Thread: Africa gearing up to nab Ugandan warlord Kony

Africa gearing up to nab Ugandan warlord Kony

By Ioannis Gatsiounis - Special to The Washington Times
Thursday, April 19, 2012

KAMPALA, Uganda — African nations have redoubled their resolve to capture Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony in the wake of a viral online documentary highlighting his rebel group’s atrocities.

The African Union has begun a troop surge directed to end the Lord's Resistance Army’s 20-year-long war on civilians in East and Central Africa, weeks after the video “Kony 2012” attracted more than 100 milion viewers on the Internet.

The force includes an estimated 5,000 soldiers from Uganda, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic, along with communications and logistic support from the United States, and civilian escorts from the U.N.

A Regional Task Force will be headquartered in Yambio, West Equatoria State of South Sudan and will allow for free movement of troops across borders.

Mr. Kony and his estimated 500 fighters, many of them abducted children, are thought to be hiding in the dense jungle border region of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.

Ugandan military officials believe Mr. Kony himself is inside the Central African Republic, based on interviews with Lord's Resistance Army defectors.

Mr. Kony started his campaign of terror more than 20 years ago in northern Uganda. Between 1987 and 2006, 20,000 Ugandan children were abducted and nearly 2 million people were displaced in the conflict.

Torture, hacking of limbs and sex slavery have been widely reported.

Eventually repelled by Ugandan forces, Mr. Kony and his troops fled from South Sudan to the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo over an area about the size of California.

Mr. Kony and several other Lord's Resistance Army leaders, whose stated aim is to establish a religious state based on the Ten Commandments, are wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

The new effort to capture Mr. Kony seeks to improve on Operation Lightning Thunder, which was launched in 2008 by the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Uganda with U.S. intelligence and logistical support. That campaign centered on Garamba National Park in northeastern Congo , where Mr. Kony was suspected to be hiding.

But poor coordination, a shortage of ground troops and a lack of sustained air power across the vast dense jungle doomed the mission to failure and even led to a spike in civilian murders and abductees by the Lord's Resistance Army in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.

In October, the Obama administration sent 100 special forces troop, up from 17 during Lightning Thunder, to help with information-sharing, coordination and strategy, but not combat operations.

The U.S. Agency for International Development has contributed $5 million to boost telephone coverage in the region, and the U.S. has donated $17 million for helicopter and fixed-wing logistical transport [-] seen as vital to success considering the area’s extremely poor road network.

Following the release of “Kony 2012,” the EU announced it was donating $12 million in humanitarian assistance, and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has asked the U.S. government for additional aircraft support.

Africa gearing up to nab Ugandan warlord Kony - Washington Times

RELATED

http://www.alipac.us/f19/senators-in...lation-255507/