Congo catastrophe

UN official: Botched attacks on LRA rebels in Congo 'catastrophic' for civilians

By Jonathan Adams
Christian Science Monitor
Terrorism and Security update
February 10, 2009

A top UN official said Tuesday that the recent US-backed military attack on Ugandan rebels had been "catastrophic" for Congolese civilians, according to media reports.

At least 900 civilians were killed in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo by small groups from the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) as they fled a joint military offensive launched Dec. 14 by Uganda with help from the Congolese military. (See a BBC map of LRA bases and attacks here.)

The UN official's comments followed a New York Times report Friday breaking the news that the US had helped plan and fund the attack from its new Africa Command.

The BBC reported that John Holmes, the UN's humanitarian chief, made the comments while visiting Doruma, a city in northeast Congo near the scene of the atrocities.

But BBC and Reuters also quoted Mr. Holmes as saying that the offensive should continue against the LRA, a rebel group known for its brutal attacks against civilians and its abduction of children to use as child soldiers or sex slaves.

"I think they need to see the operation through. I don't know how long that will take ... but I think there is no point in putting a premature end to it," Holmes said. The decision lay with the Congolese and Ugandan governments, he said. "We, meanwhile, will try to pick up the pieces as best we can."

Reuters reports that some 13,000 civilians had fled their homes for Doruma, and that the UN had reported that 700 people – including 540 children – had been abducted by the LRA "to become fighters, porters, or sex slaves."

On Friday The New York Times reported that the US had paid for and helped plan the botched attack on the LRA.

Uganda and its neighbors had lost patience with the LRA for failing to sign a peace deal and were looking to wipe out or cripple the group via military means.

But the raid "went awry," the newspaper reports, and "the rebel leaders escaped, breaking their fighters into small groups that continue to ransack town after town in northeastern Congo, hacking, burning, shooting, and clubbing to death anyone in their way."

The New York Times detailed the extent of US involvement, citing US military officials.

It is the first time the United States has helped plan such a specific military offensive with Uganda, according to senior American military officials. They described a team of 17 advisers and analysts from the Pentagon's new Africa Command working closely with Ugandan officers on the mission, providing satellite phones, intelligence and $1 million in fuel.

Despite criticisms of the horrific consequences of the botched raid, a US official denied responsibility.

"We provided insights and alternatives for them to consider, but their choices were their choices," said one American military official who was briefed on the operation, referring to the African forces on the ground. "In the end, it was not our operation."

UN News reported that 40,000 civilians have also been displaced in south Sudan by LRA attacks. It said that the LRA was relatively restrained as long as peace talks were on.

The LRA has been present in the area around Duru in Haut Uele district [areas in northeast Congo where atrocities were committed] since 2005, but had mostly refrained from attacks on civilians, particularly while the peace talks continued. However, between Dec. 2007 and Aug. 2008, LRA rebels committed grave attacks on populations in DRC, Central African Republic and South Sudan, killing, pillaging, raping and abducting adults and children.

The news agency Afrol News said that 100 civilians had been massacred early this month in the most recent attack. It reported that the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for the LRA's leader, Joseph Kony. He has refused to sign a peace deal with the government until the warrant is withdrawn.

Uganda has negotiated with the LRA since 2006 in an effort to bring an end to a two-decade conflict in which tens of thousands of people have died and more than 1.5 million have been displaced.

The Associated Press reported that the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo has not been effective at preventing the LRA to spread terror at will.

The 17,000-strong UN mission in Congo is mandated to protect civilians, but its troops are mostly posted further south, around cities including Goma where separate fighting has taken place. Hunting the Ugandan rebels, who have split up into several groups, has been complicated by Congo's own brutal civil war and the involvement of troops from neighboring Rwanda.

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Trail of terror

Ugandan rebels wage vicious attacks in Democratic Republic of Congo

In a separate conflict, Congolese rebels declare a cease-fire and plan to join government forces.

By Jonathan Adams
Christian Science Monitor
Terrorism and Security Update
January 19, 2009

Ugandan rebels have massacred hundreds of villagers in the past month, blazing a trail of terror through neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, a major human rights watchdog said in a press release Friday.

Meanwhile, officials over the weekend hailed progress toward peace in a separate conflict in Congo (formerly Zaire), after several ethnic Tutsi rebel officers agreed to a cease-fire.

Human Rights Watch reported that the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a vicious group that abducts and employs child soldiers in its long-running fight against the Ugandan government, committed atrocities against civilians while fleeing Ugandan-led military assaults last month, according to Reuters.

The LRA has hacked, beaten to death or burnt alive at least 620 villagers in Democratic Republic of Congo amid a struggling multinational offensive against the rebel group, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Uganda's army, with the backing of Congolese and South Sudanese troops, launched assaults on LRA bases in northern Congo on December 14, aiming to crush the rebels and capture their leader, self-proclaimed prophet Joseph Kony.

Agence France-Presse quoted one Human Rights Watch official who underscored the barbarity of the LRA's attacks.

"The LRA went in intending to kill and they left few survivors," Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior researcher at the New York-based rights group said in a statement received Sunday.

The assessment came after researchers from HRW and Congolese rights group Justice Plus conducted a two-week mission in DR Congo, collecting lists of people killed or abducted between December 24 and January 13.

A Human Rights Watch press release documents in chilling detail atrocities committed by the LRA, as described by witnesses and survivors.

According to the Center for Defense Information, a Washington-based think tank, the Lord's Resistance Army has been active in northern Uganda since the mid-1980s.

Kony uses a combination of fear and mysticism to maintain control over the LRA and sustain the conflict in northern Uganda.

The LRA is mostly made up of children between the ages of 11 and 15. Half of these are porters and sex slaves who would leave if they could, but do not for fear of being captured by the LRA and killed, or because they simply have nowhere to go.

In a separate conflict in Congo, hopes for peace were raised when officers of the main ethnic Tutsi rebel group, the National Congress for the Defense of the People, declared a cease-fire in their fight against a progovernment militia, and said the group would now join government forces.

The BBC reported that several Tutsi rebel officers had gone over to the other side, a move that will isolate the remaining Tutsi rebel leader, Laurent Nkunda.

The breakaway faction of the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) said its fighters would join the Congolese army.

The move is expected to increase pressure on CNDP leader Laurent Nkunda to declare a full ceasefire....

Gen Nkunda says he is fighting to protect his Tutsi community from attacks by Rwandan Hutu rebels based in DR Congo, some of whom are accused of taking part in the 1994 genocide.

Reuters reported officials praising the latest developments.

A pledge by Congolese Tutsi rebels to abandon their four-year insurgency marks a major step towards ending more than a decade of conflict in the war-ravaged east, Congo's government and foreign diplomats said on Saturday....

"For the government, this is a very good thing that renders the evolution towards peace more real. This is a significant advance," Information Minister Lambert Mende told Reuters.

Xinhua reported that the Congolese government would open a center in the eastern province of North Kivu to help Tutsi rebels reintegrate into the national army.

The agency reported that the effect of the announced cease-fire was rapid:

Barriers were being removed in an area 40 km away from the provincial capital of Goma, where Ntaganda's generals announced an end to hostilities on Friday.

Goma is relieved of pressure with the dissident CNDP fighters and a pro-government militia burying the axe. The militia, known by its French acronym PARECO, said they saw no reason for continued fighting with Ntaganda's men.

Both factions have agreed to be reincorporated into the government army FARDC.

As recently as last November, the Council on Foreign Relations wrote in an analysis that "an escalation of violence in the east has raised concerns that the Congolese government could fall, with serious repercussions possible for countries throughout central Africa."

With the latest cease-fire, that possibility now looks more remote. The Congolese military will now be able to focus its efforts on the Rwandan-backed Hutu militia, the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (known by the French acronym FDLR).

According to GlobalSecurity.org, that group includes Hutu extremists from Rwanda who were involved in the 1994 genocide against minority Tutsis, and later fled Rwanda.

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Congo rebel camp raided

Joint raid sets camp of Ugandan rebel group ablaze

Uganda, Congo, and south Sudan attacked the Lord's Resistance Army camp in northern Congo on Sunday.

By Jonathan Adams
Christian Science Monitor
Terrorism and Security update
December 15, 2008

Three African nations announced Monday they had launched military operations against the notorious Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in the remote northeast forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo the previous day.

Uganda, Congo, and south Sudan said they had attacked an LRA camp and set it ablaze.

The LRA has waged a 20-year rebellion against the Ugandan government and is notorious for kidnapping children and conscripting them. Its leaders are now hiding out in the jungles of the neighboring Congo.

The Ugandan government and the LRA have been in on-and-off peace talks for more than two years, but LRA head Joseph Kony has three times this year failed to show up to sign a deal, frustrating efforts to bring peace.

The BBC reported that the three countries released a joint statement on the raid.

A statement announcing the operation was released in the Ugandan capital Kampala by the intelligence chiefs of all three armed forces.

The statement said the attack targeted the "terrorists" at their bases in the forested area of Garamba, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"The three armed forces successfully attacked the main body and destroyed the main camp of Kony, code-named camp Swahili, setting it on fire," the statement said.

Agence France-Presse reported that the three governments have lost patience with Mr. Kony. It reported that both the LRA and the Ugandan government say they are still open to negotiations, despite the obvious breakdown of the peace process.

"We are attacking the camps. So for now the peace process is off," Ugandan army spokesman Major Paddy Ankunda told AFP.

But he added: "We still think that if there is an opportunity to re-open negotiations we will do it."

The attack, in which the forces raided and set an LRA rebels' camp on fire in the Garamba region, ended a two-year ceasefire between the Ugandan army and the rebels.

LRA spokesman David Nyekorach-Matsanga condemned Sunday's attacks but said they were still committed to peace.

Bloomberg reported that the Ugandan Air Force began bombing LRA positions Sunday. Quoting a Ugandan Army official, it said there weren't yet any details on casualties. It said the stumbling block to a peace deal was International Criminal Court charges against Kony.

Rebel leader Joseph Kony refused to sign the peace agreement, demanding that the International Criminal Court first withdraw war crimes charges against him.

The Uganda government referred Kony and his commanders to the court, which indicted them in 2005, after they had fled to neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.

Uganda started negotiations with the rebel movement in July 2006 with the mediation of the South Sudan government in an attempt to end a war which has claimed thousands of lives and displaced more than 1.5 million people.

The Daily Monitor, a Ugandan daily, reported that peace talks had already collapsed in November, when Joseph Kony "failed to turn up for the third time this year to sign a deal earlier agreed upon by both sides."

In a separate interview, Maj. Ankunda told Daily Monitor last night that the attack was prompted by the rebel leader's failure to sign the deal. "He continues to kill and abduct, so we decided to move and rescue the women and children," Maj. Ankunda said. "This operation is also intended to implement the warrant of arrests issued by the International Criminal Court against Kony and his top commanders."

The Monitor said the attack was believed to have included infantry and special forces, in addition to the airstrikes.

In a report last week, the International Crisis Group said the peace process was "failing." It warned that the LRA could be used as a pawn in the coming years by the Sudanese government in Khartoum. That Arab government has long been accused of sponsoring the LRA in its fight against the Ugandan government, as a tit-for-tat measure against Uganda's alleged past sponsorship of southern Sudanese Christian rebels who fought Khartoum.

[The LRA] is available again as a proxy if Khartoum wants to disrupt the 2009 national elections, Southern Sudan's 2011 referendum, or restart war on the Sudan People's Liberation Army's (SPLA) southern flank.

The Associated Press wrote that the LRA's insurgency has destabilized several countries in the region.

The LRA has been waging one of Africa's longest and most brutal rebellions for the past 20 years, drawing in northern Uganda, eastern Congo and southern Sudan. The rebels were notorious for raping children and using them as soldiers.

According to the website Globalsecurity.org, the LRA has "committed numerous abuses and atrocities, including the abduction, rape, maiming, and killing of civilians, including children."

The LRA rebels say they are fighting for the establishment of a government based on the biblical Ten Commandments. They are notorious for kidnapping children and forcing them to become rebel fighters or concubines. More than one-half-million people in Uganda's Gulu and Kitgum districts have been displaced by the fighting and are living in temporary camps, protected by the army.

Time magazine has called the LRA "one of the world's most terrifying rebel groups."

See video documentary from Journeyman Pictures on the LRA.

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