Uganda said on Friday it would catch Joseph Kony dead or alive, after a video spotlighting the atrocities of his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) swept the Internet and drew a wave of international support.
The LRA is notorious for violence including hacking body parts off victims and abducting young boys to fight and young girls to be used as sex slaves. Kony and his fighters were driven out of northern Uganda in 2005, after terrorizing communities for nearly two decades.
“All this hoopla about Kony and his murderous activities is good in a sense that it helps inform those who didn’t know the monster that Kony is. But of course, this is too late,” Uganda’s defense ministry spokesman Felix Kulayigye said.
Photo: Reuters
“It might take long, but we’ll catch Kony, dead or alive. How many years did it take to end the conflict in Northern Ireland? So our hunt for Kony can take long, but it will end one day,” he said.
The 30-minute YouTube video, by a little-known team of filmmakers based in San Diego, California, made an emotional appeal for the US-backed Ugandan armed forces to capture the LRA leader by the end of this year.
By Thursday, it had been viewed almost 40 million times, while Tweets about Kony had become the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter.
Kony fled northern Uganda to roam the dense forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), Central African Republic and South Sudan. Attempts to corner him and his rump LRA force, believed to be 200 to 300 strong, have failed.
In a renewed push to bring Kony to justice, US President Barack Obama sent 100 US military advisers to the region last year to help Ugandan forces track down the self-declared mystic.
US troops have set up a small base in the Central African Republic, where Ugandan soldiers are also operating, though the latest reports suggest Kony is now in neighboring DR Congo.
According to Matthew Green, author of a book about the hunt for Kony, The Wizard of the Nile, his units were highly organized and armed with recoilless rifles, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, VHF radios and satellite phones.
Green says escaped LRA child soldiers he interviewed expressed contempt for the Ugandan army as a fighting force.
“Much as they might like to grab Kony, the Ugandan military and other armies in the region have repeatedly proved that they lack the necessary helicopter, logistical and intelligence-gathering capabilities,” Green said.
“US forces could get the job done, but there would have to be a remarkable shift in the political calculus in Washington for them to consider a kill-or-capture mission,” he added.
Fred Opolot, director of the Ugandan government’s Media Center said the LRA leader was operating in “some of the most difficult terrain anyone can imagine.”
“People who are thinking it’s taking long to eradicate the LRA menace need to appreciate the overwhelming geopolitical complexities involved in the hunt for these guys,” Opolot said.
Ned Dalby, Central Africa analyst for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, said geographical, logistical and political realities severely complicated the hunt for Kony.
He said the armies of South Sudan, DR Congo and Central African Republic were poorly equipped, lacked professionalism and had discipline problems.
The US-backed Ugandan army spearheading the hunt for the fugitive LRA leader was more professional, but were not being allowed to enter Congolese territory for now, Dalby said.
The US soldiers were “no silver bullet,” he said.
The independent research group Small Arms Survey said there had been at least 12 raids by the LRA in northeastern DR Congo in the first two weeks of last month.
People in the isolated southeastern town of Obo in Central African Republic said Kony and his men lived concealed in the forests.
“They’re more at home there than the animals,” said Mauricio Gueyi, a local driver.
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