As followers of my writing and this blog know, I advocate serious, coordinated, international action against the renegade militia leader Joseph Kony.
The lack of that kind of action, however, is the source of endless articles, speculation, and discussion. Good writing about the fiasco to find Kony continues to gurgle up from time to time.
Of late is an article in The New Yorker magazine by a young writer named Ledio Cakaj, He's a blogger for the Enough organization. This is his first piece for the magazine. I recommend it.
The article details interviews with a handful of Kony's former soldiers (there are thousands) about a mutiny and attempted assassination of Kony from within his disaffected ranks. The article suggests that the 2013 attempt on Kony may was the first of its kind against the maniacal leader.
It wasn't.
I spent a significant amount of time in 2005 and 2006 tracking Kony's life and actions, which resulted in the award-winning 2009 book First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army.
It's the first serious work on Kony to be published in the United States. It remains the gold standard of source material for anyone who wants to know about Kony, what makes him tick, and why he has not been captured.
For nearly 20 years, Kony's number two man was Vincent Otti. He was a former shopkeeper who bridged the chasm between Kony's self-delusions and the real world. Otti regularly talked live via satellite phone on Ugandan radio shows. He was quite entertaining.
Otti brokered the extended peace talks with Kony that began in June 2006 in the remote jungles of South Sudan. As followers know, the peace talks finally broke down after two years during which Kony skillfully turned the talks into a three-ring circus.
After Kony's team would negotiate terms of an agreement, a large contingent of negotiators would, at great trouble and expense, decamp to a jungle rendezvous for the signing. Declarations that "peace was at hand" echoed across the skies and the worldwide web. Activists swooned.
But Kony didn't show. Three times.
The last of Kony's no-shows was followed by the abortive airstrike and (delayed) ground attack by the Ugandan army on Kony's camp in the the Congo's Garamba National Park. Kony had been living there since late 2005, having fled northern Uganda.
But Kony was gone. He'd been tipped off. The same thing happened in 2013. A privately funded attack on his camp, also by an elite unit of the Ugandan army, found an empty Kony camp in the corner of South Sudan where multiple reports said he was living. (Is there a connection here???)
Kony lived relatively well during the peace talks, thanks the largess of the international community. He was sent convoys of trucks loaded with food and supplies. The thinking was that this would keep Kony at the bargaining table. Not!
From the beginning of Kony's early days in Garamba, once a prime wildlife reserve, he helped himself to the abundant wildlife there, routinely slaughtering elephants and the rare and nearly extinct white rhinos that once lived there.
Cakaj's article discusses a number of Kony's men whom he sent from his enclave in the recesses of northern South Sudan to Garamba to slaughter remaining elephants. The tusks were carried back to be sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars and sustain Kony and his men.
Back to Otti. After spearheading the peace talks, Otti realized Kony was playing the activist community for fools and would never sign an agreement to surrender.
Otti was 61 at the time. He was tired and sick of war. He wanted to go home. At least a third of Kony's men, all of whom were under Otti's command, felt the same way. They were sick of Kony and of living on the run, not to mention his endless slaughter of innocent men, women, children, and wildlife.
They were going to leave, a move that would cripple Kony's army.
Kony got wind of the mutiny. Fearing an assassination attempt, he summoned Otti. On October 2, 2007, Kony's personal guards grabbed Otti, forced him to his knees, and as Otti plead for his life, executed him. His body was never found.
Otti's death was followed by many desertions. Some of these soldiers gave themselves up to the Ugandan army. They provided details of the Otti's death and the failed mutiny. They said that Kony justified the execution of his trusted long-time commander by saying that Otti had tried to kill him.
Kony has survived attempts on his life and massive desertions from his ranks. He will continue to do so until the international community decides they've had enough of this maniac. Kony will survive until those who can take meaningful action.
Showing posts with label Enough. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Enough. Show all posts
Monday, October 5, 2015
Monday, June 3, 2013
Kony's plunder of wildlife
A report issued by the Enough Project and titled, Kony's Ivory, documents yet another in an endless string atrocities by Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army.
The report, http://www.enoughproject.org/files/KonysIvory.pdf, reveals how Kony and his cutthroats have contributed the destruction of elephant population in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
According to the report, the elephant population has dwindled from about 20,000 (other reports set the figure at only 7,000) to just 1,500 in the past decade due to poaching, much of it by the LRA.
As anyone who has been following this issue knows, Kony and company set up camp in the Garamba park in late 2005 and early 2006, using it as a base while peace talks were conducted in Juba, South Sudan, with the Ugandan government.
Even then, reports were rife that Kony's men were killing the Garamba wildlife, mostly for the meat.
I visited the periphery of the park twice, both times in connection with research for First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army.
The first time was in 2006 on the northern edge of the park where it borders South Sudan.
The second was on the western edge of the park in 2008 in the town of Dungu, which had been attacked and raided by the LRA, despite the presence of United Nations forces.
In Dungu, I met with wildlife officers who talked about the dangers faced by the park rangers, who had basically withdrawn from much of the park because of the LRA, but also told me of extensive poaching.
It is good that Enough has documented this on-going tragedy, but it may be too little, too late.
The report provides no details on who is buying the ivory, how and why, or where it goes once it leaves the park. The only details we get are from one former LRA captive who says that people arrived in helicopters to buy it. Really? From where?
If the buyers used helicopters, it means some fairly well-heeled smugglers are involved, most likely based in Nairobi, Kenya, or Khartoum, Sudan. Or, more likely, that corrupt military commanders from either country (imagine that!) are in the middle of the illegal trade.
Just last month the Reuters wrote a story about the wider problem of elephant poaching across central Africa, based on a United Nations report, singling out the LRA as an example of the problem: http://news.yahoo.com/libya-war-weapons-may-killing-central-africa-elephants-062616139.html?.tsrc=lgwnaww.
As early as 2004, a year before the LRA entered Garamba Park, the slaughter of white rhinos was being reported as a major concern for wildlife biologists, as noted in the British newspaper, the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/democraticrepublicofcongo/1462372/Poachers-killing-last-of-the-rare-white-rhinos.html.
Closer to home, the National Geographic Society was also involved, reporting in 2004 about the problem on it's website: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/05/0507_040507_whiterhino.html
Solutions anyone?
The common thread here is that various armed groups across Africa kill the elephants and rhinos for their tusks and horns, since they can get several thousand dollars per pound for ivory. The sale of the ivory buys weapons and supplies for armed groups.
One report mentioned that the rhino horns went to Yemen where they were carved into handles for highly prized daggers for wealthy sheiks. Likewise, the rhino horns are valued for their supposed medicinal qualities and the ivory for its rarity by Asians.
Despite the on-going human tragedy and the destruction of the last wild herds of elephants and rhinos in Africa -- a problem that has been highly publicized for more than a decade -- nothing is being done to stop it.
This is all too reminiscent of what is being done, or more precisely NOT being done, about Kony and the LRA. The Ugandan army, which had been chasing Kony in the Central African Republic for the past five or so years, gave up the hunt by using the recent military coup in the CAR as an excuse to quit.
The U.S. Special Forces mission, sent by President Obama in 2011 to help in the search for Kony, also decided to stand down.
As wildlife activists have been saying for years, the slaughter of African wildlife must be attacked on many fronts.
First, enforcement. The poachers certainly must be stopped. This will require a trained and pervasive force which will require commitment and funding.
Second, the traders must be found, stopped, prosecuted and jailed.
Thirdly, the demand must be curtailed. This will require working with the Chinese and Southeast Asian nations to gain their support and cooperation.
While the Enough Project report may help rekindle interest in the poaching problem, it does little more than note a problem that people have known about for decades.
If there is to be any hope of actually solving the problem, Enough and the other groups involved in the report need to much more than plow what is already heavily plowed ground.
The report, http://www.enoughproject.org/files/KonysIvory.pdf, reveals how Kony and his cutthroats have contributed the destruction of elephant population in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
According to the report, the elephant population has dwindled from about 20,000 (other reports set the figure at only 7,000) to just 1,500 in the past decade due to poaching, much of it by the LRA.
As anyone who has been following this issue knows, Kony and company set up camp in the Garamba park in late 2005 and early 2006, using it as a base while peace talks were conducted in Juba, South Sudan, with the Ugandan government.
Even then, reports were rife that Kony's men were killing the Garamba wildlife, mostly for the meat.
I visited the periphery of the park twice, both times in connection with research for First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army.
The first time was in 2006 on the northern edge of the park where it borders South Sudan.
The second was on the western edge of the park in 2008 in the town of Dungu, which had been attacked and raided by the LRA, despite the presence of United Nations forces.
In Dungu, I met with wildlife officers who talked about the dangers faced by the park rangers, who had basically withdrawn from much of the park because of the LRA, but also told me of extensive poaching.
It is good that Enough has documented this on-going tragedy, but it may be too little, too late.
The report provides no details on who is buying the ivory, how and why, or where it goes once it leaves the park. The only details we get are from one former LRA captive who says that people arrived in helicopters to buy it. Really? From where?
If the buyers used helicopters, it means some fairly well-heeled smugglers are involved, most likely based in Nairobi, Kenya, or Khartoum, Sudan. Or, more likely, that corrupt military commanders from either country (imagine that!) are in the middle of the illegal trade.
Just last month the Reuters wrote a story about the wider problem of elephant poaching across central Africa, based on a United Nations report, singling out the LRA as an example of the problem: http://news.yahoo.com/libya-war-weapons-may-killing-central-africa-elephants-062616139.html?.tsrc=lgwnaww.
As early as 2004, a year before the LRA entered Garamba Park, the slaughter of white rhinos was being reported as a major concern for wildlife biologists, as noted in the British newspaper, the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/democraticrepublicofcongo/1462372/Poachers-killing-last-of-the-rare-white-rhinos.html.
Closer to home, the National Geographic Society was also involved, reporting in 2004 about the problem on it's website: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/05/0507_040507_whiterhino.html
Solutions anyone?
The common thread here is that various armed groups across Africa kill the elephants and rhinos for their tusks and horns, since they can get several thousand dollars per pound for ivory. The sale of the ivory buys weapons and supplies for armed groups.
One report mentioned that the rhino horns went to Yemen where they were carved into handles for highly prized daggers for wealthy sheiks. Likewise, the rhino horns are valued for their supposed medicinal qualities and the ivory for its rarity by Asians.
Despite the on-going human tragedy and the destruction of the last wild herds of elephants and rhinos in Africa -- a problem that has been highly publicized for more than a decade -- nothing is being done to stop it.
This is all too reminiscent of what is being done, or more precisely NOT being done, about Kony and the LRA. The Ugandan army, which had been chasing Kony in the Central African Republic for the past five or so years, gave up the hunt by using the recent military coup in the CAR as an excuse to quit.
The U.S. Special Forces mission, sent by President Obama in 2011 to help in the search for Kony, also decided to stand down.
As wildlife activists have been saying for years, the slaughter of African wildlife must be attacked on many fronts.
First, enforcement. The poachers certainly must be stopped. This will require a trained and pervasive force which will require commitment and funding.
Second, the traders must be found, stopped, prosecuted and jailed.
Thirdly, the demand must be curtailed. This will require working with the Chinese and Southeast Asian nations to gain their support and cooperation.
While the Enough Project report may help rekindle interest in the poaching problem, it does little more than note a problem that people have known about for decades.
If there is to be any hope of actually solving the problem, Enough and the other groups involved in the report need to much more than plow what is already heavily plowed ground.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Bring in the drones
This past week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was photographed holding a small drone that looked more like the handiwork of a model airplane hobbyist than a weapon in the American military arsenal.
The photo came while Clinton posed at the U.S. special forces base at Entebbe, the Ugandan airport on the shores of Lake Victoria, where she announced that these small drones would be used to help track down the elusive rebel militia leader Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army.
Kony is in his fourth year of wreaking havoc and eluding what has proven to be an inept and unmotivated force of Ugandan soldiers hunting Kony from their base in the eastern Central African Republic town of Obo.
The Ugandans have never had any success stopping Kony and his army of child soldiers. The recent infusion of aid and military advice from a hundred U.S. special forces soldiers sent to Uganda about a year ago by President Barack Obama has had little effect.
Obama sent the soldiers there at the end of 2011, much to the consternation of people such as the right wing radio ranter Rush Limbaugh, after signing a bill with the long-winded title: The Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009.
Yet, after nearly a year of American military advice, equipment, and infusion of millions of dollars, Kony and his army roam free.
While this is immensely frustrating to the people who continue to follow this issue, such as myself who has tracked Kony on the ground and written extensively on the LRA, it should come as no surprise.
Kony and the LRA have been wandering one of the most remote regions on earth, a place where the Central African Republic, South Sudan, and Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) meet.
He has been there since early 2006 when he and his army abandoned northern Uganda and their so-called war against the Ugandan government.
After two years of farcical peace talks, the final round of which ended in November 2008 after Kony refused sign a negotiated settlement for the third time, the international community tried to strike back.
In December 2008, the Ugandan army botched a secret raid on Kony's sprawling camp in northern DRC. Kony escaped and went on a rampage, killing about 1,000 civilians in the region who had nothing to do with Kony or his fight with Uganda.
Long before that December 2008 attack, organized and supported by the U.S. military to the tune of $1 million, I had argued that Uganda has never wanted Kony and the LRA captured, despite the rhetoric to the contrary.
Kony continues to be a valuable asset to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled Uganda with an iron fist for 26 years.
Museveni's army is one of the best trained and motivated in Africa, yet strangely has been unable to kill and/or capture Kony since 1986. Why?
Between 1986 and 2006, Kony waged a war that was conducted largely against his own people, the Acholi tribe of northern Uganda. To most people, this does not make sense.
But the fact is that while the Acholi people detest Museveni, they also rejected Kony and refused to support his lame war against the government. Because the Acholi rejected Kony as their "savior," he turned on them in vicious and horrifying attacks, kidnapping their children to fill his ranks.
This played directly into Museveni's hands. Because Kony turned on his own tribe, who were also Museveni's enemy, he did little to stop Kony in the north.
Instead Museveni turned to more lucrative pursuits and sent his army across the border to plunder the mineral-rich mountains of eastern DRC from 1996 until about 2003. (Details of this are in my book, Consuming the Congo.)
All the while, Museveni has continued to collect vast sums of money from the international community, telling them that he needs more and more money to keep fighting Kony.
Museveni continues to use this ploy with great success.
Not long after the spate of articles in April 2012 that detailed how U.S. special forces were helping the Ugandans on the ground in Central African Republic, a different story soon emerged.
The Ugandans complained about how frustratingly difficult and dangerous the hunt for Kony was. They complained of the heat, the flies, and the fact that two of their comrades had been attacked by crocodiles, killing one of them.
They complained that when they reached the latest village that had been attacked by Kony's men, the LRA fighters were long gone. It was a useless wild goose chase.
Then came the stories that the Ugandans were running out of money and supplies ... again!
These complaints are more than a little ironic.
The U.S. has committed to spending $35 million in 2012 just to find and fight Kony, according to news agency reports. Since 2008, the State Department has spent $50 million to support Uganda's non-lethal efforts to capture Kony, such as securing helicopters to transport troops and supplies.
Since 2008, the U.S. has spent and additional $500 million to help rebuild northern Uganda.
Where has the money gone?
Uganda has very little interest in capturing Kony. He is considered a source of revenue by the Ugandan leadership and is not viewed as the scourge against humanity that Kony is presented by such groups as Invisible Children and the Enough organization.
To many Ugandans, Kony is not considered their problem any more. Kony is Ugandan but has not been in their country since early 2006.
Ugandans rightly question why they need to carry the burden when Kony is in the Central African Republic now, which for all practical purposes is a failed and lawless state, much like its neighbors, Sudan, South Sudan, and the DR Congo.
Although Kony is Uganda's responsibility, there is little hope that Kony will ever be captured by the Ugandan or any of the other countries in the region, even with an air armada of drones.
That can and only will be done by an international cooperative military mission -- a mission that few, if any, countries outside of the region are willing to undertake.
The photo came while Clinton posed at the U.S. special forces base at Entebbe, the Ugandan airport on the shores of Lake Victoria, where she announced that these small drones would be used to help track down the elusive rebel militia leader Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army.
Kony is in his fourth year of wreaking havoc and eluding what has proven to be an inept and unmotivated force of Ugandan soldiers hunting Kony from their base in the eastern Central African Republic town of Obo.
The Ugandans have never had any success stopping Kony and his army of child soldiers. The recent infusion of aid and military advice from a hundred U.S. special forces soldiers sent to Uganda about a year ago by President Barack Obama has had little effect.
Obama sent the soldiers there at the end of 2011, much to the consternation of people such as the right wing radio ranter Rush Limbaugh, after signing a bill with the long-winded title: The Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009.
Yet, after nearly a year of American military advice, equipment, and infusion of millions of dollars, Kony and his army roam free.
While this is immensely frustrating to the people who continue to follow this issue, such as myself who has tracked Kony on the ground and written extensively on the LRA, it should come as no surprise.
Kony and the LRA have been wandering one of the most remote regions on earth, a place where the Central African Republic, South Sudan, and Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) meet.
He has been there since early 2006 when he and his army abandoned northern Uganda and their so-called war against the Ugandan government.
After two years of farcical peace talks, the final round of which ended in November 2008 after Kony refused sign a negotiated settlement for the third time, the international community tried to strike back.
In December 2008, the Ugandan army botched a secret raid on Kony's sprawling camp in northern DRC. Kony escaped and went on a rampage, killing about 1,000 civilians in the region who had nothing to do with Kony or his fight with Uganda.
Long before that December 2008 attack, organized and supported by the U.S. military to the tune of $1 million, I had argued that Uganda has never wanted Kony and the LRA captured, despite the rhetoric to the contrary.
Kony continues to be a valuable asset to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled Uganda with an iron fist for 26 years.
Museveni's army is one of the best trained and motivated in Africa, yet strangely has been unable to kill and/or capture Kony since 1986. Why?
Between 1986 and 2006, Kony waged a war that was conducted largely against his own people, the Acholi tribe of northern Uganda. To most people, this does not make sense.
But the fact is that while the Acholi people detest Museveni, they also rejected Kony and refused to support his lame war against the government. Because the Acholi rejected Kony as their "savior," he turned on them in vicious and horrifying attacks, kidnapping their children to fill his ranks.
This played directly into Museveni's hands. Because Kony turned on his own tribe, who were also Museveni's enemy, he did little to stop Kony in the north.
Instead Museveni turned to more lucrative pursuits and sent his army across the border to plunder the mineral-rich mountains of eastern DRC from 1996 until about 2003. (Details of this are in my book, Consuming the Congo.)
All the while, Museveni has continued to collect vast sums of money from the international community, telling them that he needs more and more money to keep fighting Kony.
Museveni continues to use this ploy with great success.
Not long after the spate of articles in April 2012 that detailed how U.S. special forces were helping the Ugandans on the ground in Central African Republic, a different story soon emerged.
The Ugandans complained about how frustratingly difficult and dangerous the hunt for Kony was. They complained of the heat, the flies, and the fact that two of their comrades had been attacked by crocodiles, killing one of them.
They complained that when they reached the latest village that had been attacked by Kony's men, the LRA fighters were long gone. It was a useless wild goose chase.
Then came the stories that the Ugandans were running out of money and supplies ... again!
These complaints are more than a little ironic.
The U.S. has committed to spending $35 million in 2012 just to find and fight Kony, according to news agency reports. Since 2008, the State Department has spent $50 million to support Uganda's non-lethal efforts to capture Kony, such as securing helicopters to transport troops and supplies.
Since 2008, the U.S. has spent and additional $500 million to help rebuild northern Uganda.
Where has the money gone?
Uganda has very little interest in capturing Kony. He is considered a source of revenue by the Ugandan leadership and is not viewed as the scourge against humanity that Kony is presented by such groups as Invisible Children and the Enough organization.
To many Ugandans, Kony is not considered their problem any more. Kony is Ugandan but has not been in their country since early 2006.
Ugandans rightly question why they need to carry the burden when Kony is in the Central African Republic now, which for all practical purposes is a failed and lawless state, much like its neighbors, Sudan, South Sudan, and the DR Congo.
Although Kony is Uganda's responsibility, there is little hope that Kony will ever be captured by the Ugandan or any of the other countries in the region, even with an air armada of drones.
That can and only will be done by an international cooperative military mission -- a mission that few, if any, countries outside of the region are willing to undertake.
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