It’s taken years of determined lobbying by international aid groups, but the Pentagon is finally deploying100 combat troops to do battle with Ugandan cult leader Joseph Kony and his brutal Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group in Central Africa. “These forces will act as advisers to partner forces that have the goal of removing from the battlefield Joseph Kony and other senior leadership of the LRA,” President Barack Obama said Friday.
The LRA has its roots in a bloody civil war in Uganda in the 1980s and ’90s. Chased out of their home country by the army and angry civilians, the pseudo-religious LRA spent a few years doing the bidding of Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir before international pressure ended that arrangement and the LRA fled south into the thick, roadless forest of northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo and southern Central African Republic.
In 20 years of violence, the LRA has killed or maimed tens of thousands of people, kidnapped many more and displaced millions. The group abducts children and forces them to kill, ultimately brainwashing them into serving Kony. The rebels keep young girls as sex slaves and other captives as laborers.
The U.S. advisers began deploying this week. “Although the U.S. forces are combat-equipped, they will only be providing information, advice and assistance to partner nation forces,” Obama said. “They will not themselves engage LRA forces unless necessary for self-defense.”
Though the danger to American lives is probably minimal, any effort against the LRA poses serious risks. Previous operations targeting Kony have ended badly. In 2006, a squad of Guatemalan commandos trained by the U.S. infiltrated an LRA encampment. But Kony was away. In the ensuing firefight, LRA troops wiped out the entire eight-man commando force and beheaded their commander.
Three years later, a small team from U.S. Africa Command helped the Ugandan army plan a complex series of raids on LRA camps, codenamed “Operation Lightning Thunder.” But the Ugandan air and ground forces could not coordinate their attacks. The enraged rebel survivors fanned out, killing more than 600 civilians as they fled deeper into the forest.
After the disastrous Operation Lightning Thunder, Africa Command assumed a lower profile in Congo, sending small numbers of trainers on short-term missions aimed at boosting the Congolese army. Meanwhile, aid groups and civilian militias ramped up their efforts to guard against LRA attacks, employing homemade shotguns and a DIY radio warning network. And advocates of greater U.S. involvement continued pleading their case, culminating in today’s announcement.
The LRA kills and rapes whether or not they’re being hunted. And since the LRA has no clear political cause and no grassroots support, ending their menace could be as simple as destroying the group itself. The LRA likely will not spontaneously regenerate like many Islamic terror groups do.
Of course, there’s always the risk of mission creep; just look at how the American efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan have metastasized, for instance. That’s one reason why Center for a New American Security analyst Andrew Exum called the idea of U.S. intervention in Congo “not quite New Coke, and it’s not as ill-advised as signing up to be al-Qaeda’s #3, but this is a pretty bad idea.”
Nevertheless, the international consensus is that Kony and his fighters must be killed or captured — and that doing so will help bring greater peace and stability to Central Africa. American troops will be leading the effort.
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