Africa: Resisting the Lord's Army
By Edoardo Totolo for ISN
After being chased out of Uganda in 2006, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) - a rebel group fighting for the establishment of a Bible-based theocracy in Uganda - has become a major threat for people living in the vast area between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), southern Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR).
The LRA is causing massive destruction across the region. In the DRC, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) estimates that 125,000 people have been displaced over the past three weeks alone, and since September last year, a shocking 540,000 people have been displaced.
The violence is on the rise also in Sudan’s Western Equatoria State, where humanitarian agencies were external pageforced to stop their operations, and in the CAR - the second poorest country in the world - where the LRA is killing and looting communities already external pagesuffering a severe humanitarian crisis.
The exact size of the LRA is not known, and estimates put their numbers anywhere between 500 to 3,000 soldiers - most of them abducted children - scattered in small groups in the three countries. Its leader, Joseph Kony - wanted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2005 - is external pagebelieved to be hiding in the CAR.
Analysts say that the LRA would not be able to operate on such a large scale without external support, and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir was accused of being Kony’s closest ally during the 1990s, providing him with arms and other equipment to fuel conflict in the region. At the same time, al-Bashir has accused Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni of supporting the Sudan’s People Liberation Army (SPLF), a rebel group fighting for the independence of southern Sudan from the central government.
Both sides have always denied all allegations. However, south Sudanese leaders external pagerecently accused Khartoum of continuing to provide intelligence and logistical assistance to the LRA.
Military and diplomatic fiascos
The current escalation of violence comes after a series of failed attempts to curb the bloodshed through peace talks and military campaigns.
Between 2006 and 2008, a complex series of negotiations - known as the Juba talks - between the Ugandan government and the LRA sparked optimism for peace in the region. The counterparts reached a final peace agreement that was ready to be signed in 2008. However, Kony failed to show up to the signing ceremony to the great embarrassment of the negotiators and politicians who organized the event.
Kony accused southern Sudanese mediator Riek Machar and the UN special envoy former Mozambique President Joachim Chissano of having manipulated the negotiations and changing the details of the previously agreed peace deal.
However, the main reason for the failure concerned the arrest warrant issued by the ICC. Kony maintains that the Ugandan regular army, the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF), committed atrocities during the war in northern Uganda, and asked the ICC to withdraw its indictment against the LRA leaders as a condition for continuing the peace talks. The ICC refused and the negotiations failed.
This collapse was followed by a military fiasco. The so-called external pageOperation Lightning Thunder was launched on 14 December last year with the collaboration of the Ugandan, Congolese and Sudanese armies. The operation could also count on the support of AFRICOM - the US military command for Africa - which for the first time participated in a military operation in the continent. The result, however, was a external pagesheer disappointment.
Operation Lightning Thunder managed to destroy the LRA’s main base camp in the forested area of Garamba (in the DRC) and it forced the group to flee to neighboring areas in the DRC, CAR and southern Sudan. The government of Uganda initially called the operation a success and announced that the LRA command structure has been severely weakened.
However, the major goal of the operation, which was capturing Kony, was not achieved. Moreover, the LRA immediately launched a series of retaliatory attacks against civilians, in which hundreds of people were killed, children were abducted and thousands families were forced to flee their homes.
Uncertain plans
Operation Lightning Thunder officially ended in March 2009, when the Ugandan army abruptly withdrew its troops from the DRC. That said, African governments are now discussing the resumption of military operations. The entire civil society in northern Uganda, however, opposes this decision.
“Twenty years of war against the LRA in northern Uganda brought nothing but terror,” Geoffrey Okello, coordinator of the external pageGulu District NGO Forum, told ISN Security Watch. “There is no need to make the same mistake in the DR Congo. Peaceful negotiations are the only options to end this rebellion.”
According to Okello, “turbulent periods” are common to all peace processes, and it might take years before the LRA will sign a final agreement. However, there is room for hope.
“The LRA said many times that it is in favor of a peace deal, and this is enough to restart the negotiations,” said Okello.
Nonetheless, a new military operation seems inevitable. At the August external pageInternational Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) in Zambia, African leaders discussed the possibility of setting up a new joint force against LRA violence. The leaders have not reached an agreement yet, but the issue has been placed on top of the agenda for the next ICGLR meeting, which will be held in the DRC “as soon as possible,” the external pageofficial communiqué says.
A major change of strategy in the region was also announced by the UN Security Council on 27 August, which is planning to revolutionize peacekeeping mandates in Central Africa. The problem is that the two main UN missions in the region, MONUC in the DRC and UNMIS in Sudan, both lack the authority and the capacity to tackle the LRA insurgency, a external pageUN official said.
However, civil society groups in Uganda have doubts about a new UN mission against the LRA.
“UN missions have brought few benefits to the populations in central Africa,” said Okello. “I believe that they will only endanger the lives of the abducted children and civilians.”
The LRA phenomenon is extremely complex and there seems to be no easy solution to the conflict. However, if the international community seeks to draft an effective and sustainable strategy to end the LRA terror, the views of civil society groups should play a much larger role.
In fact, while government forces and the UN have the duty to provide protection to populations in the affected areas, all recent military operations have ended up in a massacre of civilians.
As the rebel group operates in a myriad of small units scattered in three countries, armies would have to hunt LRA rebels in vast territories in predominately jungle areas. The risk is that another disorganized military action will aggravate the violence further and will make peace unreachable in the short term.
The two options - military and the diplomatic - have both failed to end the conflict in the past. However, the Juba talks nearly achieved this objective, as they managed to temporarily curb the violence and nearly reach a final peace agreement after 22 years of war.
All military actions, on the other hand, have systematically worsened the LRA terror - and there is little hope that this time things will be different.