President Barack Obama announced on Friday the deployment of around 100 American soldiers in Uganda, to provide support to soldiers in the region engaged in the fight against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group accused of committing atrocities. Obama announced in a letter to Congress, and communicated to the press, that he had “authorized a small number of American forces equipped for combat, stationed in Central Africa, in order to help regional forces acting to compel Joseph Kony (LRA leader) to leave the combat field”.
Subsequently, the same soldiers will be mobilized in other neighboring countries, where the LRA group is present. “These forces will advise partner armies” that aim at Kony and “other members of the LRA leadership”, reads the letter. “Our forces will provide information, advice and help” those military forces, Obama said.
In late 2010, President Obama issued, at the request of Congress, an action plan against the rebellion, aimed at disarming the LRA commanders and bringing the group to justice, protect civilians and supplement the humanitarian aid provided to those affected.
LRA, known as one of the most brutal guerrilla movements in the world, is active in northern Uganda since 1988, and since 2005 its combatants were installed in the north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Central African Republic and South Sudan.
Gen. Carter Ham, U.S. Army officer for Africa said on 4 October that “probably” Joseph Kony, wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity, is in the Central African Republic. “My best estimate, now, is that Joseph Kony and key commanders (of LRA) are probably in the Central African Republic”, General Ham said in an intervention to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a circle of reflection based in Washington.
“The Ugandan Army operates in this area”, he added, recalling that the LRA “continues to terrorize, kill and kidnap” people in these regions. But the General was “optimistic” about adding in the future a number of American instructors and military counselors with a mission to help countries in the region in the fight against the rebellion.
Washington provides already the training of a battalion of the Congolese army and is currently negotiating with Kinshasa the creation of a second battalion, said General Ham.