Kony and the LRA: Truth, Lies, and All the Rest

Ugandan authorities think they've found the remains of Okot Odhiambo, one of the most ruthless deputies of Joseph Kony's army of child soldier, the Lord's Resistance Army.

Odhiambo is rumored by the Ugandan army to have been killed or died about a year ago. But like Odhiambo's former comrade-in-arms, Vincent Otti, neither Otti's nor Odhiambo's remains have been found or identified.

While the news may be a step toward the elimination of Kony and his horde, the news has to be viewed with skepticism.

This kind of news from the Ugandan army is designed so that Kony's name does not fade from the pages of international news for more than a month or two. That the news emanates from the Ugandan army gives the impression that the Ugandan army is on top of the situation. It's not.

The recent French Press Agency story on the Odhiambo discovery quotes a Ugandan defense/military official saying that Kony is on the run and moments away from capture--something the Ugandan government has been saying for two decades.

"It will not be a surprise that he (Odhiambo) could be dead, because the UPDF [Ugandan army] has in the past killed many top LRA commanders and he cannot be an exception," Defense Minister Crispus Kiyonga said last year. "The LRA's strength has diminished and the remaining force, including Kony, are on the run."

These kind of statements are wishful thinking. Similar rumors were spread about ten years ago, about the time my book, First Kill Your Family, was published. Military leaders who were supposedly fighting Kony claimed that each of Kony's devastating counter-attacks were nothing more than the "final kicks of dying horse." The horse was not dying and the kicks were not final.

Some of those old rumors concerned Dominic Ongwen, who at one time was reportedly captured and/or killed when his unit of the LRA had lingered in northern Uganda after Kony and Otti had decamped to the Garamba National Park in northern Democractic Republic of the Congo.

Today we know that Ongwen, known as the "White Ant," is where he belongs in the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands.

How Ongwen ended up there illustrates the convoluted mis- and dis-information about the LRA.

Initial reports suggested that Ongwen had been captured by the U.S. Special Forces backing the Ugandans who are tracking the LRA through the jungles of Central African Republic. In fact, Ongwen surrendered  after a 30-minute firefight to the Christian militia Seleka rebels who had and have been fighting in the CAR.

The Seleka rebels turned him over to the U.S. Special Forces and demanded the $5 million reward that had been offered for Ongwen's capture.

"I did not want to die in the bush, so I decided to follow the right path and listen to the calling of the ICC," said Ongwen, in the Acholi language on a video taken by the Ugandan army, according to reports.

In Dominic's own words, he did not want to die in the bush. Many others who have defected from the LRA have said the same thing. They're tired of running. That's not the same thing as saying they're afraid of the Ugandan army and certainly not any goofy programs orchestrated by U.S-based "humanitarian" groups.

They're just tired.

Given the choice between  a life of endless scavenging in the bush and living in an apartment in The Hague, Ongwen chose the apartment.  He knows the ICC won't kill him, no matter how many people he killed or ordered killed and watched while they died horrible deaths.

But he knows that Kony would eventually kill him, as Kony reportedly did with Otti. Ongwen was not humane, but the court would be. Ongwen knew that.

With the desertion/surrender of Ongwen, it's been interesting to see who's lined up to take credit.

Of course the Ugandan military is first in line, even though Kony still fights as he has since 1985, when the earliest incarnations of what became the LRA battled the Ugandan army of President Yoweri Museveni. Museveni has been unable to stop Kony since 1985. Why could he succeed now?

Next to take credit has been the international community, starting with the U.S. government. It's been quickly followed by the international humanitarian community.

As I wrote in First Kill Your Family, the only way Kony will be defeated is when and if he decides to give himself up--or if and when he's killed. Kony is a self-professed prophet and militia leader. He knows only one life -- killing, plunder, and abduction. He won't change because he can't.

He won't come out of the bush because he fears he'll be killed. And the Ugandans won't go after him because they fear Kony's mystical powers. Kony lives, and for the time being, that won't change.

Sudan harbouring Kony: report

It should come as no surprise that reports this past week from Resolve Uganda claim that Sudan has been harboring international fugitive from justice, Joseph Kony, and his Lord's Resistance Army.

 

Sudan, of course, denies the charge.  

Titled, "Hidden in Plain Sight," the Resolve report  (http://www.resolveuganda.org/) includes satellite images that it claims is a recently-abandoned camp, where Kony apparently was seen in late 2012. The region is called Kafia Kingi, and is in the far northwestern corner of South Sudan, where the borders of Sudan and the Central African Republic meet.  

 

Despite the fact that the territory is clearly in the newly independent South Sudan, Kafia Kingi is "disputed" land nominally controlled by Sudan.

"Eyewitnesses testify that elements from Sudan's military actively provided Kony and other LRA leaders with periodic safe haven in Sudanese-controlled territory from 2009 until at least February 2013," according to the Resolve report.

 

While the report raises the necessary red flags about Kony's whereabouts and lines of support, it reflects a host of past behavior patterns on the part of ALL parties concerned.

 

For much of the 20 years that Kony fought his bloody war in northern Uganda, he and his army of child soldiers found refuge in South Sudan during Uganda's dry season, where Kony was able to establish semi-permanent camps and grow food.

 

In First Kill Your Family, I write about my interviews with Kony's former top commanders who described being hosted by the Sudanese, who controlled South Sudan then, including one LRA commander who was flown to a hospital in Khartoum where he was treated for a severe wound that resulted in a leg amputation.

 

Sudan's support for Kony was due to Kony's guerilla war against Uganda, following the principle that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni was an ardent supporter of the late John Garang, who led South Sudan in its war for independence from Sudan. 

 

The situation is no different today than it was back then. While Kony has directed his attacks in the past couple of years against the innocent people of eastern Central African Republic, the fact that he remains camped out in South Sudan is a warning.

Then as now, Kony has the strong potential of being a thorn in the side of South Sudan, wreaking havoc on the South Sudanese, who even now are struggling to solidify their independence and their claims to the oil-rich Abyei region that is challenged by Sudan.

 

Another repeated pattern that the Resolve report reveals is of Uganda's wholly inept efforts to capture Kony. Uganda's army, which has been chasing Kony since 2008 when peace talks finally collapsed, is considered one of the best in east Africa.

 

The fact that Uganda's army can't find Kony is not an accident. Kony is much more valuable to Uganda alive and on the loose than he is captured and on trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where he was indicted for war crimes in 2005. 

 

Kony has been and continues to be an endless excuse for Uganda to received millions of dollars of U.S. and international civilian and military aid. 

 

After all, U.S. Special Forces were assigned in 2011 to help Uganda's efforts to find Kony in the Central African Republic -- just the latest tranche in two decades worth of money and equipment that has been handed over to the Ugandans.

 

What has Uganda been doing with all that support and advice? Not much, it appears, since the search for Kony for the past two years has been based in Obo, a remote town in the far eastern tip of the Central African Republic.

 

Obo is nowhere close to where Resolve says Kony has been operating since 2009. Look for yourself on www.googlemaps.com. Kony's apparent location is about 400 north of where the Ugandans and the Americans have been looking.

 

If a handful of humanitarian activists can track down Kony, what have the Ugandan and their American advisers been doing? Not much, because Uganda does not want Kony captured or killed, but is happy to accept American aid.

 

If the Resolve report is even remotely true, this is a huge embarrassment to the State Department and the U.S. military advisers.

 

According to new reports, this is the U.S. response: "The United States is aware and continues to evaluate reports that the LRA has operated in the disputed Kafia Kingi area claimed by both Sudan and South Sudan," said Patrick Ventrell, deputy State Department spokesman.

"The US and the international community as a whole would take very seriously any credible evidence of support or safe haven being provided to the LRA," he said, adding Washington has encouraged Sudan to cooperate with regional efforts to counter the LRA.

Meanwhile, the US has thrown more money on the table, a reward of $5 million for the capture of Kony, who Secretary of State John Kerry said would "not be easy to find."

 

Given the fact that Uganda once arrested, jailed, then deported a group of mercenaries who were organizing to capture Kony, this reward will undoubtedly result in the same lack of success as all previous efforts.

Al-Shabaab's deadly strike

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?

Deja-vu, all over again

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.

Riots a dangerous distraction

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.

New school, same old problems

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?

Serious threat or convenient diversion?

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?

Corruption rears its head

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?

War on Kony can be profitable

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.

The Devil's Resistance Army

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 was high tech in the bush

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.

Kony slips into South Sudan

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.