As Ugandan Troops Withdraws From AU Mission, Is Kony’s LRA Finished?

Posted by: lukwago J in Uganda politics September 10, 2016

Uganda is pulling out of the hunt for Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army ( LRA ), taking with it the best hopes of eliminating the militia once regarded as one of the world’s most brutal. The withdrawal of the roughly 2,500 Ugandan troops from an African Union military mission, which is set to be completed by the end of the year, comes with a recognition of the LRA’s diminished stature after years of being on the run in Central Africa. But the move has also raised fears that the group could rebuild some of its strength and take advantage of a power vacuum left by a diminished AU mission.

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The Uganda People’s Defense Force announced earlier this year that it was withdrawing from the AU’s four-year-old Regional Task Force, citing sufficient gains against the LRA and inadequate support from its partner countries in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and South Sudan. It has been a decade since the LRA was forced out of northern Uganda and into the remote wilderness and borderlands of Central Africa, leaving a trail of murder, abductions and other atrocities in its wake. Yet the well-trained Ugandan army, including special forces, has continued to provide the bulk of the military might against a rebel group that no longer poses a direct threat to Uganda.

The withdrawal effectively guts the AU’s force. None of the remaining countries have the militaries to sustain it, and they have all been consumed by their own domestic strife.

The international mission targeting Kony and the LRA will be left in the lurch.

“Once the Ugandans pull out, there is no military force in the region that is willing or capable of conducting the sort of offensive, targeted operations that you would need to capture Kony and the top LRA commanders that travel around him,” says Paul Ronan, project director at the Resolve LRA Crisis Initiative, a U.S.-based advocacy group. “The Ugandan withdrawal is a major blow to any hopes of bringing Kony to justice.”

The LRA began as an uprising against the government in Kampala, but has long since stopped posing any real threat to the people of Uganda or the country as a whole. It now numbers just around 200 fighters, down from a height of more than 2,000 more than a decade ago. From a safe haven in or around Kafia Kingi—a remote but contested region at the border of Sudan, South Sudan and the Central African Republic—Kony and his militia have still launched raids against nearby villages, abducting boys and looting households, but nothing approaching the scale of their past violence. Jesper Cullen, an analyst at the Risk Advisory Group, calls the LRA “a shadow of what it was a few years ago.”

None of the remaining countries have the militaries to sustain the AU force, and they have all been consumed by their own domestic strife.

But even if it is weakened, can the LRA be neutralized if Kony remains on the run? In many ways, the image of the LRA has become irrevocably tied to Kony himself, in part because of advocacy efforts like those of Invisible Children, which produced a 30-minute documentary about the LRA’s crimes in 2012. The film went viral on the internet, while also inviting intense criticism for oversimplifying key details about the LRA. There is currently a $5 million bounty on Kony’s head.

Kony has been turned into an “arch demon” and “maniac figure” whose notoriety has eclipsed that of his militia, says Richard Downie, the deputy director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s skewed our perspectives on the group to some extent and put maybe too high a bar on judging the success or failure of the [AU] mission.”

Kony and four of his top lieutenants were indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity in 2005, the first-ever arrest warrants from the court. Dominic Ongwen, the only other indicted LRA commander believed to be alive, turned himself over to Central African Republic soldiers last year and is currently awaiting trial at the ICC.

With governments in the region also contending with spillover from the fight against Boko Haram in West Africa and al-Shabab to the east, among other conflicts, the LRA is far from the most dangerous threat to regional stability. Still, after years of chasing the group, it’s worth asking whether Uganda isn’t leaving the LRA on the ropes, rather than out for the count. The dissolution of the AU force could offer an opportunity for the LRA to regain its strength.

The African Union’s Peace and Security Council in May expressed “deep concern” about Uganda’s decision, worrying that it “could create a security vacuum, particularly in the Central African Republic, which the LRA and other negative forces could exploit to escalate their criminal activities in the region.” The AU asked for Uganda to postpone its withdrawal until May 2017, but Kampala declined. Ugandan forces have reportedly already begun withdrawing from forward bases in preparation for their eventual final departure later this year.

The United States, meanwhile, has committed 100 military advisers to the fight, first in support of Uganda and then the AU mission when it was created in 2012. After expanding existing sanctions against Kony and the LRA in March, the Treasury Department followed up in August with new sanctions on his sons, Salim and Ali, as part of what it claimed was a commitment to hounding the group. Implicit in the move was a pledge not to give up the fight against the LRA. Washington will continue to work closely with Uganda, the AU and the other nations involved in the task force “to ensure a successful completion of this mission,” an official at United States Africa Command said, while noting the dramatic gains made in recent years.

Yet the remaining LRA fighters appear to have slowly increased their activity. According to data compiled by Invisible Children and the Resolve LRA Crisis Initiative, the LRA abducted 498 people and killed 17 others in the first six months of this year, up from recent years.

The LRA is a particular threat in eastern regions of the Central African Republic, where nearly 70 percent of the abductions in the first half of 2016 took place. That poses a problem for the U.N. mission in the Central African Republic, known as MINUSCA, which has placed a greater priority on the south and west of the country. Without the bulwark of the AU task force, MINUSCA will likely be further strained, potentially exacerbating an already precarious security situation.

Left unchecked, the LRA could either rebound or fade into obscurity. Uganda’s withdrawal ensures the question remains open.

Source: world politics review

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