although the peace mission in Darfur is technically under the 2007 United Nations and African Union joint peacekeeping force called UNAMID, it has languished under a lack of commitment from contributors and leadership, largely from the diplomatic ineptitude of the Bush administration.

Gration is attempting to provide that leadership.

The U.S., the region, and the world have nothing to lose and much to gain. If the international community and the rebels can show something of a united front on Darfur, it might get the begrudging agreement of the Sudanese government to reverse its decision to expel 13 humanitarian organizations from Darfur after the ICC warrants were issued against al-Bashir.

This would be good news for millions of Darfuris stranded by the forced abandonment of the aid groups.

But it also might lay the groundwork for serious efforts to end the six-year conflict that has claimed 300,000 lives and forced more than 2.2 million people to flee.

Saint Abu Garda and the ICC

2009-05-19T07:51:00.005-06:00

The surprise and voluntary appearance at the International Criminal Court in The Hague by Sudan's Darfur rebel leader Bahar Idriss Abu Garda, 46, is the best thing that has happened to the court in years.

The arrival and subsequent release of Abu Garda is a public relations coup for the court, which is still struggling to find its sea legs, and could serve to shame the three ranking Sudanese also indicted by the court to cooperate.

The ICC stepped into the international spotlight last year when ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo asked for genocide charges to be brought against Sudan President Omar al-Bashir for masterminding the Darfur conflict.

In early March, the ICC judges ordered the arrest of al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the first time the court has taken such action against a sitting head of state.

Also indicted by the ICC are two other Sudanese, Ahmad Haroun, a former cabinet minister who just recently was named the governor of Kordofan in Sudan's troubled southern regions, and Ali Kushayb, a commander of the janjaweed Arabic militia responsible for most of the death in Darfur.

Sudan has steadfastly refused to cooperate with the ICC, and like the United States, refuses to acknowledge its authority in Sudan or anywhere.

In the midst of all this, the ICC prosecutor filed charges against rebels who attacked and allegedly killed African Union peace keepers in the fall of 2007.

Abu Garda, member of the Zaghawa tribe of Sudan, has been charged with three war crimes committed in connection with the 29 September attack against the AU base at Haskanita in north Darfur.

During this attack twelve African Mission In Sudan (AMIS) soldiers were killed and eight others were severely wounded.

Reasons behind the attack are unclear. But speculation is that frustration an anger among the Darfur people and the rebels was such that the rebels attacked the inept and inert AU forces -- who some say were cooperating fully with the Sudan forces -- for not protecting them.

The ICC responded by filing charges against Abu Garda and two other rebel commanders, a move that some say was largely intended to diffuse criticism against the ICC for only indicting ranking Sudanese involved in the Darfur fighting.

After appearing in front of the court on Monday and oozing confidence, Abu Garda was allowed to leave the Netherlands, and come back voluntarily for his pre-trial hearing in October.

ICC Judge Cuno Tarfusser thanked him for coming. "The court appreciates very much your voluntary appearance," Tarfusser said. "In doing so, I think you have sent out a very good message."

This is a far cry from the way the ICC has handled cases in the past, when indictees are arrested and swiftly taken into custody, just as three Congolese militia leaders are currently, along with former Congolese vice-president Jean-Pierre Bemba.

If nothing else, the court's soft treatment of Abu Garda could be a signal to the other Sudanese, in particular President al-Bashir, that the court might be willing to make some accommodations if the Sudanese cooperate.

With Saint Abu Garda free to come and go as he pleases -- which includes being able to return to Darfur and presumably lead his splinter rebel group into battle -- one can only wonder how the Sudanese will react.

Kony deja-vu?

2009-05-17T08:56:00.003-06:00

It's been quiet on the Kony front, but not completely.

A couple of weeks ago, the Ugandan army revealed that it was investigating a couple of Belgian citizens who had been stopped in South Sudan for supposedly trying to re-arm and re-supply Kony.

See: http://www.iwpr.net/?p=acr&s=f&o=352266&apc_state=henpacr

Little is known about these Belgians, who they are, or what they were doing as part of a convoy of supplies traveling from Yambio, South Sudan, deep into the jungles where Kony is supposedly still licking his wounds.

When contacted, the Belgian embassy said that it didn't know anything about the arrest or that it has been splashed across the daily newspapers in Kampala.

A couple of days later, the military attache in the Belgian embassy admitted that the embassy was cooperating with the Ugandans.

Then, just a few days ago, the Ugandan government, on a Ugandan website called www.UGPulse.com. quoted a government official as saying that the Ugandan military suspected that Kony might launch an attack on northern Uganda.

Whether this is serious or nonsense is hard to determine. But the lack of news about Kony or his whereabouts makes one wonder. Kony's return to northern Uganda is very unlikely, however.

He has been severely hurt by the December-March military action against him in northeastern DR Congo. What made it possible for him to escape the assault on his camps last year was the remoteness of his location. Returning to northern Uganda would be like sticking his head in the jaws of the lion.

That being said, however, we can't forget that the Ugandan army could not kill or capture Kony who operated there from 1986 to 2006.

Those who follow the seemingly endless story of Joseph Kony should note a very detailed story in Newsweek magazine this week about Kony, titled "Hard Target: The Hunt for Africa's Last Warlord."

See: http://www.newsweek.com/id/197885/page/1

While the story is largely a "catch-up" on Kony since the magazine's last article about him a LONG time ago, it has a couple of interesting quotes from U.S. military advisers.

"We have some hints where he might be now, but nothing like we had before the strike," says a senior U.S. military-intelligence official who was intimately involved with the operation's planning and execution, but is not authorized to speak on the record about it. "Kony has virtually disappeared from the face of the earth."

While Kony has obviously not disappeared, many are wondering what is going on. I suspect Kony is wondering the same thing, because he has few options and is in desperate need of supplies and arms, which might explain the still mysterious attempt to re-supply him.

Then, later in the story, we read:

Kony has been lying low since then, but U.S. officials believe he's preparing his next move. Ugandan forces have mostly pulled back from their forward operating bases in Congo, leaving their pathetically underequipped, ill-trained Congolese colleagues to continue the hunt. "I'm sure Kony is seeing an opportunity to pull his operation back together," says one AfriCom official who can't speak on the record about the ongoing military situation.

If there is anything positive to be taken from these remarks, it is that finally, after 23 years, the world, and in particular the U.S. and its African Command (AfriCom) is finally watching Kony closely.

--
I apologize for the one-month absence from my blog, but I've been on the road now for more than three months promoting my book, First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army.

On April 25, I participated in the Los Angeles event organized by the filmmakers of "Invisible Children," a documentary that exposed the horrible realities of Kony and his army of child soldiers for what is probably millions of young college students and what appears to be a new generation of social activists.

I addressed the event briefly, which was in conjunction with the release of a new documentary on Kony called "The Rescue," in which the film makers joined with several hundred people who went to the jungle last year to witness Kony signing a final peace deal that would have ended his war.

Rather than signing and releasing the hundreds of child soldiers he still has, Kony disappeared, and we all know about Kony's bloody rampage against some 1,000 Congolese after he was attacked last December 14.

Earlier this month, I was in Cape Town, South Africa, for a conference on international justice and the rule of law sponsored by the American Bar Association.

War on Kony can be profitable

2009-04-13T05:23:00.003-06:00

A story in the Daily Monitor reveals that, as many have suggested, the army is profiting from the recent three-month operation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo against the Lord's Resistance Army.

This information only supports speculation that the Ugandan army didn't really want to capture Kony. After all, it would mean an end to the army's cash cow.

Enjoy this story by Chris Obore.

KAMPALA -- The revelation that the army spent Shs390 million a day during the three-month Garamba operation against the LRA, has divided some top army officers, Saturday Monitor has learnt.

The antagonism has also been worsened by the discovery that some junior army officers in collusion with their superiors had been stealing money meant for pensions and benefits for fallen and retired soldiers. Sources say the army chiefs are now trading accusations against each other over the leakage of that information to the public.

President Museveni, who is also Commander-in-Chief, has also demanded answers to what in military circles has been labelled “abnormal expenditure”.

Our sources said after Daily Monitor reported recently that the Garamba expedition against LRA’s Joseph Kony had drawn Shs35 billion ($17 million USD) from the public coffers, Mr Museveni reportedly called his top commanders and asked them to explain the huge expenditure.

“The President was furious with the Shs390 million a day bill, saying it is abnormal; the man was really hard on the army,” the source said.

Presenting a balance sheet of the Garamba operation to Parliament’s Defence and Internal Affairs Committee, the Chief of Defence Forces, Gen. Aronda Nyakairima, justified the expenditure, saying although Kony was not captured, killed or forced to sign the agreement, the overall operation was a success as it had significantly impaired the rebels’ capacity to return and destabilise the country.

Defence Minister Crispus Kiyonga, who appeared with the CDF, said the “little” money for the operation was not catered for in the budget, the reason his ministry was forced to ask for supplementary funding. MPs did not get details on how the money was spent.

But sources say Mr Museveni was not amused by the expenditure and accused some army officers of financial impropriety.

Apparently, the President was not aware of the huge expenditure until the story was carried by the Daily Monitor.

According to sources, on learning of the President’s dissatisfaction, a blame game at the defence ministry ensued, leading to the sudden transfer of the Undersecretary, Mr Fred Ogene.

Sources say some sections wanted Mr Ogene fired or interdicted but being a civil servant, it was not possible, considering the stringent laws governing his appointment.

But Defence and army spokesman Felix Kulayigye told Saturday Monitor: “He has been requesting for transfer for a long time, so I don’t believe he was forced out.”

Mr Ogene confirmed by telephone yesterday that he had been moved.“I don’t think the transfer has anything to do with Garamba; it might be but I was not told,” he said, adding: “I have been transferred to the President’s Office.”Mr Ogene, however, said what was given about Garamba expenditure was not the accountability but the highlights.

Pension scamMeanwhile, Dr Kiyonga, has reportedly put more pressure on the army chiefs to explain why there was delayed detection of how money for pensions and benefits was stolen by paymasters.

Sunday Monitor reported recently that the army was investigating a racket involving officers who have been stealing money meant for retired soldiers and families of dead servicemen in a scandal that could eclipse the infamous ghost soldier scam that led to the sacking and prosecution of a former army commander.

Soldires celebrating after arriving at Entebbe Airport from Garamba.
The racket was being perpetrated through a chain of soldiers working in the Directorate of Records, Manpower Audit and Army Strength Management sections.

When the story was reported, Mr Kiyonga, who was then in South Africa attending to his ill relative, reportedly instructed his military assistant to dig into the matter.

When the military assistant swung into action, top army chiefs reportedly refused to cooperate because the investigation could end up at their doorsteps.

The Chief of Staff Land Forces, Brig. Charles Angina, who had instigated a covert fact-finding operation using a combination of military intelligence and staff officers to establish the facts; and later arrested some culprits, reportedly got furious that the information had leaked to the media.

Now Brig. Angina has reportedly deployed operatives to find out how his confidential information ended up at Daily Monitor.

When Kiyonga returned from South Africa, sources say he wrote asking for more information regarding the Mafia-like racket that had been fleecing widows and orphans of fallen fighters but he is reportedly getting lukewarm response from top army chiefs.

Maj. Kulayigye said he was not aware that Mr Kiyonga had asked for answers to the pension graft in the army but promised to reach to his military assistant.
He, however, later called back saying: “All phones are off, so I can’t help you.”But Joint Chief of Staff, Brig. Robert Rusoke, said yesterday that when the matter first came up, “he ( Kiyonga) was not around.”“But the PS will brief him,” Brig. Rusoke said.

Asked what the army had done so far, Brig. Rusoke accused Saturday Monitor of trying to sabotage investigations.“What do want us to say? The matter is under investigation,” he said.He said the Defence permanent secretary “has been in contact with Ministry of Public Service” because “we are working together with Public Service to investigate the matter.”

Last financial year alone, while Shs53 billion was released for payment of benefits and pension, not more than Shs10 billion was actually paid out to beneficiaries. The rest disappeared.

International action needed

2009-04-01T11:41:00.003-06:00

(Originally published at www.iwpr.net, on March 27)

The recent withdrawals of the Ugandan and Rwandan armies from different corners of the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, call into question the international community’s desire to bring peace to the country.

The Ugandan army’s departure from northeastern DRC – after an abortive attempt to deal a decisive blow to rampaging Ugandan rebels – has left thousands of people vulnerable to continued atrocities.

Sadly, the Ugandan attack on Kony this past December was leaked, allowing Kony to take his soldiers out of the camp before the strike. Then, it took two days for Ugandan soldiers to show up.

This stumbling start to the operation against Kony raised doubts about the seriousness of the effort.

Meanwhile, the numbers of dead and displaced by Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA, in northeastern DRC continue to climb.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports that another 11,000 people were uprooted in the mid-March attacks by the LRA. This brings the total displaced by rebel raids in the Haut Uele district of Oriental province to more than 188,000 in the last six months.

An additional 990 Congolese have been murdered by the LRA and 747 abducted, the vast majority of them children, UNHCR says. Another 16,000 Congolese refugees who have crossed into Southern Sudan to escape LRA attacks are also receiving assistance.

Requested by the DRC’s president Joseph Kabila, the abrupt end to Uganda’s drive against Kony came without complaint or objection from the UN, the United States or any European Union countries.

Although the military support provided by the US showed that someone was willing to help end the menace of the LRA, the mission was poorly executed and failed in its main objective.

Likewise in the Kivu provinces of DRC. The same populations who have been in turmoil for a decade are once again in panic after Rwanda’s failed attempt to eliminate the threat of Hutu militias.

Despite the capture of Tutsi commander Laurent Nkunda and the DRC’s stand-down agreement with his former militia, serious concerns remain should indicted commander Bosco Ntaganda remain free.

Rather than shrink away from these situations with a quiet shrug, the international community should be preparing to act. Unless a new and more serious effort is organised against Kony and the LRA, a tragedy of even greater proportions will unfold.

Not only will Kony continue the senseless killing in this remote corner of the world, a worrisome message will be sent around the globe. The message is that if you’re far enough off the beaten track, and you’re victimising people who are already marginalised, you can commit atrocities as along as you like.

It doesn’t matter if you’re indicted by the International Criminal Court, as Kony and some of his henchmen have been. You can easily remain free. No one will lift a finger. In other parts of DRC, the message is the same.

Despite the presence of 17,000 UN peacekeepers, ethnic-based militias remain. Occasional interventions by neighbouring countries may generate a temporary diversion, but little will change.Of course, some benefit from the status quo. The well-documented illegal exploitation of minerals in the eastern Congo can only continue as long as the militia fighting is allowed to mask the plunder.

All of this can only stop with aggressive outside intervention.

One viable option is for the UN Security Council to authorise a multi-national strike force to encircle, confront and capture Kony and his commanders. Such an action has precedent and could be accomplished by a seasoned NATO commando strike force.

The same should be done in eastern DRC. The mission of the UN peacekeepers there is fruitless without a peace to keep.

Without active intervention, the illegal plunder of DRC minerals will continue. An available force of 3,300 EU troops is now in Chad, drawn from 26 countries and called EUFOR, which just recently was turned over to the UN.

In the hand-over ceremony earlier this month, the force was called a “new model” for EU involvement in troubled regions of Africa.

Despite the availability, however, one can only wonder about the purpose of the force, since on the occasion of the hand-over, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner proclaimed, “We won’t intervene ever again in internal affairs.”

The new force expects to have 3,900 troops by June, when the rainy season starts, and 5,200 by the end of the year. Despite Kouchner’s comments, 1,100 French soldiers remain in Chad under an earlier agreement with the government.

Why not use this force for short-term, focused missions to neighbouring countries? Why not stop the endless bloodshed which DRC, Uganda, the Central African Republic and South Sudan have all failed to do?

Intrigue, lies and more

2009-03-20T08:49:00.004-06:00

In a document recently circulated, the former spokesman for the Lord's Resistance Army peace team reveals the web of intrigue and lies behind the rebel group's failed peace talks with Uganda.

Written by Obonyo Olweny, a writer and teacher based in Nairobi, and dated Feb. 20 of this year, the analysis describes why the two-plus years of talks failed and what might be done to restart them and bring Kony to the peace table.

What Olweny proposes is certainly a long-shot, especially since he says that the reasons Kony won't sign the painstakingly negotiated deal, which he did three times last year -- is that he doesn't want to stand trial in either The Hague or Uganda, believing that doing so would be an admission of guilt.

So what does Kony want? Does he want to be absolved of any guilt and live in a Kampala mansion, surrounded by a bevy of his abducted "child-brides?" Hmmm. It's not a far leap to ascertain this man's broken psyche.

Fortunately, Olweny lays some blame squarely at Kony's feet:

"Kony and his fellow military commanders in the LRA failed to understand and appreciate peace talks as part of a complex political process. This caused him to miss out on this so far best opportunity to take advantage of the situation to end the war.

Olweny goes on:

"Twenty years in the bush with little contact with a changing and modernizing outside world was a long time. While they honed and perfected their war strategies and tactics that won them battles, built a fearsome reputation and ensured their continued survival even against a combination of national armies, the LRA leaders lacked the diplomatic and political preparedness necessary to navigate through peace talks with a leader as wily as (Uganda President Yoweri) Museveni.

"Kony thus failed to take advantage of the Juba peace talks to improve his standing not only in the communities in northern Uganda, but also nationally. This lack of understanding on Kony’s side made it easy for their opponent at the negotiating table to manipulate and outmaneuver them."

And outmaneuver them, Museveni certainly did. According to Olweny, the LRA peace delegation was riddled with spies and plants by Museveni and packed with people whose only motivation was their own self-enrichment.

Olweny writes:

"From the very start of the peace talks, the LRA delegation was riddled with government operatives. Some had served in the state security apparatus; others were ruling NRM party functionaries. As soon as the media published the list of the first delegation, an official of the Ugandan High Commission in Nairobi boasted that they had their men in there. The LRA military leadership was informed about this but chose to ignore it to the detriment of the peace talks."

But this is just the beginning. As I and others have written, the latest so-called leader of the dubious LRA peace team, David Mastanga, was suspect from the start. Olweny continues:

"The entry of David Nyekorach Matsanga from London into the LRA delegation in April 2007 and his eventual takeover of the delegation leadership was a disaster for not only the LRA but the peace process as a whole."

Matsanga as chief mole

"By planting their own man to lead the LRA delegation, the government had pulled off the highest form of covert operation in peace talks negotiation. Some of those who knew him in London believe that Matsanga is an operative of Uganda’s External Security Organization (ESO) and one of the foreign intelligence services.

"It is further believed that he was brought in with the mission to steer the peace talks in the direction desired by the Uganda government: to have a watered down peace agreement and deliver Kony and fellow commanders apprehended for the ICC.

"That explains why during the last round of negotiations in February 2008, he rushed to sign three critical agendas in a span of less than two weeks without any consultation with Kony.

"Far from representing the interest of the LRA fighters in the bush and the suffering displaced people in northern Uganda, Matsanga has secretly visited Kampala several times, and not once the IDP camps.

"Forget about his occasional tongue bashing of Museveni over the radio and television designed to hoodwink the gullible international public, Matsanga was in effect the government’s hatchet man at the talks.

"As he shuttled between Nairobi, Kampala, Garamba, Juba and London, Matsanga’s primary objective was to hijack, derail and destroy the Juba Peace Talks. The result of his work is there for all to see: a disintegrated/factionalised LRA delegation, a rushed Final Peace Agreement (FPA), four times refusal of Joseph Kony to sign the FPA, and the disastrous UPDF attack in Garamba."

Olweny also explains how the LRA was so easily compromised:

"There were delegates whose principal interests were simply the allowances and perks that came with the position, rather than identifying with and arguing strongly the case for the displaced and suffering people back at home as much as for the LRA.

"Some of those who lacked confidence in themselves feared being overshadowed by those who were more articulate and focused. One delegate even said that this was the opportunity to ‘eat’ (i.e. make as much financial/material gains as possible) since the talks would go nowhere.

"With members who were more interested in personal gains and gratification than meeting the difficult challenges of peace talks, it was easy for the government of Uganda and other agencies to compromise them."

That subversion reached to the highest levels of the LRA as Olweny confirms the rumored secret meeting that took place with the LRA in Mombasa.

The Mombasa deception

"A secret meeting in Mombasa from March 31 to April 6, 2007 between a select 5-man group of delegates led by its chairman Martin Ojul and a 4-man Uganda government delegation led by General Salim Saleh, then Minister of State for Micro-finance and Dr. Sam Kagoda, Permanent Secretary Internal Affairs and a key member of the government delegation in Juba, was a strong case of corruption and underhand negotiating tactics [Pax Christi statement, 11 April 2007].

"Other LRA delegates, some of who were in Nairobi at the time, had not only been excluded but were purposefully kept in the dark altogether. This division reflected a rift between the top military commanders. While Vincent Otti sanctioned the meeting, Joseph Kony appeared to have been unaware of it."

As a result of this meeting, Otti was eventually killed by Kony.

So what's next? While Olweny reveals some interesting details and backgroud, it does little to suggest a way forward that will bring about justice for the people of northern Uganda.

He calls for serious talks that address the so-called legitimate grievances of northern Uganda, specifically the "marginalized" Acholi. But he fails to recognize that these same Acholi were the primary victims of Kony's atrocities, and that Kony's alleged political agenda does not exist.

Kony is leading a cult of killers. Nothing more.

This is grossly clear given the fact that Kony has killed nearly 1,000 people in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo who had NOTHING to do with Uganda, the war, or anything related to the LRA.

To blame this killing on Uganda's attack on Kony last December is absurd and demented as Kony himself.

Salvation comes

2009-03-14T11:24:00.003-06:00

Catherine Ajok, one of the 30 girls abducted in October 1996 from St. Mary’s College in Aboke returned this past week after 13 years in the captivity of the Lord's Resistance Army.

Pictured above in a photo taken by Martin Ssebuyira and published in the The Daily Monitor newspaper in Kampala, Ajok arrived in Uganda after being flown from northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“I’m very happy that I have returned back home," Ajok told the press. “I can’t say anything but I’m happy to be back home,” she added.

Ajok arrived with a child fathered by LRA leader Joseph Kony, she says.

However, she had not seen Kony for the past three months, she said, because she was considered a risk because she was caring for a young child and could slow Kony's movements in the bush as he fled the Ugandan army which is pursuing him.

After escaping in an attack on LRA forces, Ajok finally reached UPDF base after one month of wandering in the jungles of Congo. She was in the region of Doruma, which is west of Kony's base in Garamba National Park, and was part of a group led by Col. Binangi Swoop.

Ajok was found with her 21-month-old baby, Happy Odonga. “We were over 30 wives of Kony. About 13 had given birth and the rest hadn’t.”

Ajok was the sole remaining of the 30 Aboke girls who had been abducted by the LRA in 1996. All had eventually escaped, and reportedly two had died.

From the plane, Ajok and her baby Odonga, were whisked to an unidentified home in Kampala were she will get psychological treatment before being handed over to her parents.

Ajok, 26-year-old is the daughter to Dr Alfred Alyai and Lucy Namataka of Aboke in Apac district.

“This marks the history that we can’t easily forget, for shameless Ugandans to subject such beautiful young girls to abject sufferings,” said military spokesman Felix Kulayigye.

Ajok’s painful story begun on October 9, 1996, the night she was abducted along with 149 girls when rebels attacked their school.

The deputy head mistress of the college, Italian nun, Sister Rachele Fassera, went into the night in search of them, and eventually secured the release of all but 30 who remained with the LRA.

Now, her ordeal is over.

The depths of depravity

2009-03-08T09:27:00.005-06:00

The call supposedly came from this man, Okot Odhiambo, pictured above as published in the Sunday edition of the New Vision newspaper in Kampala.

The photo accompanies an article by staff writer Barbara Among that delves into the issue of the calls and/or calls several weeks ago by Odhiambo, the number two man in the LRA, to the International Organization for Migration, that he and the LRA's nubmer three man, Dominic Ongwen, wanted to surrender.

Among says the call was a hoax and cites a number of sources inside the Ugandan intelligence community.

Security sources have idenitifed the caller as a man named Richard Komakech, who is suspected to have been making calls pausing as Odhiambo offering to surrender, Among writes.

“This man is a former rebel and had a satellite phones and Global Position System (GPS) which he has been using,” a source said.

When news broke of the call, there was a flurry of excitement because it would have been a major blow to the LRA and an even greater victory for the stalled Ugandan operation to kill or capture LRA leader Joseph Kony in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Just as quickly as the story sufaced, it died, leaving the IOM gasping for air, as Among points out.

The IOM has been tight-lipped regarding any information on Odhiambo, Among writes, except for a press statement on February 3 that it did not have any knowledge of Odhiambo’s whereabouts.

“IOM has no authority to arrest any individual… Nor does it have any information on Odhiambo’s whereabouts,” read a press statement on its website.

Questions abound as to whether the organisation was at any one point in touch with Odhiambo, Among correctly writes.

“I highly doubted it was Odhiambo," Gulu Resident District commissioner Col. Walter Ochora told New Vision. "You can’t pick a phone and say ‘I am Odhiambo’, when still under the command of Joseph Kony. That would be madness. Odhiambo could not make that mistake.”

Military intelligence concurred with Ochora, saying the announcement was a military tactic, initiated by Kony’s supporters from outside Uganda.

“Those are tactics. At the time, the forces had mounted pressure on him and he needed a breather,” said a security officer, who preferred anonymity told
Among, adding that Komakech could have been pausing as Odhiambo for the reason security is yet to establish.

I would offer that the reason is simple: we're dealing with the deadly and depraved people here, people who will do and say anything to anybody, any where and at any time, if they think they can benefit from it.

But even more disconcerting is that this apparent hoax could be part of an even more deeply established organization that supports Kony by trying to derail the Ugandan army as it pursues Kony.

This organization, which is inside and outside of Uganda, condones the recent killing of at least 900 innocent civilians in northeastern DRC who have had nothing at all to do with the LRA or its so-called war against Uganda.

After all, no one yet has offered a reasonable explanation as to why or how Kony was tipped off the day before the attack on his camps on Dec. 14.

This of course has led to speculation that it was intentionally leaked, thus allowing the Uganda military operation to continue indefinately and for international money to flow into the Uganda military machine indefinately as well.

There is plenty to wonder about with this operation to find one of the world's most wanted men, but topping the list is, What are the depth of depavity?

The Devil's Resistance Army

2009-03-07T07:59:00.004-07:00

Stories are beginning to filter out, coming from people who have been freed or have escaped the clutches of the Lord's Resistance Army's in northeastern Democractic Republic of the Congo.

One of the most compelling has been reported by journalist Modest Kizito Oketa, reporting from Yambio, South Sudan, for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.

He was able to talk with five South Sudanese who had been abducted by the LRA during the past two years, who were now on their way home, thanks to the Ugandan army.

Ironically, these abductees had been taken into their captivity at a time when the LRA was negotiating a so-called peace deal with Uganda as it continued to insist that it was not adbucting people -- a blatant lie swallowed only by the weak-kneed international community.

As reported by IWPR, the abductees, including three young women, two of whom gave birth in the bush, fled the LRA during recent battles between the rebels and the Ugandan army.

The clashes followed the mid-December joint Ugandan, South Sudanese and Congolese offensive against LRA bases in the Garamba National Park in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, codenamed operation Lightning Thunder.

Ugandan soldiers brought the abductees to their base in Dungu, the regional capital of northeastern DRC, from where they were airlifted to Yambio, Western Equatoria, in late February.

Together with their allies, the Ugandans have been pursuing the LRA fighters since their surprise attack on rebel camps in Garamba on December 14, as we have extensively reported.

The attack failed to defeat the rebels, however, allowing them to rampage across the region for the past two months, leaving an estimated 900 Congolese and South Sudanese civilians dead.

The escapees talked of their time of horror during which they had developed a healthy distaste for LRA leader Joseph Kony, who as many now know, learned of the attack ahead of time.

“[He] told his men a day earlier there were plans to bomb the camp and ordered all his commanders and other soldiers to leave immediately,” said John Isaac, a 20-year-old former resident of the South Sudan town of Ezo, who had been abducted in March 2008.

"The first day of the attack, we were in the camp,” he said to IWPR, explaining that many non-combatants remained even though Kony and his fighters had left.

“It seems he talks with his devil gods,” Isaac said. “We prefer him to be called the leader of [the] Devil’s Resistance Army." The escapees spoke of their wretched life in the rebel camps," he told IWPR.

"All the period we have spent in the hands of the notorious LRA, we were beaten, forced to do hard labour and to kill one another," said Isaac.

Isaac and some others escaped during the chaos of a rebel encounter with Ugandan forces. He said that the LRA fighters scattered as fighting broke out, enabling him and five Congolese children to run to safety.“I thought I would not survive,” said Isaac.

“Everyone was screaming and the children were crying. We were all praying to Almighty God to protect us.”

They came across some local people, he said, who took them to Ugandan army units based nearby, "We felt joyful when we escaped into the hands of Congolese civilians."

Once the escapees reached the Ugandan army soldiers, they said they knew they were safe. "The soldiers took us to Dungu the following day," said Isaac.

It's an amazing story, but now what? Kony is still out there, as are his top two commanders who just a few weeks ago said they wanted to surrender. Really?

And, now, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has an agreement from DRC Presdient Joseph Kabila to contine the operation, but for exactly how long, is unknown.

With Kony reportedly headed for, or already in the Central African Republic, it could go on forever, just as the war in northern Uganda did.

LRA commander captured

2009-03-04T10:36:00.002-07:00

The Ugandan army is once again beating its chest in over the capture of what it claims to be the fourth ranking commander of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army.

Thomas Kwoyelo was captured in the Democratic Republic of Congo's northeastern Garamba National Park on Tuesday, army spokesman Major Felix Kulayigye told news media by phone.

"We had contact with the rebels yesterday. Thomas was injured and is now in our custody. We also have some of the fighters who were with him, while others ran away," Kulayigye told the French Press Agency.

This is a much-needed and overdue success for the struggling Ugandan strike force now in its third month of chasing the elusive rebels army and its leader Joseph Kony.

Kony is reportedly on his way to the Central African Republic these days, after his other top commanders, No. 2 Okot Odhiambo and No. 3 Dominic Ongwen called an aid group saying they wanted to surrender.

Apparently they didn't and are still at large, roaming around the remote jungles of northeastern DRC.

While the capture of Kwoyelo denotes some progress, it is far short of anyone claiming that that so-called Operation Lightening Thunder has been a success.

Some 900 people have been killed and the culprits are still on the loose.

The capture does give Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni some small bargaining chip, however, as he meets today with DRC President Joseph Kabila to discuss the future of the operation.

It should also be an interesting meeting, however, since Museveni was instrumental in putting Kabila's father in power in the DRC, only to see the Ugandans stick around and exploit DRC minerals for half-a-dozen years.

Kabila has to be wondering what the Ugandans really intend to do.

KAMPALA (AFP) — Uganda's army announced Wednesday the capture of a commander of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army, the first top insurgent to be arrested in a three-month-old regional military drive against the militia.
Uganda, DR Congo and south Sudan armies launched a joint military operation against the rebels in December after elusive LRA chief Joseph Kony refused to sign a final peace deal with the Kampala government.
Kony is yet to be arrested and his fighters have killed hundreds of civilians while fleeing the onslaught.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and his Congolese counterpart Joseph Kabila are to meet Wednesday to review the operation and decide whether Ugandan troops will remain in DR Congo.
Kabila had said Ugandan troops were to leave DR Congo by the end of February, but they have yet to withdraw.
Kony's rebels are accused of having raped and mutilated civilians, forcibly enlisting child soldiers and of massacring thousands during two decades of conflict.

Spreading to the CAR

2009-03-01T08:08:00.003-07:00

I apologize for my two-week absence. I've been on the road since mid-February promoting my new book on Joseph Kony and the LRA titled First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army.

If you haven't already, order it now at Amazon.com.

So far, the tour has been a success with stops in February across the Midwest at the University of Iowa, Magers and Quinn Bookstore in Minneapolis, U of Wisconsin at Madison, Northwestern, DePaul, Columbia College, Seminary Coop Bookstore in Chicago, U of Indiana, and finally Ohio State.

The tour continues this month:

7 p.m. Monday, Mar. 9, at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle;
6 p.m. Wednesday, Mar. 11 at Powell's Books in Portland, Ore.;
5:30 p.m. Thursday at UC Berkeley's journalism school;
7 p.m. Saturday, Mar. 14 at Book Passage in Corte Madera, in Marin Co. north of San Francisco.

For a complete listing, see the book's webpage at http://www.firstkillyourfamily.com/.

***

As many others including myself have suspected, Kony is taking his band of killers into the Central African Republic, Reuters news agency reported last week, after the fighters apparently ambushed a national army patrol.

The clash triggered fighting that killed several fighters, according to a colonel in the republic's forces. The attack took place in the remote southeast of the country, which is sandwiched between Congo and Sudan.

"They were routed by the heavy retaliation from our soldiers," the colonel said. "One of our officers and a soldier were injured ... I cannot give the exact number we killed, but those who survived were chased to the other side of the Sudan border," he said.

As we have been reporting and discussing for months now, the LRA has killed nearly 900 civilians in northeastern Congo in retaliation for the Ugandan army attack on the LRA's camps in mid-December.

Kony has long wanted to move his base from the Garamba National Park in the DRC to the remote and lawless lands of the CAR, but was previously prevented from doing so by his late deputy commander, Vincent Otti. Kony killed Otti, according to defectors who witnessed the execution.

If Kony is moving to this region, it would add a new dimension to the conflict, which has spread death and destruction all over the northeastern DRC, and would embroil the CRA more deeply into the problem than ever before.

Fearing they would cross the border, Central African Republic sent extra soldiers last month to beef up patrols in its remote southeastern region, where LRA fighters last year invaded and kidnapped hundreds and looted dozens of villages and towns.

Those attacks continued sporadically for most of 2008, and tried the patience of the international community, which finally consented to the attack on Kony after his third and final failure to sign a peace deal with Uganda.

Kony's clash with the CAR makes it clear that he still has ammunition and weapons, which makes him a lethal force. Speculation had been growing that Kony was out of ammo since his killers had resorted to hacking people to death with machetes.

Several question still linger, however.

Will the Uganda, CAR and South Sudan forces pursue Kony north into the CAR?
How far can the Ugandan operation be stretched before it breaks?
How many troops does Kony have?
What happened to the widely reported offer to surrender by Kony's two top deputies, Okot Odhiambo and Dominic Ongwen?

The surrender was being negotiated with the aid group, International Organization for Migration, a Swiss-based group with operations all over the world.

What happened?
Did Kony kill Odhiambo, as has been rumored?
Did Okot die, since he was reportedly wounded badly?

Stay tuned.

Things fall apart

2009-02-16T06:47:00.004-07:00

Troubling new information emerging from the surrender negotiations of two commanders of the Lord's Resistance Army indicate that the deal is collapsing.

While the Congolese government is telling the world that LRA chief Joseph Kony and about 250 rebels are trapped in a swamp in the Garamba jungle in north-eastern DR Congo, word comes from the Daily Monitor in Kampala that one of the commanders is under arrest by Kony.

The commander, Okot Odhiambo, was reportedly severely wounded and about two weeks ago called the aid group, International Organization for Migration, to help negotiate his surrender along with a small force of soldiers and captives.

While no one knows if the arrest claim is legitimate, it means someone is trying to block the deal. That would most likely be Kony, who would see his army cut in half and leave him isolated. Or, it could be one of his supporters on the outside, who are trying to block or delay his capture.

Along with Odhiambo, his other top commander, Dominic Ongwen, has also asked for a surrender. It hasn't happened yet and word has been scarce. And, since the flow of information to the public is being carefully controlled by the Ugandan government, we're not going to be told the truth.

But, if Kony does have Odhiambo in his grasp, it means certain death for Odhiambo. Kony killed his former deputy, Vincent Otti, in October 2007 after Otti pushed too hard for the peace deal with Uganda and was prepared to take his followers, about half of the LRA, out of the bush.

If Kony has reasserted himself into the situation, it would be typical Kony tactics. By "arresting" Odhiambo and executing him, he would be enforcing his brutal and blood form of discipline, insuring that any others who want to desert stay with him out of pure fear.

The call regarding the arrest does not square with comments by Congo spokesman Lambert Mende who told AFP news agency, “They have no way out of these swamps except to surrender,” regarding the LRA.

He also said that a UN peacekeeping force in Sudan, UNMIS, had been preparing their return to Uganda. Was this all a publicity stunt to help a mission that has failed to kill or capture the LRA leaders?

“For reasons that remain unclear none of the combatants had presented themselves at the designated rendezvous as of Saturday afternoon,” said David Gressly, UNMIS regional coordinator for southern Sudan.

Odhiambo and Ongwen are wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes.

Kony's last days?

2009-02-15T09:58:00.004-07:00

We've heard this before.

Joseph Kony and his cult of child killers, the Lord's Resistance Army, is surrounded, and now it's only a matter of time before he's captured.

These are the words uttered recently by the spokesman for the Ugandan army, which currently has Kony on the run in Garamba National Park in the northeastern corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Perhaps it is true. We know that Kony's two top commanders, Okot Odhiambo and Domnic Ongwen, both wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, are negotiating their surrender.

When that may happen is not known. But the fact that they've broken away from Kony and want to give up their fight is significant. It will leave Kony more isolated than in the past, even though he theoretically has the bulk of his force under this command.

According to reports, that force is only about 200 or 250 fighters, along with about and equal number of abductees, women and children.

If the numbers are accurate, it's a greatly reduced force from the 500 or 600 fighters that Kony supposedly commanded earlier

However, I can't help but remember being told that Kony's days were numbered when I interviewed the Ugandan army intelligence chief in northern Uganda in 2005.

At the time, Kony's force was migrating across south Sudan toward the DRC, but LRA units still controlled most of the north and were inflicting serious damage at will. An army convoy had been attacked and half a dozen Ugandan soldiers had been killed.

The attack was dismissed as the "final kicks of a dying horse," a favorite phrase of the Ugandan army. Sadly, they use it too much, even though it's now 2009, some four years later, and Kony and the LRA are still out there.

However, maybe it is true this time. Despite the botched attack on Kony's camps on Dec. 14, Kony's forces are scattered, their communications are down, and their ammo much be all but expended.

But Kony has been in tight spots before. What's next?

Escapee: Kony is angry

2009-02-13T06:33:00.004-07:00

As information dribbles out regarding Uganda's faltering military operation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo against Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army, we learn that Kony is angry.

Well, why not? His camps were bombed and now his top two commanders are negotiating their surrender.

In a story from the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, we learn from an escapee who was with the LRA camp when it was attacked, that Kony was already gone.

"The first day of the attack I was in the camp," said 21-year-old Jackline Apio, who had been in captivity for six years.

"LRA leader Joseph Kony had told us a day earlier there were plans to bomb the camp and ordered all his commanders and other soldiers to leave immediately."

This begs the question, how did he know? It also confirms earlier suspicions that Kony has informers close to the government.

Apio continues: "At about 11 a.m., after we had cooked, we heard the sound of approaching helicopters. Minutes later they [the helicopters] started bombing the camp. We all ran away. "

Why did Kony not have everyone abandon the camp? There have been strong fears that Kony would use the hundreds of abductees as human shields in case of an attack, which is why many in the international community have resisted attacking Kony long ago.

Here we can clearly see that Kony sacrificed these civilians to cover his escape and those of his fighters and commanders.

This should also provide insight into the kind of man we're dealing with.

Apio: "After two hours the rebels came back [to the camp] and collected food, medicine and weapons they had abandoned. The rebels, women and children later joined Kony."

Now it gets interesting: "He was looking enraged, and we started walking towards [the] Central African [Republic]," Apio says.

"Kony later changed [his] plans and ordered everyone to split into groups of 10, including the women and children. He said we should all remain in [DR] Congo. I don’t know where he went, but he remained somewhere with a few soldiers."

Again, Kony's cunning becomes apparent. He knows that others know he has wanted to go the CAR for a long time. Most suspected he would. Knowing that, however, he reverses course, and decides to stay. The only way his army can survive, however, is for them to break into small groups -- again his standard tactic, but quite effective.

But, there is a risk, of course, and that is losing his command and control.

"Our group was led by Dominic Ongwen [Kony’s deputy]. We were 30 and were attacked several times by UPDF [Ugandan People’s Defence Forces] soldiers. On 22 January in the afternoon, our group was attacked by UPDF; we had walked the whole night and were resting," she continues.

"I was shot in my left thigh. Then the [UPDF] commander appeared and ordered [the] soldiers not to shoot children or women.

"The other rebels ran away. We were five, two babies, two young children and I. I thought I would not survive; everyone was screaming and children crying. I said my last prayer because Kony [had] told us that anyone caught by the UPDF would be killed."

This is what Kony tells his captives in order to keep them under his tumb.

Ironically, it is Ongwen and Kony's latest deputy, Okot Odhiambo, who now want to surrender. As I have mentioned, this will be a serious blow to Kony's forces, and if nothing else, will cause others in his camp to do the same.

However, Kony is still out there.

As Apio explains, "It is difficult to get Kony, he keeps changing his location. Not even his commanders know his real location because he does not use satellite phones."

U.S. helpled plan botched attack

2009-02-07T12:34:00.003-07:00

The New York Times today confirmed what I have reported for weeks now, that the Ugandan army attack on the camps of rebel leader Joseph Kony and his brutal band of killers, the Lord's Resistance Army, was botched.

New, however, is that finally the U.S. military admits it was involved in the training of the special forces that attacked Kony's camps in the Garamba National Park of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the planning of the operation.

However, the comments made by the U.S. forces are very reserved, as if they are trying to distance themselves from a poorly executed plan that has resulted in a bloody rampage by the LRA that has killed some 900 people.

It is the first time the United States has helped plan such a specific military offensive with Uganda, according to senior American military officials, the Times reported.

They described a team of 17 advisers and analysts from the Pentagon’s new Africa Command working closely with Ugandan officers on the mission, providing satellite phones, intelligence and $1 million in fuel, the Times reported.

However, the newspaper reports, no American forces ever got involved in the ground fighting in this isolated, rugged corner of Congo, but human rights advocates and villagers rightly complained that the Ugandans and the Congolese troops who carried out the operation did little or nothing to protect nearby villages, despite a history of rebel reprisals against civilians.

As I have written and told to the BBC, which interviewed me on the topic several weeks ago, "the troops did not seal off the rebels’ escape routes or deploy soldiers to many of the nearby towns where the rebels slaughtered people in churches and even tried to twist off toddlers’ heads," the Times reported.

Further, the Times explained that American officials conceded that the operation did not go as intended, and that villagers were left exposed.

“We provided insights and alternatives for them to consider, but their choices were their choices,” said one American military official who was briefed on the operation, referring to the African forces on the ground, according to the Times.

“In the end, it was not our operation.”

That doesn't sound like a whopping endorsement for the results.

Maj. Felix Kulayigye, a Ugandan military spokesman, declined to discuss the American involvement and simply said, “There was no way to prevent these massacres,” according to The Times.

If there is any good to come to light, it is that in fact the U.S. has become involved actively in some of Africa's most important tragedies. However, the new AfriCOM which lead the way here, hopefully learned a lesson that planning is only the first step.

Ensuring proper execution of such missions must be also integral to the mission, or as we have seen, the results are catastrophic.

Dominic makes two

2009-02-06T07:49:00.008-07:00

The French Press Agency is reporting that Dominic Ongwen, another deputy commander of the Lord's Resistance Army, also wants to surrender to Ugandan forces fighting in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The possible surrender of Ongwen follows last week's request by LRA deputy commander Okot Odhiambo, who is currently negotiating the terms of a surrender.

If true, the defection and surrender of these commanders would leave Kony largely isolated, yet still with the bulk of his army in the DRC, said to be some 600 or 700 men.

The surrender of both these men would be a huge success for the Ugandan army and theoretically for the international community since both are wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

"Dominic Ongwen is here with me, we are together," Odhiambo told AFP by phone from his jungle hide-out, adding they had 120 LRA fighters with them.

Meanwhile, word continues to trickle out about the possible surrender of the deputy commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, Okot Odhiambo.

According to the Daily Monitor newspaper in Kampala, the Ugandan army commander in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Brig. Gen. Patrick Kankiriho, has given Odhiambo a map sketching out where Odhiambo and his men can surrender.

The options are several locations, or any church or the United Nations Mission in Congo (MONUC) outpost.

“I sent him a sketch map of areas where he can report. I told him if he cannot report in those areas where the UPDF is, he can go to any church or the UN,” Kankiriho told the Monitor.

The church suggestion is ironic since Odhiambo and his men are thought to have been behind a slaughter in a church of about 50 people in the Doruma area in December.

This communique to Odhiambo is the first hard information that the negotiations, which began last week, are still on-going with the rebel unit, said to nubmer about 85 people, including about 45 soldiers, 20 abductees and non-combatants.

"If Odhiambo responds and says he is at point A, then we will know he is serious. We will not hurt him. We can even leave our guns behind and we get UN to escort us and we meet him,” Kankiriho said.

If Odhiambo surrenders, it will be a major success for the Ugandan military strike that began Dec. 14 and sent the LRA, lead by Joseph Kony, on a killing rampage that has taken the lives of nearly 1,000 civilians in the region.

But how long the Ugandan army can or will stay in northeastern DRC? Congolese officials have set today, Friday, Feb. 6, as the deadline for Uganda's withdrawal from the region.

The deadline makes no sense, of course, given the current negotiations, but the Congo is under pressure to rid itself of foreign forces. Neighboring Rwanda currently has about 2,000 troops in the Kivu provinces of eastern DRC, who are ridding the region of the Hutu militias.

The two situation are virtually unrelated, but problematic, none-the-less.

Certainly, simple logic dictates that Uganda should continue this operation against Kony and the LRA, since in both this situation and the Kivus, the DRC is incapable of controlling or solving the problem.

But this also raises the question whether Uganda can solve the Kony problem as well. Given the botched operation that began the current mess, there are serious doubts for any permanent solution.

The question also arises as to why Kony and his army are in the DRC in the first place. Why didn't Uganda solve the Kony problem sometime during the 20 years he fought in Uganda?

What makes Uganda think it can do the job now?

Rock and a hard place

2009-01-31T07:29:00.006-07:00

No news is bad news.

Despite the flurry of stories over the past couple of days on the defection and pending surrender of Okot Odhiambo, the deputy commander of the Lord's Resistance Army, we have heard nothing in the past 48 hours.

A uniformed Odhiambo is pictured above in the lower center, with former LRA deputy commander Vincent Otti to the left, whom rebel commander Joseph Kony reportedly executed in October 2007.

I took this photo at a meeting between the LRA and former peace talks mediator Riek Machar in July 2006, not far from Kony's camp near the border of South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Odhiambo is supposedly negotiating with the Ugandan army and reportedly is demanding the same amnesty that Uganda has given more the 20,000 former fighters with the LRA.

That's an astounding number of former soldiers, considering that Kony's army has probably never been more than one or two thousand, but gives you an idea of how many people have been abducted by his army and forced to kill their families, friends, relatives and thousands of other innocents.

But if Uganda does give Odhiambo and his unit of 45 fighters amnesty, it will be putting itself between a rock and hard place. Odhiambo has been wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity since 2005.

Uganda first went to the ICC in late 2003 and asked the ICC to get involved, and it did. Now it's up to Uganda to turn him over to the ICC, when and if they get him. Only Uganda is balking, saying it's going to keep Odhiambo in Uganda and put him on trial there, assuming they don't give him amnesty.

Considering that Odhiambo is said to have been behind some of the worst massacres committed by the LRA, as well as the recent killing of more than 200 people in one village alone in the DRC, it is hard to beleive that Uganda would give him amnesty.

Uganda put itself in this situation and must show a little backbone and moral strength.

Meanwhile, the deafening silence surrounding the Odhiambo announcement gives credence to the accusations that this is yet another ruse by the LRA to buy time and secure food and medical supplies.

Odhiambo is said to have been badly injured in either the initial strike on Kony's camps on December 14th, or in subsequent gun battles. The Ugandan army said it has captured huge supplies of food that the LRA has been storing and which it received from the international community, supposedly to keep them at the peace table. It didn't work.

The LRA has been on a rampage since then, killing nearly 900 people according to the latest count from the United Nations, and has forced 130,000 people to flee.

With their food supplies gone, the Ugandan army on their tail, and most of the people in the region gone, the LRA is going to be hard pressed for food and ammo.

So maybe this is a feint by Odhiambo. We shall soon see. Stay tuned.

2009-01-29T12:27:00.005-07:00

The reported defection and pending surrender of Okot Odhiambo, the deputy of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army, is a serious blow.

Long thought to be the militia's most ruthless commander, Odhiambo (left above) became deputy to leader Joseph Kony (right above) after Kony executed the former deputy, Vincent Otti who was a strong advocate for peace in October 2007.

Odhiambo is said to have been the LRA commander most responsible for the deadly attack in Feburary 2004 on the Barlonyo refugee camp near Lira in northern Uganda that killed more than 300 people, most of whom were burned to death in their huts, hacked to death or had their head crushed.

Odhiambo's force is thought to be about 45 fighters and about 10 kidnapped civilians. He reportedly has been suffering from serious wounds sustained in battles with the Ugandan army, which is pursuing them.

Odhiambo, along with Kony and a third commander named Dominic Ongwen, are wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Odhiambo took his force to the Doruma area after Uganda's Dec. 14 attack on the LRA's main camp in the Garamba National Park of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In Doruma, his forces are said to have killed more then 200 people, about 50 of whom were hacked to death while trying to hide in a church.

Now Odhiambo is demanding amnesty and to stay in Uganda, just like the demands that have been made for the past several years by the LRA as terms of its disarming.

Some sources suggest, however, that the surrender is bogus and only an attempt to buy time and seek aid. We will soon know.

However, if the defection and pending surrender are real, it could be the first of more defections and the beginning of the end for Kony and the LRA.

2009-01-27T08:02:00.005-07:00

The photo above, by Peter Martell, of the UN's humanitarian news agency, IRIN, contradicts claims by the Uganda army that subcommanders in the Lord's Resistance Army want to surrender.

Led by the self-proclaimed prophet and spirit medium, Josephy Kony, the LRA has been on bloody rampage the past six weeks in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

At least 700 people, all innocent civilians, have been killed as revenge against a Dec. 14 attack on LRA camps in the DRC's Garamba National Park by the Ugandan army.

Pictured above are children now in South Sudan who have fled the LRA, some of whom were forced by the LRA to watch as their parents were hacked to death.

"The LRA [Lord's Resistance Army] attacked our village of Diko [on 4 January], taking 10 people with them," Saleh Sebit, a village elder, told IRIN. "We do not know where they are, and we fear they are now dead."

One eight-year-old boy said he was forced to watch rebel fighters chop the legs and arms off his father and a companion, before they beat the men to death with a wooden club, IRIN was told.

"The LRA attacked two tractors as [they were] coming with people to Mundiri," added Sebit. "They fired, killing one, and set fire to the vehicles."

Sebit and the boy are just two of an estimated 8,000 people displaced in a recent upsurge of attacks on farming villages in Sudan's Western Equatoria state. Many of the displaced, according to state officials, are now staying with relatives, according to IRIN.

These attacks also question the claims by the government of South Sudan that it has "closed" its border with the DRC, in an effort to prevent the LRA from entering the country and killing civilians.

Meanwhile, the Kampala-based Daily Monitor newspaper, quotes the Uganda military as saying that the LRA's sub-commanders want to surrender.

The army said it couldn't name the commanders because they they'd be killed by Kony, just as he did in October 2007 to his long-time deputy commander, Vincent Otti.

The reports were a progress report sent to the media by Capt. Deo Akiiki, the spokesman for the latest military offensive against the LRA dubbed, “Operation Lightning Thunder,” according to the Monitor.

“We assure Ugandans that this Kony nuisance will come to the end. We are in touch with some LRA commanders and soon or later they will surrender to us. Those who will persist will either be captured or killed in the jungles,” Capt. Akiiki said.

He said apart from contacting the army with a proposal to surrender; the rebel commanders have also approached some Non-governmental Organisations over the same matter.

LRA was high tech in the bush

2009-01-25T07:54:00.004-07:00

The ability of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army to stay a step ahead of the Ugandan army and other adversaries is evident with the recent capture of equipment pictured above.

With its wide array of laptop computers and at least a dozen satellite phones and other equipment, the LRA appears to have been able to stay abreast of international developments via the Internet.

Such capacities, however, require computer skills that neither LRA leader Joseph Kony, nor the vast majority of his fighters and commanders have.

Abducted as children from their villages in northern Uganda, most in the LRA have been living in the bush their entire lives. They lack formal education, certainly not computer training, and instead have undergone the bizarre indoctrination at the hands of Kony and his commanders.

So where did all of this equipment come from and who operated it? Satellite phones require the purchase of air time, and you can't buy it in remote villages in the jungle. Who was buying that for the LRA and how was that done?

The mere presence of this equipment and communications devices shows that Kony has an organized system of support far beyond the confines of his camps in the Garamba National Park of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

It is this network that should be investigated by the international community as it is clear that this network in the Acholi tribal diaspora has been vital to the survival of the LRA.

Even Uganda President Yoweri Museveni has alluded to this network, as he explained why and how Kony was able to escape the Dec. 14 attack on his camps in Garamba.

Museveni said that among the equipment pictured above, was a radio that may have allowed Kony to monitor communications the Ugandan army and learn of a pending attack.

The Ugandan army know how to keep its communications secure? Or, has the Ugandan army been infiltrated with Kony sympathizers?

The existance of Kony supporters in the Acholi tribal diaspora was evidenced recently when Kony's former negotiators made public their distaste for the LRA's self-proclaimed new spokesman, David Matsanga.

These former representatives, most of them ex-patriots of northern Uganda, also alluded to the formation of a new rebel group called the Uganda People's Liberation Front and Army.

The Kony support network, some have suggested, not only purchased this equipment, but smuggled it in the massive shipments of food and supplies that were paid for by the international community and trucked to the jungle camps of Kony by the Catholic charity, Caritas.

Fortunately, this support for Kony by the international community has ended, and, as far as we can tell, so has Kony's access to electronics. Kony certainly kept a few sat phones as he fled his camp. But they won't last long without batteries, battery chargers, and airtime.

While Kony's ability to wage war may have been damaged, he has yet to be captured or killed. He is still out there, and his soldiers are still killing innocent civilians.

While the Ugandan government has obtained the support of the Central African Republic in the fight against the LRA, it also shows that Uganda is very worried that Kony will head to the CAR.

If he goes there, as many suspect he will, he will become harder and harder to capture or contain, with or without his high tech equipment.

CAR joins, Congo extends

2009-01-23T09:15:00.007-07:00

Photo left: Uganda army special forces alight from an assault helicopter during an operation against the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) camp in Democratic Republic of Congo in December 2008 ( Reuters) Photo right: destroyed village in DRC, photo by Doctors Without Borders.

According to a story by Radio France International, the Central African Republic will participate in joint military operations with the Ugandan army against the rebel Lord's Resistance Army.

Led by self-proclaimed prophet Joseph Kony, the LRA has been on a killing spree in northeastern DR Congo since it was attacked on Dec. 14 by Ugandan forces. As it has in the past, the LRA is expected to cross into the CAR which has an undefended and porous border with the DRC.

The development comes as the DRC has agreed to let Ugandan troops remain in its country to hunt rebels for 21 more days, according to RFI.

Ugandan officials say the mandate for joint operations could be extended once more.

"Kony, if he was clever enough, he would either surrender, go to the designated area of Ri-Kwangba and sign the peace agreement," Captain Deo Akiiki, Ugandan army spokesman told RFI.

"If he continues fighting I don't believe he will succeed anyway. This is a different situation, a different territory and the successes against the LRA are evident," he added.

Akiiki told RFI that the LRA has no food because Ugandan troops destroyed its camps.

"I don't see where Kony's hiding. I am sure he will not get any other safe haven, not in the DRC, Southern Sudan or the Central African Republic," Akiiki said.

"We will not be diverted by LRA's tricks of breaking into two parts but we know where the main part of LRA is and we will go for them," Akiiki told RFI.

"Because of the pressure we are putting on them because of the many fighting squads we are having in their jungles" the attacks on civilians have stopped, he said.

But people in the region continue to flee for their lives, he said.

"Frightened people continue to move out of their villages, but at the moment at least we have all fighting mechanisms put in place to ensure that these destructions are not done," said Akiiki.

Kony could strike back

2009-01-22T10:33:00.006-07:00

The new investigative reporting publication, The Independent, in Kampala, Uganda, (http://www.independent.co.ug/) is reporting on growing dissent among the current and former military leaders in Uganda over the on-going operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The generals suggest that the strike against Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army, was designed as a short-term move. But since it has failed to turn up much, except for things like Kony's guitar, pictured here, the strike is looking more like it will be a long and bloody affair.

As Independent's managing editor Andrew Mwenda notes, it would seem like the operation could and should be a success. After all, the Ugandan army is backed by the UN peacekeeping force to the south. To the north it has the South Sudan army, and on their side is the Congolese army.

Kony is supposedly boxed in.

But according to one unnamed general, a long-term war in that remote location could be disastrous for the Ugandan army. A sustained campaign could work to Kony's advantage.

First of all, the general points out, the Congolese and South Sudanese contributions to the effort are limited. It's unlikely they will have the stomach for an drawn-out war.

Secondly, the LRA is accustomed to working in small, highly mobile, and independent units. They survive by attacking and looting villages and are not interested in taking and holding territory.

But most importantly, to sustain such a war, Uganda will need to establish base camps and supply lines treacherous and remote areas.

“This will leave our army badly exposed,” the general told the Independent, “because LRA will now be able to attack UPDF supply lines to loot food (and therefore feed off our backs) and to make it difficult and expensive for us to sustain our troops" in Garamba National Park where Kony is still thought to be.

"It would be almost impossible (and if possible extremely expensive in money and soldiers) to secure the vast distance ..., " the general said. "There are no roads, there are few human settlements and most of the place is either forest or bush. No commander would love to be in such a situation.”

Not only is the future bleak for the innocent civilians in the area who have suffered, but also for the Uganda military.

Obama's east African roots

2009-01-21T09:57:00.004-07:00

We all know about President Barack Obama's father being Kenyan, but now claims are being made that Obama's grandfather was a Ugandan.

In an article published in the Kampala newspaper, the Daily Monitor, and written by Angelo Izama, a group claims that Obama's Luo tribal connections extend to regions of Kenya that were once part of Uganda in the 1920s when it was a British protectorate.

According to the Monitor, the information came in a statement signed by Nelson Umah Tete about a book titled “The Luo” by George William Alenyo.

The organisation, Luo Community [Ugandan Chapter], is however an unregistered entity whose real membership remains unknown, the Monitor said.

“By 1926 when Obama’s grandfather Onyango Obama was born in Nyanza province [it] was still part of the Uganda protectorate whose boundary extended up to the Rift Valley in Nakuru” the statement said, adding that the boundaries were not altered until 1926.

As we all know, Obama’s African roots have been a source of excitement in the region, and a beer has been named after him in Kenya. Children born on the day he won the presidency have been named after him.

DVD’s with his speeches are selling like blockbusters and his acceptance speech has been turned into a cellular phone ringtone, the Monitor reports.

While ‘Obamania’ has shown no signs of ebbing, it holds a special significance to ethnic Luo group.

It must be noted that the Luo tribe in western Kenya is closely related to the Acholi tribe in northern Uganda, of which Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army is a member.

The Acholi as well as the Luo, as they're known, both speak the Luo language, which in northern Uganda is also simply called Acholi.

New focus on Africa needed

2009-01-20T07:37:00.003-07:00

The suspense and anticipation is palatable as the U.S. swears- in Barack Obama as its first African-American president.

It is a milestone, of course, and a colossal turn-around in American governance and policy.

While Obama surely will bring about change on many fronts, one of the places it is sorely needed is Africa.

But leveraging change in Africa won't come immediately, as Obama's priority must be the crumbling U.S. economy. As the world's economic engine, the U.S. economy drives the fortunes of the world.

Some levers for shifting gears are already in place in Africa. Specifically, the U.S. military's new African Command, Africom.

While it does not necessarily mean more troop involvement, it well could. In announcing the new command, generals said that U.S. forces in Africa would support humanitarian aid efforts there.

This has led to complaints about the militarization of foreign aid, which is a legitimate concern. However, given the state of most Africa countries, the carrot-and-stick approach could prove effective.

Having lived in the Balkans, the Caucasus, Afghanistan and Africa, I know well the failure of foreign aid. Providing aid without demanding results and accountability is not only wrong, it perpetuates the conditions that created the need.

The best example we have is with Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army, now rampaging through northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo where it has killed more than 600 innocent people, abducted hundreds of others, and raped and mutilated scores more.

This is the same army that was pampered and fed by a collection of European countries for more than two years as an inducement to negotiate. But after two years, Kony and his LRA made fools of the international community by not signing a peace deal on three separate occasions.

And now Kony's on what is the most bloody rampage in his army's horrific 22-year existence.

Chances are slight that the U.S. will get involved in the hunt for Kony that continues by the Ugandan Army.

What we can expect quickly, however, is some action in Darfur. During his campaign, Obama called for direct action in Darfur, and this has been reiterated by his designated Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

First is the likely imposition of a no-fly zone over Darfur, which will be enforced by U.S. air power already based in the region. This would effectively ground Sudan's fleet of Antonov bombers and attack helicopters, and would go a long way toward stopping the destruction of Darfur's villages.

Other actions have been suggested, as were leaked in a recent White House memo, such as jamming Sudan's communications system and blockading Sudan's ports -- a move that would halt the flow of Sudan oil which President Omar al-Bashir uses to fund his war in Darfur.

While the world's attention to Africa will soon shift to Darfur, it would be nice if some of that attention would spill over to the bloody corner of the DRC where Kony and his LRA continues kill innocent people with impunity.

Death toll climbs

2009-01-19T09:27:00.004-07:00

According to a story in the New Vision newspaper in Kampala, Uganda, hundreds of civilians were burned to death on Saturday by the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels.

The rebels set ablaze a church called Bima in the Democratic Republic of Congo at midnight as the faithful prayed, according to the New Vision.

It is not yet known how many were in the church at the time, according to Radio Okapi, the UN's radio network in Congo. The rebels reportedly attacked others with axes and knives, slitting throats and crushing skulls.

The massacre occurred in the towns of Tora and Libombi, and two nearby mining communities located 130km from Dungu, the base of operations for the Ugandan military which is chasing the LRA.

According to the president of the civil society of Dungu, Felicien Balani: “The LRA entered around midnight. They surprised the faithful of the church who were in a prayer vigil. They burned them in the church,” said Balani.

The rebels also burnt several houses at the gold mine town of Tora. So far recorded are five deaths and six injured.

Civil society organisations working in Dungu said over 100 people had fled the area by yesterday.

“In Doruma, it was really awful. They had killed at least 300 people. We were in a village where there are only six survivors, all the others were killed,” said Anneke Van Woudenberg, of Human Rights Watch.

“One of the few survivors, a 72-year-old man who arrived late for Christmas lunch, hid in the bushes and watched in horror as his wife, children and grandchildren were killed,” Woudenberg told New Vision.

After the massacre, the rebels “ate the Christmas feast the villagers had prepared, and then slept among the dead bodies before continuing on their trail of destruction and death” through another 12 villages.

Another 86 people were massacred in the most recent incidents.

More time, more trouble

2009-01-18T09:15:00.005-07:00

Ugandan officials are going to travel to the Democratic Republic of Congo's capital of Kinshasa this week to ask for more time to hunt rebels.

Uganda had approval from the DRC to chase the rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army for a month that ended Jan. 14, 30 days after the military first attacked the LRA camps in the Garamba National Park on Dec. 14.

Even though the deadline passed, Uganda made no moves to withdraw its troops.

Neither has it produced evidence that a month of fighting has done anything to slow, stop, kill or capture the LRA and its leader Joseph Kony.

Instead, the death toll among the civilian population of northeastern DRC continues to mount, with the UN saying more than 600 have been killed, about 400 more abducted and more than 100,000 people displaced.

It is also somewhat gratifying to see that the Enough project, has finally joined me and a growing chorus who have condemned the Ugandan operation as a dismal failure, despite the government's claims to the contrary.

Uganda's request for an extension signals what I predicted shortly after the attack began. Uganda will only create the same disastrous situation that it did in northern Uganda when it conducted a "war" against Kony and the LRA.

As has been widely reported in the Ugandan news media and as I amply demonstrate in my new book on the LRA (First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army), the war in the north was poorly fought and undermanned.

This was due to the massive fraud perpetrated by the Ugandan army's high command which listed thousands of "ghost soldiers" on it's pay rolls as fighting in the north, when they didn't exist. The generals and commanders pocketed the money.

Meanwhile, the Acholi and Langi people of northern Uganda were herded into 200 refugee camps and bore the brunt of the LRA's endless attacks on these poorly guarded camps, which became the LRA's favorite soft targets.

Since the Ugandan army was unable to capture Kony or defeat the LRA after more than 20 years of war, why does it think it can do so in the DRC which is more difficult terraine and more remote?

It can't. Ultimately the Ugandan army will be forced to set up its own military camps and from them wage war against the LRA.

As a sign of things to come, Ugandan army spokesman Paddy Ankunda told the French Press Agency, that, "It's going to take a little more thinking to figure out how civilians are going to be protected."

Fortunately, most of the regional population already has fled. Those who remain will be herded into defensible civilian camps, much like those in northern Uganda. Viola! We're right back to where we were in Uganda: an endless war with endless bloodshed.

Meanwhile, the situation swirling around this botched campaign is taking on ever more bizarre dimensions.

The LRA's self-proclaimed spokesman, David Nyekorach-Matsanga, told AFP that a ceasefire agreement was imminent.

This is as credible as Matsanga's previous claims.

"There is a ceasefire coming soon because the Ugandan army knows it has not achieved its objective. The LRA will never be defeated through fighting, only through dialogue," he told AFP.

Matsanga, who says he is in regular contact with the elusive Kony, said talks are ongoing between Kampala and former Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano, who serves as the UN special envoy to LRA-affected areas.

Ugandan officials don't beleive Matsanga because there is need. What is the point of a ceasefire? A peace agreement has already been negotited and now only needs to be signed, something Kony has refused to do three times.

A ceasefire will only give the LRA time to regroup. Uganda knows that.

"There will only be a ceasefire if Joseph Kony himself gives categorical assurances that he will sign the Final Peace Agreement," Uganda's deputy foreign minister, Okello Oryem, told AFP.

"The communication must come directly from Kony," Okello told AFP.

Ankunda, meanwhile, was quick to reject the claim that Matsanga and Kony recently spoke. "David Matsanga is not in touch with Kony. That is a fact," he said.

That certainly hasn't stopped Matsanga from getting all the press he wants.

Condemnation, but no action

2009-01-17T09:45:00.006-07:00

The United Nations Security Council has once again condemned the atrocities that are currently being committed by the Lord's Resistance Army.

On Friday, the UNSC issued a press statement, read aloud by the Council President Jean-Maurice Ripert of France, which chairs the council this month.

Here it is:

"The members of the Security Council strongly condemned the recent attacks carried out by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which have resulted in over 500 dead and over 400 abducted, as well as the displacement of over 104,000 people. The members of the Council expressed their grave concern at the scale of these atrocities and emphasized that those responsible must be brought to justice.

"The members of the Security Council reiterated the statement of the President of the Security Council 22 December 2008. The members of the Council expressed their deep concern that the Council’s previous calls for the LRA to cease its attacks, and recruitment and use of children, and to release all women, children and non-combatants, have not been heeded.

"The members of the Security Council demanded that the members of the LRA cease all attacks on civilians immediately, and urged them to surrender, assemble, and disarm, as required by the Final Peace Agreement."

Does the world need yet another strongly worded statement? It seems that the LRA, and its leader Joseph Kony, the self-proclaimed prophet and spirit medium, has committed enough atrocities in the past twenty-two years to warrant more than grumbling from the UN's guiding council.

The French like to present themselves as the bastion of "liberty, fraternity, and equality," but they're disinclined to do much to enforce those values.

It's not as though France couldn't.

As I stated last week during a interview on BBC radio's The World Today show, putting an end to Kony and the LRA's endless rampages will take more than letting the Ugandan army wander around the jungles of northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

It will take a well-trained and well-equipped force authorized by the UN and composed of international troops with the specific goal of capturing or killing Kony.

This is not without precedent. It's been done before in other African countries, including eastern DRC when the inept horde of UN peacekeepers there, which number an astounding 17,000 soldiers, were unable to keep the peace. The UN authorized a limited European Union force to enter the country, settle the situation, then pull out. It worked.

Such a force is sitting very close by. It's called European Force, or Eufor, and is about 5,000 EU troops, mostly French, who are in eastern Chad on the border with Sudan.

They're positioned as a deterrent to any further invasions by the Sudan-backed rebels who attacked the Chad capital of Ndjamena last February. And, some speculate that the force may be there to help protect Chad's oil fields, which are pumping out crude that is piped to the west coast of Africa via Cameroon.

But, there's not much for them do these days. Why can't the UN send them in for one-month mission? It's clear the Ugandan army needs help, as does South Sudan and the Central African Republic, where most say the LRA is headed.

The Sudan People Liberation Army (SPLA), which is South Sudan's army, has found dozens of body of people believed to be killed by the Ugandan Lord Resistance Army (LRA) after being abducted.

And, the BBC reports that rebels attacked a village in the DRC this week, killing four people, including a girl of four and abducting a boy of nine. A bishop in South Sudan says two men had their hands and legs chopped off and were beaten to death, as boys watched.

The BBC noted that the LRA now operates in at least four countries in the region, and that the CAR has sent troops to its border with DR Congo in an effort to push back the rebels.

The survivors of the LRA attacks told a UN agency that the rebels looted and torched their houses, forcing them to flee into the forest.

"What we saw was shocking," David Nthengwe, UNHCR spokesman for eastern DR Congo, told the BBC. "People live in fear in the forest. Many of them are unable to move, as they fear that the LRA is going to attack them."

Clearly the Ugandan army is not making much progress. Yet, the Eufor sits there in Chadian desert, just an hour away by air.

LRA in disarray, again

2009-01-16T10:26:00.005-07:00

My friend and fellow reporter, Henry Mukasa of the New Vision newspaper in Kampala, this week contacted the former spokesman for Lord's Resistance Army's former negotiating team.

The former spokesman, Obonyo Olweny, says that the self-proclaimed spokesman and chief negotiator for the LRA, David Matsanga, does not represent the LRA and never has.

By so doing, Olweny has shed light on the chaos behind the scenes of the LRA, which has been under attack by the Ugandan army since December 14, and at this point appears to be scrambling for its life.

Most significantly, in his response to these charges, Matsanga has revealed that a new rebel group may be emerging in northern Uganda called the Uganda People's Liberation Front/Army.

Who are these people and what do they want? Matsanga says they're an Acholi cabal based in London and headed by a man named Ladit Balgara.

If the Acholi diaspora are forming a new rebel group, does this mean they've written off LRA leader Joseph Kony, the self-proclaimed prophet and spirit medium meant to lead the Acholi?

Could Uganda President Yoweri Museveni be on the verge of victory at last?

These issues will be dealt with in future dispatches.

Olweny is a former English teacher and currently a resident of Nairobi, I believe, and Henry and I spend a lot of time with him in July 2006 when the peace talks were beginning between the LRA and Uganda in Juba, South Sudan.
After Olweny and the leaders of the former negotiators, Martin Ojul, in particular, were supposedly fired by Kony in early 2008 -- in a surprise announcement made by Matsanga, not Kony -- Olweny dropped out of sight, only to re-emerge this week.

Ojul, by the way, now lives in Kampala on a Ugandan government salary.

The Olweny-Matsanga dispute has revealed one reality of the LRA: Kony keeps his own council.

According to sources at the late November meeting between Kony and the Acholi religious and cultural leaders, Kony knew nothing about the peace agreement that has been negotiated for two and a half years. When his fellow Acholi tried to explain it to him, including the Catholic archbishop from Gulu, Kony became angry and called them traitors.

“Kony never saw the text of the agreement until the day of signing. Is that normal?” Olweny told New Vision. Now, to be fair, Olweny here may be confirming earlier reports, but could also be simply repeating them.

But what he also said is more interesting:

“Since the attack on LRA bases in the DRC, I don’t think he (Matsanga) has talked to Kony. Kony is under pressure. He hardly talks to anyone,” Olweny said.
“Kony sees Matsanga as responsible for the attack. He misled him,” he added.

This is an amazing charge, but probably true. Matsanga should be looking over his shoulder. Yet, Matsanga continues to speak for the LRA.

As I've said before, Matsanga is in this for the money. As previously noted, Matsanga was stopped in the airport in Juba this past April, just a couple of days after he has successfully duped the entire international community into believing Kony was prepared to sign a peace deal.

Matsanga had $20,000 in cash, his pay for three months work as the LRA negotiation team leader. Matsanga then fled, and deputy, the Dr. James Obita, a western educated Acholi, took over.

Obita managed to pull yet another layer of wool over the world's eyes, and convinced everyone that Kony would sign the deal in May. Again Kony didn't show. Obita dropped out of sight. Obita then accepted amnesty from the government and reportedly is also collecting govenment money.

Would Matsanga keep quiet if Uganda offered him a job and a house in Kampala? Hmmm.

In the interim from May to about October, Matsanga saw an opening, and with no one openly disputing his claim, he re-emerged and convinced the world that Kony would sign a deal at the end of November.

Despite Olweny's remarks, Matsanga maintains that he is in contact with Kony, despite a statement said to be from the LRA "high command" this past weekend, that Matsanga was fired.

Matsanga explained it this way: “This group of former LRA delegates have teamed up with self-confessed paupers and senior militarists in Nairobi and London, namely Obonyo Olweny and Alex Oloya, under a new outfit called Uganda Peoples Liberation Front/Army (UPLF) headed by Ladit Balgara based in London to cause mayhem for the people of northern Uganda,” Matsanga said in an email sent to The New Vision.

“They issue unsigned statements using the LRA letterheads that Obonyo acquired during his spokesman tenure one year ago.”

“Those who have plotted against me have lost in the past and will lose on this round. They have been advised (by Kony) to desist from such malicious acts and work with me to bring peace in northern Uganda,” Matsanga said.

When asked to describe Matsanga's motivations, Olweny said, "He is the one asking for money in the name of LRA and the blood of the suffering people in the north. We began the peace process in Juba and he came from London begging to join the LRA delegation. You tell him he has failed to deliver the peace agreement he promised to his paymasters,” he added.

It is clear that Olweny is enjoying Matsanga's failures, because his "paymasters" are the UN, which has been funding the peace talks.

Asked whether it was true that he had joined a new rebel front (UPLF/A), Olweny said: “I think Matsanga is running out of his mind.”

That is not a denial, rather it's an attempt to disparage the messanger.

Matsanga blamed what he called “merchants of conflicts in Uganda based in London” for sowing discord in the LRA to derail the peace process.

Sowing discord in the LRA? That assumes there has been unity.

Rampage or runaways?

2009-01-14T09:45:00.002-07:00

More conflicting information, or perhaps non-information, is coming out of northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo as Uganda's army pursues the rebel Lord's Resistance Army.

In a story written by Henry Mukasa, the government-owned daily, New Vision, quotes Gen. Patrick Kankiriho as claiming to have "engaged" forces led by the LRA's deputy, Okot Odhiambo, 30km north of Doruma on Monday.

That would put them right on the border with South Sudan, or even in that country, and he claims that two were killed and two were captured two."

Speaking from Dungu, the general said that now eight LRA fighters have been captured and 38 killed since the offensive was launched on December 14, 2008. Over 21 rebels have surrendered to the allies in various parts of Congo and South Sudan and nine captives were rescued.

“We have reached a stage of ‘search and destroy’ for fighters and rescue for captives. We rescue the abductees and the combatants who want to fight us, we engage them,” Kankiriho explained.

The commander said after the battle, two sub-machine guns, four full magazines, two empty magazines and two Sudanese uniforms were recovered.

In another battle on Sunday, Kankiriho said four rebels were killed south of Lagoro. One was captured, two women rescued north of Doruma, while another rebel surrendered with his gun at Yambio in Sudan.

Kankiriho explained that the joint forces had tightened their noose around Kony and his scattered fighters in the vast and densely- forested Garamba National Park in Congo.

“You think he is asking for ceasefire for nothing? The man is under immense pressure. Big, big pressure. We shall get him,” he stressed.

Despite this tough talk, the UN is reporting a different side of the story.

Reuters news agency says that the UN now puts the total civilian dead at the hands of the LRA at 537, since the Dec. 14th attack on LRA camps in northeastern DRC.

Another 408 people had been kidnapped by the rebels, according to UN High Commission on Refugees, and more than 104,000 people are thought to have been forced from their homes into the bush by the violence.

"The displaced population is in dire need of food, shelter, medicines, clothes and other aid items. The area, which by itself poses immense logistical challenges due to the lack of roads or their poor condition, remains highly volatile," UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said in a statement in Geneva.

As most are wondering, what has happened to LRA leader Joseph Kony, the self-proclaimed prophet and spirit medium?

The Ugandan general refused to say, arguing that this would pre-empt army action drive the Kony further underground. He advised the critics of the military offensive to wait for photographs that show the recent successes.

The New Vision also reported that the Central African Republic (CAR) began deploying more troops on its border with Congo to guard against incursions by the LRA.

Kankiriho said the group was composed of families of rebel commanders and a few fighters guarding them, led by Odhiambo, who is reportedly wounded.

Kony fires Matsanga, others

2009-01-11T07:52:00.006-07:00

In a statement said to be from the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and issued in Paris this weekend, the guerrilla force has apparently fired what's left of its negotiating team, according to the Sudan Tribune, on-line edition.

This is a simpering end to a bizarre and tortured history of negotiations between the LRA and Uganda that has had little or no credibility since they began two-and-a-half years ago in Juba, South Sudan.

The most immediate effect is that it means the end of David Nyekorach-Matsanga's claims that he speaks for the LRA.

As mentioned in an early edition of this blog, Matsanga's credibility was sabotaged in last spring when he announced that he was heading a new team of LRA negotiators

He claimed to be in touch with the LRA's leader, the self-proclaimed prophet and spirit medium Joseph Kony, who had agreed to sign the peace deal with Uganda that had been negotiated by the earlier, and perhaps even less credible team.

Matsanga even convinced the international community to fly him to The Hague, Netherlands, along with a couple of Kampala lawyers, to make an appeal to the International Criminal Court.

The court has indictments against Kony and his remaining two top commanders for war crimes and crimes against humanity pending since 2005.
These Matsanga claimed were why Kony wouldn't sign.

Therefore the court should drop the indictments and let Kony go free, he said. The court didn't, of course, and sent Matsanga packing.

Reality dawned on the international community in late April 2008 when Kony didn't show at a pre-arranged site to sign the peace deal, despite the presence of hundreds of "officials" to witness the event.

When it was revealed that Matsanga had never talked with Kony and had duped the entire assembled cadre of blithering apologists for this, Africa's most vicious and demonic cult, he fled the jungle enclave.

As the Sudan Tribune notes, he was arrested at the Juba airport with a letter from Uganda President Yoweri Museveni and $20,000 in cash. The money was his pay from the international community for his "work" as team leader. The letter showed that Matsanga had been used by Museveni.

But the lunacy didn't stop. Others in the so-called negotiating team said it all had been a misunderstanding and that Kony would sign the deal a month later. Again, Kony's didn't show.

By this time, Kony's marauders had already completed an extended raid across portions of South Sudan and into the Central African Republic, killing, looting and abducting hundreds of people to bolster its force.

Then Matsanga resurfaced, again claiming he was the spokesman for the LRA and that Kony would sign the deal. Then for the third time last year, people from northern Uganda, the UN, and the international community traipsed to the jungle.

Again, Kony didn't sign, and as mentioned in earlier entries, threatened the ethnic leaders from the north, calling them traitors.

Kony was finally attacked on Dec. 14 in his camps in northern DRC by the Uganda army, which propelled Kony's LRA on the bloodiest rampage in the militia-cult's history.

The apparent official statement, meanwhile, ends all contacts with Matsanga and a couple of women named Miss Abalo and Justine Labeja, both presumable from northern Uganda.

The statement was also reportedly sent to all of the official parties who have been involved in the so-called negotiations, including the United Nations, African Union, non-governmental organisations, UN special envoy to the talks, Joachim Chissano, and presidents of the DRC, Kenya, Southern Sudan, Central African Republic, Uganda, and various international observers.

What this means is unclear, but one can guess. First of all, it means that Kony has finally acknowledged that the peace talks were a farce and nothing more than a ruse for him and his negotiating "team" to collect per diem payment from the international community.

Rumors were that in order to be part of the team, one had to share the cash with Kony. This was in addition to the tons of food that was shipped to the jungle each month for Kony by the Catholic Charity, Caritas, and paid for by the blithering apologists.

Now that he has been attacked, Kony has realized it's over and the gravy train has stopped rolling his way.

What is next, is anyone's guess. My prediction is that Kony will regroup his beleaguered forces and take them to the CAR. In the meanwhile, he'll be desperately reaching out to anyone willing to provide him arms and cash, as he continues to loot and kill innocents in the region.

What we can expect is a slow but steady devolution of the region into the same bloody no-man's land that Kony created for 20 years in northern Uganda.

Offensive Against Kony Backfires

2009-01-10T10:00:00.005-07:00

The December 14 assault on Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) camps in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) surprised many.

The offensive came after LRA leader Joseph Kony had rebuffed the international community three times in 2008 by failing to sign a peace deal with Uganda that had been negotiated over the previous two years.

The latest one came at the end of November.

I was on the plane from Entebbe, Uganda, to Juba, South Sudan, on Thanksgiving Day with the delegation of some 15 elders and cultural leaders from northern Uganda who had been summoned to the jungle by Kony.

Kony had called for them for last-minute consultations before signing the agreement –or so many thought -- on Nov. 30 or Dec. 1.

I sat beside one of the elders, who smiled and shrugged when I asked if Kony would sign this time.

His doubts proved to be well founded. Sources at the elders’ meeting with Kony said that he knew little of the agreement and threatened them for pressuring him to sign it.

Kony’s latest snub gave Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who was prepared to sign the deal if Kony did, the excuse he needed –along with the blessing of the international community and cooperation from DRC and South Sudan – to launch an assault.

But it was botched, as some had feared. Uganda has only created a bigger problem for the region and the prospect of a protracted and bloody conflict repeating what northern Uganda has suffered for 20 years.

The first hint that the offensive was mishandled came when word spread that Ugandan ground forces arrived at the main LRA camp two days after Ugandan jets and helicopter gun-ships bombed it.

They found nothing but burned huts.

Only recently has Uganda found some mass graves, which some say contain the bodies of LRA fighters killed in the attack. And, only in the past week has Uganda reported accepting escaped captives of the LRA and some defecting fighters.

This, however, has prompted Kampala to claim the offensive, which is ongoing, a success.

On New Year’s Eve, some two weeks after it began, Museveni was quoted in the New Vision newspaper as saying, “Our aim was to disrupt Kony and it was successful. Our initial plan was to scatter and stop him from causing terror.”

But the assault appears to have had the opposite effect. Kony has killed more people and sewn more terror in the following two weeks than during the entire preceding year.

Museveni calls that a success?

And the killing continues, with the latest reports that Kony is headed to the Central African Republic, to yet another failed African state where he can regroup.

One of the most bloody alleged LRA massacre took place in the village of Gurba, about ten kilometres from the town of Doruma in northeastern DRC.

Details are sketchy, but according to United Nations reports, the LRA hacked to death between 45 to 60 people who’d sought sanctuary in a Gurba church.

According to witnesses, body parts were scattered in and around the church. This alleged atrocity typifies the LRA’s methods.

For me, it was particularly disturbing. I had been to Doruma in June and met and talked with people there. I’d spent a couple of hours with a young school teacher there named Raymond Rpiolebeyo, who taught third grade at the Ecole Primer Ndolomo, a Catholic school.

On Easter weekend last year, he had been cycling to Gurba to spend the holiday with his family when he was abducted by the LRA, who then proceeded to loot the village.

Raymond escaped, however, and returned to Doruma. I spoke to him at length about his experiences with the LRA. He confessed that he was nervous because he knew the LRA could come back and he didn’t want to contemplate that fate.

The UN reported that about 200 people were killed in Doruma and the surrounding villages by the LRA in the days after Christmas. It is impossible to know if Raymond is still alive, and perhaps I’ll never know. I can only hope.

While the Doruma area appears to have suffered the brunt of the LRA’s senseless slaughter of civilians, estimates are that more than 500 people now have been killed by the widely scattered LRA units.

The coming year promises to be deadly for those unfortunate to live in the region where the DRC, South Sudan and the CAR meet.

Museveni’s stated aim of “scattering” the LRA has certainly been accomplished, but that of stopping LRA terror has not. By not planning and executing an effective attack on Kony, the Ugandan leader has inadvertently fueled the rebel’s terror campaign.

And he has set the stage for the same abysmal conditions that existed in northern Uganda for 20 years.

Scattered LRA units are now operating semi-independently, and this time reportedly killing, looting and abducting villagers in three countries.

From 1986 to 2006, Museveni was unable to capture or control Kony in northern Uganda or South Sudan. Even though the LRA is now being pursued by forces from DRC, South Sudan as well as Uganda, the result undoubtedly will be the same.

LRA kills 50 in South Sudan

2009-01-07T11:25:00.003-07:00

The rampaging Lord's Resistance Army on January 5 killed another 50 people in South Sudan, according to officials in the regional capital of Juba.

The UN's news service, IRIN, reports that the fifty are feared to have been killed and at least nine abducted in attacks on villages in southwest Sudan, near the border with Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

"We received reports from the state that they abducted seven men and two women," Bashir Bhandi, head of the Southern Sudanese Parliamentary Committee on Communication, told IRIN on 6 January.

Since mid-December, the LRA has killed some 500 people following a Dec. 14 attack on the LRA camps in the Garamba National Park in northeastern DRC.

The surge in violence follows a Ugandan-led offensive, with Southern Sudan and DRC forces, against the rebel group after its reclusive leader Joseph Kony failed once again to sign a Sudan-mediated peace agreement in early December.

"The number of people they killed or kidnapped has gone above 50," Bhandi told IRIN. "They loot and kill. They take them to the forest. None of the people they have taken to the forest has been found alive. They kill them."

"I am told that our military is not ready to face the LRA and the citizens are digging up guns they kept in the ground for their own defence," Jimmy Wongo, an MP from the area said.

"How the LRA can manage to abduct seven men and two women yesterday I don't understand." The Southern Sudan Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Martin Ellia Lomuro, said officials had done everything to try to halt the killings.

"We did not only close our borders, we supported also the regional initiative to control the LRA," Lomuro told IRIN. "What is happening in Western Equatoria is very strange," he added. "It is a serious matter of concern to both the Legislative Assembly and the executive."

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), has reported that LRA groups had mounted raids in different locations in north-east DRC in the first days of January.

Also in northeastern DRC, a team from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reached the town of Faradje, which the LRA attacked on 25 and 26 December, killing some 70 people and prompting 40,000 to flee.

"Our mission found Faradje pillaged and destroyed by fire," UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond told reporters in Geneva. More than 800 houses, three schools, government buildings and health centres had been burned, with most families losing their annual harvest in the fire, according to UNHCR.

LRA attacks park, rampage continues

2009-01-06T10:12:00.004-07:00

Some 20 people were killed in an attack by the Lord's Resistance Army on a park ranger station in northern Democratic Republic of Congo, local officials told the Reuters news agency on Monday.

The attack apparently came last Friday when dozens of LRA fighters fired on the headquarters of the Garamba National Park in the town of Negero, in Congo's Orientale province.

"Ten people were killed, including two women, two park rangers, an electrician and five other civilians who have not yet been identified," Orientale's Deputy Governor Joseph Bangakya told Reuters.

In addition, 10 LRA fighters were killed in what was described as a four-hour gunbattle with armed park rangers and Congolese soldiers based at Negero's airstrip.

The soldiers were stationed there as part of a three-week-old multinational assault on LRA strongholds in northeastern Congo.

But that is not all. In two separate attacks on Sunday, according to Reuters, LRA gunmen attacked the Congolese village of Napopo and attacked Laso, a village in Sudan. It was not immediately known if anyone died in the incidents.

The continuing attacks are yet further evidence that the multinational operation has been a failure and that LRA leader Joseph Kony is not only alive and well, but able to organize attacks at will in various locations in the DRC.

The death toll now in the wake of the botched Dec. 14th attack on Kony's camps is now well over 400, with the BBC reporting that the dead may be as many as 500 people -- all innocent civilians.

"The number of dead just keeps going up. Since the beginning of these operations, it is the civilians who are dying," said Felicien Balani, who heads a coalition of civil society groups, according to Reuters.

Estimated to number between 800 and 1,000 fighters, Ugandan and Congolese officials say the LRA has now splintered into smaller groups. Some are believed to be heading towards neighbouring Central African Republic, where the rebels have carried out raids in the past.

Uganda on UN Security Council

2009-01-05T09:53:00.006-07:00

Uganda begins a two-year term on the United Nations Security Council this year, and it signals perhaps a new emphasis on African issues for the UN and the world at large.

Uganda’s new position will give it a stronger voice than ever on African affairs as the UN’s leadership councils faced increasingly complex East African issues: Somalia, Darfur, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as Uganda's lingering problems with the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

Uganda's presence on the council may prompt more active involvement of the UN in the on-going hunt for the LRA's leader, the self-proclaimed prophet and spirit medium, Joseph Kony.

To date, however, the UN has only served a support role in this military action, which began Dec. 14 with a Ugandan air force strike on Kony's camps in and around the DRC's Garamba National Park.

Kony's scattered forces, thought to be moving to an even more remote and lawless region of the Central African Republic, responded to the attack by killing more than 400 civilians in the region.

Although the hunt for Kony includes Congolese and South Sudanese forces, the fact that the LRA escaped with unknown casualties and can still commit grievous atrocities, shows that these forces need help.

According the East African newspaper, the Uganda's UN ambassador, Francis Butagira, made it clear that Uganda supports international intervention in Somalia, where it has already stationed troops, but curiously wants the UN to leave Zimbabwe alone.

One can speculate here that President Yoweri Museveni, who in 2005 forced the Ugandan parliament to change the constitution, allowing him to be president for life, has his own interests at heart.

If the world steps in to remove Robert Mugabe from control of Zimbabwe, it might set a precedent that Museveni fears. After all, his election in 2006 to a third term was not by a huge margin.

And, it is well known that Museveni maintains a firm grasp on Uganda, which also explains why he discounts any talk of "power-sharing" in African countries, even though this would be a good solution for Zimbabwe, fearing that such will be proposed for Uganda.

The issue of Zimbabwe does not have an international security dimension and thus “does not warrant intervention by the Security Council,” Butagira told UN radio.

Butagira also indicated he supported a delay in International Criminal Court’s pending charges of genocide against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, but added that this should not be viewed as “a blanket endorsement” of Sudan’s policies.

This of course begs the question: how do you solve the on-going genocide in Darfur if you don't pressure the Sudan leadership?

Uganda is not fond of clear answers or firm, decisive action. Regardless, it should be interesting to see how Uganda plays its new role in the UN.

Kony slips into South Sudan

2009-01-02T07:50:00.005-07:00

Despite all the tough talk by leaders of Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo, the self-proclaimed prophet and leader of the Lord's Resistance Army Joseph Kony is alive and well.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni told reporters on New Year's Eve that Kony had been tracked into South Sudan a week earlier, south of the town of Maridi.

Maridi is a regional center and a stopping-off point for negotiators who frequently trekked on to Nabanga, a small village where they met representatives of the LRA.

That Kony was there a week ago means that he is most likely well beyond at this point, and as the BBC reports, headed to the Central African Republic.

Kony has wanted to be based in the CAR for a long time for the same reasons that he located his army in the DRC's Garamba Park: it is virtually a lawless land and beyond the reach of most authorities.

Kony's desire to decamp to the CAR was revealed by defectors who made detailed public statements about the death of the LRA's former deputy commander, Vincent Otti. According to the statements, Otti refused to move to the CAR because it would make peace negotiations impossible.

Kony solved that problem by killing Otti and the peace talks as well.

Kony's movement toward the CAR further complicates the situation with the LRA. First of all, it makes a liar out of South Sudanese officials who said they've "sealed" the border to prevent Kony and his soldiers from crossing in.

If Kony does settle in the CAR, further negotiations will need to be made with the CAR to allow Ugandan forces chasing Kony into the CAR to conduct military operations.

Meanwhile, Museveni told reporters that Kony escaped one more time when a helicopter gunship held off firing on the rebel leaders because civilians were near.

“On December 24, Kony was to be killed," Museveni told reporters, according to the government-owned New Vision newspaper. "We were tracking him in Southern Sudan with an army chopper, but he was saved by the villagers who came out to wave at the chopper. The pilot could not fire because he would have killed innocent people,” he said.

Museveni went on to say that the villagers did not know that Kony was hiding in their area. “The people did not know that there was a snake in their area, which saved Kony. We have now airlifted enough commandos to Garamba and he will not survive this time,” he said.

Museveni said he has asked the Central African Republic to join in the fight against Kony, but did not reveal the CAR's response.

As has been widely reported, fleeing LRA rebels have killed more than 400 civilians in Dungu, Doruma, Faradje, Bangadi and Gurba in the DRC and Maridi in South Sudan.

Museveni continued with his tough talk. “If they come back to fight, that will be the quickest way for them to go to hell,” he said.

We'll see.

Ceasefire is not serious

2009-01-01T07:46:00.003-07:00

Calls for a ceasfire from Joseph Kony, leader of the rampaging Lord's Resistance Army, are hard to take seriously since they come from the discredited group's spokesman, David Nyekorach Matsanga.

Matsanga claims to have talked with Kony -- a claim he has made in the past and proved to be untrue -- who has asked him to appeal for a ceasefire.

“Kony called me and told me he wants to talk peace. I am calling upon President Museveni to call for a ceasefire. We should re-open the negotiations,” Matsanga said to the New Vision newspaper.

When such a ceasefire is declared, a neutral venue and chief mediator should be found, Matsanga has said.

Kony has apparently decided that the former peace talk mediator Riek Machar, whose forces from South Sudan have joined in the hunt for Kony and his army, is no longer the neutral figure he apparently once was.

Instead, he wants UN envoy Joaquim Chissano to take over.

This also is very difficult to take seriously, especially since the LRA is being pursued now more vigorously than ever by a combined force of Congoleses, Ugandan and South Sudanese forces.

It is curious that Kony now is turning to Chissano, whom he has refused to meet in the past, as a far as most know, has never met.

It seems that the LRA negotiators, led by Matsanga, have tired of the food and accomodations given to them by the international community in Juba, South Sudan, where the talks have been based for two years.

Matsanga and whoever is now part of the ever-changing cast of so-called negotiators, want the talks resumed and moved to what they're saying is a neutral location, such as Kenya, Tanzania or even South Africa.

But what is the point? Why would Kony sign anything now or in the future when he has not done so on three occassions this past year?

The answer is clear and simple: he won't. This call for renewed talks is only an effort by Matsanga and a new set of negotiators to collect a wad of cash and live large on someone else's money.

Uganda isn't buying it.

“If Kony says he is ready to sign, that arrangement can be made but only if he is going to assemble at Ri-kwangba,” said Capt. Chris Magezi, military spokesman.

Magezi was reflecting the thinking of Uganda President Yoweri Museveni who has also said the only safe thing for Kony to do was to assemble his cult at Ri-Kwangba and sign the peace agreement.

“The operation will see the end of Kony, either peacefully by him walking to Ri-Kwangba or by being violently killed or captured,” Museveni said. “As an old fighter, I would not want to be in Kony’s position. The combined arms operations about to begin will decimate him.”

It is tough sounding talk, mostly, and Kony does not seem weakened by the offensive, since he has killed more than 400 civilians since his forces were first attacked on Dec. 14.

The United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon has condemned the atrocities committed by the LRA and demanded that the rebels respect the international humanitarian law.

Ban’s special representative, Leila Zerrougui, on Tuesday met with Congo’s national security council to discuss the government’s needs. “She informed them of UN’s willingness to support them,” MONUC said in a statement.

Defiance from the LRA?

2008-12-31T07:52:00.005-07:00

It is increasing difficult to understand why credible news organizations and international news agencies continue to quote the nonsense being spewed by David Matsanga.

For those who don't know this man, he is the so-called spokesman for the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which has gone on a bloody rampage in the Democratic Republic of Congo since Christmas and killed 400 innocent people.

Senseless killing is standard operating procedure for the LRA. This time it's in response to the Dec. 14 attack on the LRA camps by the Ugandan, Congolese and South Sudanese armies.

Any true military force would combat another military force that attacked it. But not the LRA. This cult of killers responds by killing defenseless villagers, then thumps its chest about how "invicible" it is.

And, there is Matsanga, taking calls from news hacks and claiming that it is not the LRA, but the Uganda army that is killing the civilians. And, pathetically, the news organizations publish that.

The most recent nonsense sent around the world came from the Voice of America. Matsanga told VOA the killings were carried out by a special battalion of the Uganda Peoples Defence Force (UPDF) called Battalion 105 that is composed of former LRA combatants who have defected.

It's an interesting idea, but like everything Matsanga says, impossible to take seriously.

The many former LRA fighters I have interviewed -- something Matsanga has not done -- would welcome the opportunity to put a bullet into the head of each and every LRA commander for what these abducted children were forced to do by the LRA. This included killing their own parents, or mutilating their friends and relatives.

Matsanga goes on to say that he has talked with the LRA leader Joseph Kony (who the VOA dutifully calls "general") and he has informed Matsanga that the LRA was not responsible for the alleged killings.

Why would anyone believe Kony? And, where is he?

Now, this is the same Matsanga who earlier this year told the world he spoke for the LRA and convinced the international community to trek to the jungles where they were to witness Kony signing a peace agreement with Uganda.

Of course, Kony didn't. Once confronted, Matsanga confessed that he had never really talked with Kony, who probably didn't even know he was supposed to show up and sign a document he knew nothing about.

But, this has not stopped people like Matsanga from continuing to claim he represents the LRA, while sitting in his house in Nairobi. And, it has not stopped the news hacks at VOA from giving this man a global forum for his unique brand of nonsense.

It is no wonder that fewer and fewer people take news organizations, especially newspapers, seriously anymore, and prefer to read blogs like this.

Situation worsens as LRA rampages

2008-12-30T08:02:00.005-07:00

As feared, the situation in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has worsened now two weeks after the Dec. 14 air strike against the rebel Lord's Resistance Army camps in and around the Garamba National Park.

Aid agencies report that tens of thousands of people continue to flee the rampaging Ugandan rebels in the wake of more than 400 deaths, about half of which were in the town of Doruma, not far from the South Sudan border.

The Catholic relief agency Caritas has reported that some 20,000 people had fled to the mountains from the rebels, whose controversial spokesmen continue to deny carrying out the attacks.

Yet, an eyewitness told the BBC that five people in Faradje had their lips cut off by Lord's Resistance Army fighters as a warning not to speak ill of the rebels.

Bruno Mitewo, head of the Catholic aid agency, said the agency has information that from parishes in the region that more than 400 civilians have died in the attacks.

He said that in Faradje 150 civilians had died, almost 75 people in Duru and 215 in Doruma. The victims had been hacked to death and forced into fires, he said.

"All villages were burned by rebels... we don't know where exactly the population is because all the villages are empty," he told the BBC.

"We have almost 6,500 displaced who are refugees in the parishes of the Catholic Church around the city of Dungu, more than 20,000 people displaced are running to the mountains," he said.

Those who were hiding in the bush and forest were mainly the young, as the LRA tends to kidnap children and recruit them as fighters, he said.

An eyewitness in Faradje said the people who had their lips cut off were being treated for their injuries.

“The entire population of Faradje [80km from the Sudanese border], some 30,000 people, has left. Most have taken refuge in Tadu and Kpodo,” said Ivo Brandau, head of information for the UN's OCHA. The villages are 37km and 11km from Faradje.

As has been widely reported, forces from the DRC, Uganda and Southern Sudan are in the midst of a joint military operation against the LRA after the LRA's leader, Joseph Kony, failed to sign a peace agreement with Uganda in early December.

OCHA officials said people from Kiliwa and Paika, two villages north of the regional capital of Dungu, had also fled.

“It’s not yet known exactly how many. Another group of around 180 households is said to be in Duru (about 50 kms north of Dungu). This area is considered to be at risk because of the presence of the LRA,” said Brandau. “Villages and local officials are still looking for bodies.”

Several prominent Faradje citizens were killed in the attacks, including a senior doctor, two pastors, a school inspector, a pharmacist, and the deputy head of the Directorate General of Migration.

According to OCHA, the LRA occupies seven villages around Doruma: Batande, Manzagala, Mabando, Bagbugu, Nakatilikpa, Nagengwa and Natulugbu.

Military officials said that following the air strike on LRA positions in Garamba National Park, the rebels fled north towards Sudan and south into the DRC.

Deja-vu northern Uganda

2008-12-29T11:32:00.005-07:00

As many feared and some predicted, the Dec. 14 attack on the camps of the Lord's Resistance Army in northeastern DRC has provoked a bloody response.

So far, according to UN sources, at least 200 people have been killed by the scattered forces of the LRA, led by their self-proclaimed prophet Joseph Kony. At least 120 homes have been burned.

One of the most gruesome of these latest attacks was in a church near the town of Doruma (pictured above) close to the border with South Sudan. There LRA rebels hacked to death 45 people who were hiding in a church.

This attack on innocent civilians rivals some of the gore that the LRA indulged in across northern Uganda for two decades.

I visited Doruma this past June to interview people there about an earlier attack by Kony's killers on Easter weekend of this year.

Maybe this is how Joseph Kony likes to spend religious holidays: killing hundreds of innocent people.

The attack against Kony was of course long overdue. He has been killing and abducting people in this remote area of the DRC for more than two years now.

And, he has been lavishly aided and abetted by the soft-minded members of European Union who remain convinced Kony will sign a peace agreement and give up, no matter how many people he kills.

Whatever.

The latest bloody rampage, however, can be blamed on the Ugandan government which can be accused of botching this attack on Kony.

Instead of surrounding the camp before they bombed it, thus enabling the LRA and its leadership to be killed and/or captured as they fled, Uganda bombed first and sent troops two days later.

This allowed Kony and his army to disperse, taking what they needed, including their supposedly dead and wounded, assuming there were any.

Why has it taken so long for Uganda to produce proof of any casualties?

The problem now is that Uganda and the DRC are facing an extended guerrilla war in northern DRC, much like it suffered in northern Uganda.

Already, Kony's units have scattered, and despite the claims of "victory" by the Ugandan government, Kony was able to conduct coordinated attacks on and after Christmas day.

In short, it's deja-vu northern Uganda. The coming year promises to be a bleak one for the people of northern DRC.

And sadly, neither Kony nor his top commanders are any closer to being captured and put on trial before the International Criminal Court which has sought them since October 2005.

Kony Runs Rings Around Negotiators

2008-10-04T09:54:00.002-06:00

Someone defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

It’s an accurate description of the continuing situation with Joseph Kony, the leader of the Ugandan rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA, currently holed up in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC.

As he has in the past, Kony continues to play humiliating games with negotiators seeking a final end to northern Uganda’s brutal 20-year war with the LRA.

He, or his so-called spokesman David Matsanga, repeatedly announce that Kony plans to sign a permanent peace agreement, and even go so far as to set dates. Negotiators scramble to an agreed rendezvous point in the jungle – but Kony never shows.

This is followed by public grumblings from the negotiators, who vow never again to be fooled. But that “never again” lasts only a few weeks. Kony then calls someone like United Nations Special Envoy Joachim Chissano or talks mediator Riek Machar, the vice president of South Sudan, or dials up Mega FM in Gulu or Radio France International, and rambles on about how much he wants peace.

This inevitably draws yet another delegation to the jungles and which again is left sitting alone and waiting. Kony undoubtedly enjoys this because of the ease with which he can get away with it.

He clearly does not want peace.The was made abundantly clear – again – over the past week, when the LRA reportedly conducted more attacks on civilian populations both in South Sudan and on unarmed civilians in northeastern DRC.

One South Sudanese soldier was killed, according to reports, and others injured in an attack on Sakure, a village in Western Equatoria Province of South Sudan, which officials say was the work of the LRA.

South Sudan’s army reportedly chased the rebels back across the border into DRC, but the LRA didn’t quit there. Instead, it looted and burned houses, schools, churches and health centers, mostly in DRC.

Meanwhile, several hundred kilometres to the southwest of these attacks, some 50 students were kidnapped by LRA rebels in Duru. It’s a village about 75 km north of Dungu, in DRC.The reason for this convulsion of violence by the LRA is unknown, but it is not unexpected.

As reported by IWPR, the LRA went on a rampage in early spring, trekking to Obo in the Central African Republic and then back again with hundreds of abductees carrying as much loot as they could.

This kind of violence by the LRA has continued at various levels ever since the peace talks with the LRA began two years ago in Juba, South Sudan.This latest round of attacks came simultaneously with a September 18 statement out of Juba calling for yet another round of meetings with Kony and his Acholi tribal leaders. The statement was signed by Acholi chief David Acana, Machar, and Matsanga.

What kind of military response, if any, these latest attacks may generate, is unclear. Some have suggested that the LRA has stepped up the attacks because of increased presence in Dungu of the Congolese army.

The LRA apparently wants to test the resolve of the local forces to see who really intends to control the region.When I was in Dungu in June, the UN had just completed a large airstrip about eight km from the town, and was expecting the arrival of up to 1,000 Congolese soldiers.

They’ve started to arrive, but it remains to be seen what they’ll do.The people of Dungu, who reportedly have already begun to leave following these latest attacks by the LRA, view the arrival of Congolese soldiers with fear since they have a reputation of being as bad or worse as the militias they’re supposed to be fighting.

What’s lacking in this on-going circus is the collective will on the immediate states involved –DRC, South Sudan, and Uganda – or the international community to bring an end to it all.

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Another setback for ICC prosecutor

2008-09-06T09:29:00.006-06:00

The Hague, Netherlands -- The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, again has been handed a setback in his efforts to bring former eastern Congo militia leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo to trial.

In the latest move, the ICC's judges last Thursday rejected the prosecutor's request that the Lubanga trial, which they summarily suspended in June, be allowed to continue.

Instead, the judges outlined the conditions under which they would allow the trial proceed.

Their primary requirement is to be allowed full access to documents and evidence that Moreno-Ocampo obtained from United Nations and other sources under the condition that the information be kept confidential.

The court suspended the Lubanga case after the judges concluded that Lubanga could not receive a fair trial because not only the judges, but Lubanga's defense, was prevented from accessing that evidence.

That evidence reportedly could benefit Lubanga.

Moreno-Ocampo has argued that he is allowed to collect confidential information under the Rome Statute which created the court.

The ICC judges agreed, but said that information can only be obtained anonymously if it is used to obtain other information and evidence that can be shared.

The judges, however, said they might lift their suspension of the Lubanga trial if, and only if, they "can adequately review - on a continuing basis for the entirety of the trial– the documents in question...."

In other words, they want full access. Once that happens, then the judges will decide what, if any, evidence can be handed over to the defense in order to insure a fair trial for Lubanga.

The primary charges against Lubanga are for recruiting and using child soldiers for his ethnic Hema militia in eastern DRC.

The judges indicated that discussions are continuing between the court, the prosecutor, and the UN and others who provided the documents, suggesting that a breakthrough in this deadlock may be possible.

The judges decision is far from complete, however, and does little to solve the standoff between themselves and the court's chief prosecutor.

And, it does little to change the condition of Lubanga, who remains in ICC custody.

Hema Feel Vindicated by Lubanga Trial Crisis

2008-08-17T13:57:00.005-06:00

Inside a Bunia neighborhood mud hut where one can buy a bowl of mandro, a murky homemade beer, customers say the International Criminal Court, ICC, was wrong to prosecute Thomas Lubanga.

Many in the hut in Mudzi-pela – on the side of Bunia that is almost wholly occupied by the Hema ethnic group to which Lubanga belongs – believe the delays and problems with the trial are a sign that the case was weak from the outset.

“[This] shows that the ICC cannot take control of the case. We can’t understand why they have postponed it so many times,” said one patron, who, along with others here, see Lubanga as a hero not a villain.

The trial was supposed to start on June 23, but judges have postponed it after concluding that the prosecution had withheld a “significant” body of evidence from the defence.

They consider the breach so serious that they will meet on June 24 to decide whether Lubanga should be released and dismiss the case against him.Lubanga, who is being held in The Hague, has been charged with recruiting children under the age of 15 to become fighters for his militia, the military wing of his political party, the Union of Patriotic Congolese, UPC.

Vicious clashes between the Lendu and Hema in the Ituri region of northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, DRC, grew out of a civil conflict that broke out in the region more than ten years ago.

The decade of war, which has resulted in the deaths of more than five million people, according to recent reports, saw the toppling of the two regimes and the spawning of many ethnic-based rival militia groups in the eastern Congo.

The Ituri region has been the focus of ICC investigations since 2003, and has resulted in the arrest of four Congolese, including Lubanga, Germain Katanga, Matthieu Ngudjolo, and Jean Pierre Bemba, a senator and former presidential candidate.

Militia leader Bosco Ntaganda has also been indicted, but he is still at large in eastern Congo.Lubanga’s trial – which was the first to be prosecuted by the ICC – was originally scheduled to begin on March 31.

Various reasons have been given for the delays, including the failure of prosecutors to disclose to the defence all its evidence and the identities of witnesses testifying against the accused. To people in Mudzi-pela, Lubanga is a saviour who defended them during the decade-long civil war.

“Thomas came to our rescue,” said one woman. “We were running for our lives with babies in our arms. He came to help.”

She pointed to the dirt road outside the hut where she said five people had been killed.“People were trying to kill us. They were Lendu,” said another woman.

“Thomas [Lubanga] helped us so much.” The repeated stays in the Lubanga proceedings have drawn accusations in the region that a case should never have been brought against him.

“The [ICC is] telling lies,” said one man, adding that many Hema orphans had little option but to become fighters.

“Imagine the [Lendu] come and kill your family. It’s better to be a child soldier. Children were given a way of protecting themselves.”

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New War Looms in DR Congo

2008-06-29T14:16:00.000-06:00

Just returned from two weeks in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The place still has a ways to go before it's listed on the Conde Nast Traveler's top destinations. Unless you're an unemployed war lord, gold smuggler or diamond merchant.

Joseph Kony falls into the first category, but he could get busy soon, and may be distracted from his solar powered video projectors.

Doruma, Democratic Republic of Congo -- On the morning of Good Friday, March 21, third-grade schoolteacher Raymond Rpiolebeyo rode his bicycle down the dirt track leading to his home village of Gurba, expecting to spend the Easter weekend with his family and friends.

But his trip was cut short when a group of heavily-armed rebels emerged from the jungle, ordered him off his bicycle and took him captive.

The fighters were members of the Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA, the Ugandan rebel group that for the past two-and-a-half years has occupied remote areas in and around the Garamba National Park in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, DRC.

After two years of relative quiet, and as peace talks with Uganda continued in Juba, South Sudan, the LRA went on the rampage in the remote region where the park is located, with a campaign of looting, abduction and killing.

In a major extended raid, rebel forces left the Garamba park at the beginning of February and crossed first into South Sudan and then into the neighbouring Central African Republic, where the rebels kidnapped more than 100 people and pillaged the town of Obo before returning to their base camp in DRC.

Along the way, the group used captured civilians to act as porters for looted goods. Some of the captives were then pressed into service, forced to undergo military training to boost the ranks of a group that has survived over many years by abducting and forcibly conscripting civilians including children.

Recent reports suggest the situation is about to intensify. United Nations sources say units of the DRC army could begin arriving by the end of June in Dungu, the area’s main town, located less than 100 kilometres from the Garamba park. Their mission would be to keep the LRA forces in check, if not drive them out of the park altogether.

Such a move could, however, herald a protracted war against the LRA, which currently numbers about 700 seasoned guerrilla fighters with a cult-like devotion to their leader Joseph Kony, making them one of sub-Saharan Africa’s most feared militias.

For the complete text: http://www.iwpr.net/?p=acr&s=f&o=345360&apc_state=henh

Three strikes and you're out

2008-05-18T03:38:00.000-06:00

Joseph Kony, leader of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army, has once again snubbed negotiators who traveled to Ri-Kwangba, a remote location in the steaming jungles along the border of South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Only this time it was not the nearly 200 people who last month went there to witness the signing of a peace settlement that will permanently end the 21-year war that Kony led in northern Uganda.

This time it was Kony's own people, the leaders of his Acholi ethnic group, who went there at his bidding supposedly to explain details of what would happen to him, should he sign the deal.

Uganda has proposed a special court to try him in lieu of the International Criminal court in The Hague. But Kony would much prefer the forgive-and-forget mato oput ceremonies that the Acholi have historically used to settle family and clan disputes such as stealing a cow.

The traditional ceremonies have never been used for such things as massacres of entire villages and the kinds of atrocities committed by Kony's Lord's Resistance Army.

But that didn't stop Kony from issuing new demands for his signature on the peace deal, such as a shiny new mansion in Kampala, security and piles of money.

If anything, these latest demands only confirm that Kony has lost touch with reality outside of the brutal and bloody existence he has created for himself and his cultish militia for the past 20 years. Could he really expect to be rewarded lavishly for causing the death of some 100,000 in his homeland and the displacement of nearly 2 million of his fellow Acholis?

Back in Uganda, the Acholi leaders said they were finished with Kony, that never again would they go to visit with the man.

This latest move has left the international community with few choices. Someone has to capture Kony and take out his militia, but the question is who?

The government of the DR Congo can't control the dozens of militias that proliferate in eastern Congo, and it's unlikely it will allow Uganda to re-enter the country, which Uganda did in the mid-1990s when it backed the former army of Laurent Kabila that toppled Mobuto's regime.

The logical choice to go after Kony would be the UN's massive force there now, which is some 17,000 peacekeepers.

Something like this was tried in January 2006 by Guatemalan special forces and it resulted in a four-hour gun battle in which eight of the blue helmets died, as did 50 to 60 of the LRA.

And, if the UN took the initiative to go after Kony, who's wanted by the ICC, it would only complicate matters in Darfur, Sudan, where the Sudanese government already suspects that the UN forces assigned to Darfur want to capture the two Sudanese wanted by the ICC.

Stay tuned.

Wake Up Call for Sudan

2008-05-12T15:09:00.000-06:00

It was a gem of a plan.

Make that “JEM” – short for the Justice and Equality Movement, the leading rebel group in Darfur that launched this past weekend’s attack on Omdurman and the Sudan capital of Khartoum.

As a result, the dynamics in Darfur and Sudan have changed. That the rebels could advance some 600 kilometres, from west to east across Sudan's open desert, without so much as word reported in or outside of Sudan, then attack the nation’s capital, speaks volumes.

The Sudan government responded by saying the rebels were beaten back, were on the run, and that the remnants were being hunted down.

Abdullahi Osman El-Tom, the head of strategic planning for JEM, had a different view, and told me that the rebels had withdrawn.

El-Tom called the attack a success and said it put the Sudan government on notice. “It has told the government that we have the capability of striking in the heart of the country, not just fighting in the deserts of Darfur,” he said. "Otherwise they will continue bombing in Darfur.”

Given Sudan’s substantial military, said to number some 100,000 soldiers, an air force of aging Russian-made bombers used extensively against civilian targets in Darfur, and a mercenary force of janjaweed fighters, what went wrong?

Reports of the fighting have been sketchy. Some say that at least 60 rebels were killed and the official Sudan news agency claimed 300 rebels had been arrested with 60-70 vehicles seized or destroyed.

State television in Sudan broadcast images of corpses, blood and burned vehicles in the streets, as well as captured rebels, two of whom appeared to have been badly beaten.

Sudan has accused Chad of backing the rebels and has severed diplomatic ties with its neighbour. Chad has denied involvement in the attack.

El-Tom denied that the rebels had support from Chad. “The Chadians can hardly protect themselves,” he said. He explained that the equipment used in the rebel attack had all been captured by rebels from the Sudan army.

“We’ve taken the equipment from Sudan,” he said. “There’s no shortage of arms, no shortage of vehicles. You take them from Sudan.”

El-Tom said the rebels have extensive support in the general population and the armed forces. During clashes with the Sudan army, the soldiers “drop their arms and [abandon] cars and run in the opposite direction.”

That the JEM were “defeated” by Sudan is not as significant as that a major weakness of the Sudan government, which has operated behind a façade of total control, has been exposed.

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What next with Kony?

2008-05-11T04:06:00.000-06:00

Joseph Kony, leader of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army, was slated to meet peace negotiators this weekend in Ri-Kwangba, a remote location in the steaming jungles along the border of South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The objective, for those who are following this bizarre and horrific saga, of course, is to resuscitate the dying hopes for a peace settlement that will permanently end the 21-year war that Kony led in northern Uganda.

Kony was supposed to sign the peace deal at this same jungle spot on April 10 in front of some 200 people who had traveled there to witness it, applaud, hug and pat each other on the back.

Only Kony didn't show.

As it turns out, he probably didn't even know about it because he hadn't been talking to his own peace team, who instead had been faking it as as they collected hundreds of dollars a day in per diem donated by the naive largess of the international community.

The former leader of the rebel peace team, David Matsanga, a former apologist for Africa's favorite dictator, Robert Mugabe, quickly grabbed the first plane out of Juba with some $20,000 in his pockets and is in Zambia. Adios.

While most of the rest of the world has given up on Kony, chief mediator, Dr Riek Machar, VP of South Sudan, has not.

This Saturday he and Dr. James Obita, the LRA's third chief negotiator, were to brief Kony "issues" he wants "clarified," which is how Uganda plans to handle Kony's trial -- if it could be called that.

In fact, what Kony wants to know is how Uganda plans to protect him from arrest and a trial in front of the International Criminal Court here in The Hague on more than 30 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

For the uninitiated, Kony's so-called war in northern Uganda has killed some 100,000 people, mostly due to war-related causes, and has displaced about 2 million people, most of whom still refuse to believe the war is over and go back home. Kony managed all of this by abducting tens of thousands of people, mostly young boys and girls, and turning them into child soldiers and sex slaves.

But peace deal or not, it seem unlikely that the ICC will let Kony off the hook by agreeing to a local trial in Uganda. First of all, such a court hasn't been created and Uganda has no laws against crimes against humanity.

This glaring omission of reality hasn't stopped a lot of talk about it, however.

Ironically, among those to meet with Kony are Justice James Ogoola, the Director of Public Prosecutions in Uganda, and some traditional and local leaders from the insurgency-hit regions, civil society groups and donors.

Now Ogoola is a smart, no-nonsense kind of guy. I saw him in action a couple of years ago when he ran an investigation into the theft of $200 million given to Uganda that was supposed to go treatment and preventions of AIDS.

Most of the money went to the buying of expensive cars, to non-existent non-profit groups, or just disappeared. Official corruption is endemic.

Which raises the obvious question. How can any legitimate trial in Uganda even be considered?

I've met Obita and he's a smart and honorable man, and why he's involved is a mystery. And why would Ogoola want to get involved in this mess?

Yet, hope for resolution continues.

As Obita said last week: “It is from the meeting with Dr Machar that Kony will propose the date he plans to sign the peace deal.”

He's got to be kidding. Kony has turned the peace talks into his new business while he rebuilds his army in the DRC. Get a grip.

This ordeal will only end with Kony's capture.

Charles Taylor, cool customer

2008-05-11T01:12:00.000-06:00

10 May, 2008 -- The Hague:

Sat in on the trial this week of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, now facing prosecution before the International Criminal Court.

He was quite cool, if not bored, as a woman told horrific accounts of her ordeal after she was taken by one of Taylor's soldiers and used as a sex slave and cook.

The trial continues this summer. Stay tuned.