Renewed brutal attacks and forced recruitment by Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have raised fears that the rebels are destabilizing terrain straddling three African nations, analysts said.
Since last month, a series of raids in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and southern Sudan has been blamed on the rebels and analysts say their forces could also threaten areas of the Central African Republic (CAR).
A UN report this month accused the northern Ugandan fighters of serious human rights abuses in attacks in northeastern DRC that killed more than 200 people.
The rebels “conducted a campaign of killing, systematic abduction of children and burning of almost all houses,” the report said.
Fleeing refugees said the rebels have returned to their trademark pattern of surprise attacks and abductions, after mostly minor raids during the last three years of peace talks.
“This time was different: they were killing, burning the huts, destroying the food and they took the children with them from the school into the bush,” said Denangwa John, a Congolese farmer who fled to Sudan.
Local officials say at least 100 children were snatched from southern Sudan and another 100 from DRC, with thousands displaced. The attacks follow earlier raids along the eastern jungles of the CAR, local authorities said.
LRA rebel chief Joseph Kony began his battle 20 years ago, claiming to fight against the marginalization of the people of northern Uganda. But the LRA’s ferocious attacks, in which rebels chopped off the limbs and lips of their victims, were often aimed at civilians, not the military.
In the 1990s, the rebels began moving into neighboring south Sudan, reportedly backed by Khartoum as a proxy force against southern rebels.
Since 2005, when Sudan signed a peace deal to end its long-running north-south civil war, the rebels slowly shifted to remote jungles in DRC.
“The LRA has gone from Uganda, but with this wave of abductions it is consolidating its forces in isolated areas of south Sudan, CAR and the DR Congo,” said Francois Grignon of the International Crisis Group think tank.
With oil-rich south Sudan due to vote on independence in 2011, some fear the LRA may reprise its role as a proxy force for those keen to block the emergence of a fully autonomous south.
“They are a force that could be used in future against south Sudan,” Grignon said.
A renewed LRA campaign could have a major impact on the region, causing instability in nations still trying to recover from their own civil wars.
“The LRA is seeking a role in the conflicts affecting the area, and has also sustained links with groups in Sudan,” said Tim Allen, an expert on the LRA at the London School of Economics.
“The LRA has long had a role in Sudan — linked to the antipathy of groups in the far south towards the Dinka,” he said, referring to the ethnic group dominant in much of the southern leadership.
Despite three years of peace talks, Kony — who is the subject of an International Criminal Court warrant for massacres and the rape and mutilation of civilians — has repeatedly failed to appear to sign the final peace deal.
“The LRA has received various resources in the course of the peace negotiations from a variety of actors,” Allen said.
South Sudan provided food and basic supplies to the LRA during the talks to stop them raiding areas around their bases.
However, many fear the potential involvement of Khartoum, although analysts admit there is no direct evidence.
“It has been able to re-arm and reorganize,” Allen said. “It is also the case that it has always retained a significant military capacity.”
LRA spokesman David Nyekorach Matsanga insists Kony remains “committed” to peace, blaming attacks on other militias.
“The LRA is not recruiting new soldiers or making a new offensive,” Matsanga said.
But the refugees in southern Sudan say they know the fighters are LRA.
Those in affected areas are gloomy for the future.
“The peace talks never addressed the main point: What can anyone offer Kony so that he would want to come out of the bush?” said John Patchanize, a trader whose business between Sudan and the DRC is blocked by fear of attacks on the border.
“The truth is that Kony is a warlord who understands one thing — war,” he said.
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