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In Dungu, I met with wildlife officers who talked about the dangers faced by the park rangers, who had basically withdrawn from much of the park because of the LRA, but also told me of extensive poaching.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. 

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.

Russell's out-of-body experience?

USA Today, the nation's colorful, vapid newspaper, got a jump on the coming Oprah Winfrey interview of Jason Russell, founder of Invisible Children and maker of the now infamous Kony 2012 viral video.

In the advanced excerpt, undoubtedly leaked to boost viewers for Oprah's  less-then-successful network, Russell claims he had an out-of-body experience this past March.

If you saw the video, it was hard to forget, of course.

It showed a butt-naked Russell on a busy street corner in San Diego ranting and raving at traffic, snapping his fingers, shouting incoherently, and slapping his hands on the pavement.

(The article wrongly states that Russell was pounding his fists on the pavement, which makes me wonder if the reporter bothered to see it before writing about it.)

Russell clearly flipped out. The true reasons are probably known only to Russell and his psychiatrist, but the man clearly has some deeply rooted issues he needs to confront. I doubt that his meltdown was because of the fact that the video was viewed by 100 million people.

He's trying to make a comeback, and why not? His Invisible Children organization raises millions of dollars each year from gullible college students for his anti-Joseph Kony crusade. Without Invisible Children, Russell and the others at the organization stand to lose their fame, fortune and So-Cal life style.

My criticism of the Kony 2012, which some have said was too harsh, still stands. Russell used his child to generate a superficial emotional response on the part of millions of naive viewers to a very serious and complex problem.

He not only used his child, but he drew on historical film footage to create a host of misleading impressions, the worst of which is that Kony is still terrorizing children in northern Uganda. He then concluded the video by asking for money.

Only in passing does Kony 2012 mention that Kony left northern Uganda in 2006, and has been roaming a remote region of central Africa ever since.

What bothers me the most is that Russell has the personnel and the resources to do much, much more, and to have a serious impact on the on-going push by the African Union soldiers to find and capture Kony and ultimately put him on trial.

Here's the article from USA Today:

Oprah Winfrey has scored another first.
She's talking to Kony 2012 campaign creator Jason Russell, who had a very public meltdown soon after the phenomenal success of the video that brought worldwide attention to Uganda rebel leader Joseph Kony. It all happened in March. And while many remember the initial Kony video, another video â?? of Russell â?? emerged, showing him on the streets of San Diego naked, yelling, disrupting traffic and pounding his fists on the pavement.
Russell was hospitalized with what his wife said at the time was "reactive psychosis."
He and his wife, Danica, will discuss with Winfrey on Sunday's Oprah's Next Chapter (9 p.m., OWN) what happened on that day and the impact the events have had on his career, his marriage and his continued fight against Kony.
Here's an excerpt:
OPRAH: "What do you remember, Jason?"
JASON: "I remember me flipping off cars."
OPRAH: "Flipping off cars? Like with your..."
JASON: "With both hands. I remember that just like 'doot,' just like a little memory. I remember running around our lemon tree. I remember ..."
OPRAH: "There were reports that you were breaking into cars?"
JASON: "There are reports. I mean I think I was stopping cars in the street. People said I was laying in the street â?? it's a busy street â?? I was laying in the street."
OPRAH: "How did you get your robe off? How do you go from running out with your robe on to your robe off?"
JASON: "Again, it's really hard to explain if people who have never had an out-of-body experience, but it really wasn't me. That wasn't me, that person on the street corner ranting and raving and naked is not me, that's not who I am."
Russell goes on to acknowledge that he was "walking around snapping my fingers up and down" and "slapping my hands on the ground as hard as I can. Just slapping them on the ground. Talking to myself. Ranting. Raving. Talking about good versus evil, God and the devil. I mean it was just very out of control." He shows that he dented his wedding ring because he was pounding the pavement, literally, so hard.

M23 atrocities in eastern Congo predicted

Human Rights Watch has released a scathing report on abuses being committed by the Rwandan-backed, ethnic Tutsi group M23, now wreaking havoc in eastern Congo.

HRW does the best work of any humanitarian/rights group in the region and their research is impeccable.

That M23, the successor group to the notorious ethnic Tutsi CNDP, is committing atrocities was predictable and I wrote as much in Consuming the Congo: War and Conflict Minerals in the World's Deadliest Place, back in 2010.

At the time, the CNDP (a French acronym for the National Congress for the Defense of the People), had been incorporated into the hapless Congolese army. It was a foolish gesture by the Congolese to appease the various ethnic militias fighting over the region's minerals.

As I wrote in Consuming the Congo, it was bad idea and doomed to failure. The CNDP would only play along as long as they and their leader, the notorious Bosco Ntaganda, wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, could continue to plunder the region's resources.

Even then, people in the region knew that the CNDP had stockpiled weapons for the day when the arrangement would collapse. It didn't take long.

The trigger came when the Congolese authorities made it known that Ntaganda was about to be arrested and taken to The Hague to face trial. Ntaganda would have none of that, of course, since he and his Rwandan backers were making too much money.

Ntaganda, it must be noted, was deeply involved in the $10 million gold scandal in 2010 that was thwarted by Congolese authorities who refused to let Ntaganda get away with that sale without getting a piece of the action. After the gold was siezed, its whereabout remain unknown.

So now the old CNDP, which has morphed in to M23, is back to killing, plundering and raping. Ntaganda remains free. Rwanda refuses to acknowledge any connection to the group, as always. Instead, Rwanda and President Paul Kagame collected praise and admiration from people such as former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

Clinton should know better and should not be dirtying his hands, since the truth of the situation in eastern Congo is in the HRW report, according to Reuters:

"The M23 rebels are committing a horrific trail of new atrocities in eastern Congo," Anneke van Woudenberg, HRW's senior Africa researcher, said.

One victim said that M23 fighters had burst into her home, beaten her son to death and repeatedly raped her before dousing her legs in petrol and setting her ablaze, the rights group said.

HRW also said that at least 600 men and boys have been forcibly or unlawfully recruited in neighboring Rwanda, with recruitment continuing after allegations of Rwandan complicity were published in an interim UN report in June.

"The United Nations Security Council should sanction M23 leaders, as well as Rwandan officials who are helping them, for serious rights abuses," van Woudenberg said.

A Hijacking, new film on Somali pirates

I, for one, am looking forward to seeing this film. The president of the shipping company, the ship's captain, and the primary negotiator for the pirates are all in my book, Pirate State: Inside Somalia's Terrorism at Sea.
--Peter

Toronto Film Fest: Somali Pirates

 

Everyone is talking about a Danish film called “A Hijacking,” whose screening on Sunday afternoon was completely full.
A taut psychological thriller written and directed by Tobias Lindholm, tells the high pressure story of a Danish freighter captured and held for ransom by Somali pirates. The drama follows the pressure cooker of weeks of high-stakes negotiations that recalls Paul Greengrass’s “United 93” or even the classic “Das Boot.”


 

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.

Me and Ali

Are Somali pirate negotiators guilty of piracy?

This past week a federal court judge decided that no, in at least one case, they probably aren't.

The ruling by District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle came in the case of a man I'd met and interviewed in Somaliland, Ali Mohamed Ali.

Ali was far from the fearsome, gun and RPG-wielding pirate that's portrayed in the news media. He was friendly, polite, and casually confident as we met in a hotel lobby in Hargeisa in September 2009. He spoke English with an American accent, thanks to the more than 20 years he'd lived in the U.S.

I had come across Ali, who asked me to use a pseudonym for him in my book, Pirate State, by a series of strange connections.

I'd been talking with the head of a Danish shipping company, Per Gullestrup, about his experience in  negotiating the release of his company's ship and crew that had been hijacked by Somali pirates in November 2008.  He'd had a rather hard time dealing with batallion of insurance company experts who collect high fees for their work, he explained, and had told him to put up and shut up.

For months the negotiations for the ship and crew of the CEC Future went nowhere until he got a call from a man known as Mr. Ali. Ali suggested that they cut out the middlemen and talk directly. Within weeks, a deal was struck. The ship and crew were soon released.

The piracy scenario played out hundreds of times, but this one was different. Never before had either the shipping company nor the pirate negotiator been so open about the process. Suddenly the world had a window on the sordid inner workings of the Somali pirates and ransom negotiations, all of which had previously been hidden from public view by paranoid shipping companies and their insurers.

The ordeal of acting as a negotiator had been terrifying. The Somali pirates were a crazed bunch, Ali explained, surly and unpredictable. At one point, Ali had been taken hostage himself.

When the ransom was delivered via an airdrop, brought on board, and divided among the pirate, there were bloody knife fights among the pirates over the money. Once on land, the fighting continued as the disgruntled pirates viciously turned on each other.

Ali had come into his role as a negotiator quite by accident. Living in Hargeisa, where he has a young son, he had been contacted months earlier to help with the release of a German couple whose small sailboat had been hijacked by Puntland pirates. The couple had been kidnapped and was held for ransom.

Ali told me he felt badly for the Germans, knowing that they'd been grabbed by desperate pirates who were unable to take a large commercial ship. He was able to help and eventually a ransom was paid, apparently by the German government, and the couple released.

The couple spent a several months in the Somaliland port of Berbera repairing their boat and eventually sailed away.

When I met Ali, he said he did not consider himself a negotiator and didn't want to be in the business. But, he felt compelled to help in these cases. I sensed he was sincere, since his fluency in English and familiarity with western culture made him a valuable commodity. But he had passed on many other opportunities to get involved.

Ali's life changed on April 20, 2011, when he was arrested by federal agents as he got off the airplane at Dulles International Airport in Washington, DC.

He was jailed on a host of piracy charges, such as conspiracy, piracy, and hostage taking. He remained in jail until last week when Judge Huvelle ordered his release while he waits for his trial next year sometime.

Huvelle was irritated at prosecutors, whom she said had misled her on the case and called their behavior inexcusable. She said that prosecutors had been unable to show that Ali had "intentionally facilitated acts of piracy while he was on the high seas." According to the case, Ali had only been on the sea for less than 30 minutes, apparently only to visit the hijacked ship and crew.

I had all but forgotten Ali until this past spring when I got a call from an FBI investigator working on the case. I cooperated with the FBI, who asked if I would discuss my dealings with Ali. I reviewed my notes, but could find nothing that I had not already published and nothing that would support any of the piracy charges he faces.

When I mentioned that, the agent told me that you can't dabble in piracy. You're either part of the pirates, or you're not.

Judge Huvelle apparently disagrees.

While the government appeals the judge's rulings, Ali is under house arrest, reportedly living at a friend's house in Centreville, Virginia, about 20 miles west of Washington, DC. He wears a monitoring bracelet and can only leave to visit the local mosque and his lawyer.

While I support the full prosecution of Somali pirates, I don't think the government is going after the right man here.

 I wish Ali well.