Kony tapped UPDF radio - Museveni

From the Monitor Kampala by Rodney Muhumuza 23 December 2008:

President Yoweri Museveni has said at least four battalions of Ugandan troops are closing in on Joseph Kony in DR Congo’s forested Garamba area, over a week after a joint force bombarded the rebel leader’s camps and forced him to flee.

Mr Museveni, who described the attack as very successful, said the reclusive rebel leader may have escaped because he acquired a gadget that he used to monitor the radio conversations of the pilots manning the helicopter gunships.

“We found that there was a manual of a certain gadget Kony may have used to monitor the radio conversations of the pilots,” Mr Museveni told a press conference in Kampala yesterday. “We captured the manual but we did not capture the gadget itself. The gadget only becomes useful if the pilots do not maintain radio silence.”

Mr Museveni, who regretted that his government spent time negotiating peace with the Lord’s Resistance Army, said the UPDF would seek to block Kony from crossing into the Central African Republic, where his troops have sometimes sneaked to recruit and cause havoc.

“The force on the western side of Garamba has detected a group of 100 fighters trying to go to the Central African Republic,” Mr Museveni said. “We shall get them before they go there.”

Mr Museveni said the operation had been successful despite delays in putting the ground forces into action.

Ugandan commandos entered Garamba last Tuesday, two days after the initial assault.

Although there have been no casualties from the attack, Mr Museveni said yesterday that LRA fighters may have returned to bury their dead. “It was a very successful operation…we attacked Kony’s main camp and devastated it,” Mr Museveni said. “Kony only understands one language--- the language of the gun.”

Kony, indicted by the International Criminal Court in 2005 on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, in April refused to sign a peace deal negotiated under the mediation of the South Sudan government.

Kony has said he will not sign the peace deal until the ICC withdraws arrest warrants for him and his top lieutenants.

The offensive on Garamba, where Kony had be holed up for nearly three years, was the first direct confrontation between the UPDF and the LRA since a ceasefire agreement was signed in August 2006.
 
“I don’t think that it was ever correct to beg Kony for peace as some groups were doing,” Mr Museveni said. “We had no other option but to act against these criminal acts.”

A section of Acholi elders, reacting to the offensive, said aerial bombardment of the LRA camps was the wrong tactic against a rebel group that still holds many women and children, most of them forcibly recruited.

Mr Museveni said yesterday he had asked the Police to examine whether the recent statements of MPs Reagan Okumu and Livingstone Okello-Okello, who claimed that the allied forces had hit empty camps, were not potentially criminal.

Mr Museveni suggested that the Ugandan contingent would stay in Garamba for an extended period as it tries to capture or kill Kony.
 
“If Kony tried to settle in any other region, he would be exposed to more danger than in Garamba,” he said. “I would like to assure Ugandans that this is the end of Kony as the terrorist of Uganda… As an old fighter, I wouldn’t want to be in Kony’s position. The combined operations are about to decimate him.”

Meanwhile, the LRA yesterday set new demands for talks with the government and called for a ceasefire.

Addressing a press conference in Nairobi, the leader of the LRA peace delegation, Mr David Nyekorach Matsanga, said the LRA will not go back to Juba for the completion of the talks and signing of the Final Peace Agreement (FPA).

He added LRA want a different person other than vice President of South Sudan, Dr Riek Machar, to chair the talks.

If possible, Dr Matsanga said, a UN appointed envoy should take over the process as Dr Machar “has lost credibility to mediate in the conflict.”

He termed Dr Machar as a traitor especially after the Sunday attacks. Mr Matsanga said the UN appointed envoy should report directly to the UN Security Council at every step made.

The rebel group demanded the inclusion of Sant. E-Gideo, an international NGO in Northern Uganda in the peace talks.

LRA's Kony spotted heading for Central African Republic

Photo: UPDF soldiers celebrate overrunning Kony’s camp in the Garamba Forest. One of them is wearing the LRA leader’s wig

LRA boss spotted heading for Central African Republic

Sunday Vision report by Barbara Among Saturday 20 Dec 2008:

KONY ON THE RUN

REBEL leader Joseph Kony has once again eluded the military dragnet and is said to be heading to the Central African Republic (CAR).

Intelligence information shows that Kony, who had left his centre of operations at Camp Swahili to go hunting shortly before the attack, never actually came back to his camp and could have just continued on to the CAR.

Last Sunday Kony’s bases were bombarded in an operation codenamed Lightning Thunder, jointly carried out by Uganda, Congo and South Sudan forces after Kony refused to sign the peace agreement that had been painstakingly reached in Juba in April.

According to SPLA sources based in Yambio, Kony is heading into the CAR. It’s a couple of days walk from Garamba to the southeastern CAR.

Along the way small groups of LRA were reported looting food and abducting people. They reportedly looked tired and were not heavily armed, confirming reports that they had abandoned their guns during Sunday’s surprise attack.

“Small bands of LRA looted and abducted people,” sources said.

However, because of the surprise attack and presence of allied forces at Dungu, the LRA rebels are this time heading westwards to an area that is extremely poor and sparsely populated.

This area has little attention from the CAR government.

The LRA’s spokesperson, David Matsanga, denied reports that Kony had crossed into the CAR. “If he has crossed, asked the CAR government to confirm,” he said.

“Slowly the military option will become elusive; like we said before, it wont yield peace."

The LRA have been moving between South Sudan, DR Congo and the Central African Republic via Dungu for the last two years. They were able to access fertile and populated areas of Haut Mbomou Prefecture, southeastern CAR.

Intelligence information from the UN indicates that the rebels previously, while in the CAR, were based in the villages of Obo Bambouti, Gbassigbiri and Ligoua.

The logistics base in Dungu is being used for surveillance and intelligence work by the allied forces, including the UN mission in DR Congo (MONUC). It was also aimed at preventing the LRA from crossing in and out of the CAR.

It is, however, still unclear whether the joint forces would track Kony inside CAR. Sources said a top Ugandan minister visited the country a week before the attack.

The CAR has expressed its willingness to help Uganda flush the LRA out of its territory. Foreign affairs minister Sam Kutesa told journalists on Tuesday at his office that the CAR government had said it was ready to co-operate in the operation.

In his report on the status of the peace talks, chief mediator Riek Machar said that during the December 4 meeting with President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa and December 8 meeting with President Yoweri Museveni, both expressed disappointment that Kony had not signed the final deal. They also pointed out that he was a threat to the security of the two countries.

It has also emerged that shortly before the attack last Sunday President Museveni called President Kabila and Sudan’s Salva Kiir to inform them that Operation Lightning Thunder was underway.

Operation spokesperson Chris Magezi said without weapons and food the rebels cannot put up a long fight. “We have achieved a lot and this has been a big blow to Kony. We are occupying all of the LRA camp and major food sources; Kony cannot survive on the food he carried away for long.”

He added, “Because of the pursuit, they have continued to drop valuable items such as mattresses and food. We shall get him.”

However, sources intimated to Sunday Vision that the Special Forces had been operating in the area gathering intelligence disguised as locals and hunters for the last two years.

“Through them the army was able to get the rebels’ routine, which were used in the planning and the attack was timed to take place during their parade,” said a source within Uganda’s security, who preferred anonymity, as he is not the official spokesperson.

“Plan B was given two and a half years. Why give the military two days?” asked Col. Walter Ochora.

He added: “The CAR is not on the moon, but in case they cross, we have the support from the French. They are putting an eye on the Central African Republic.”

Speaking to Sunday Vision during a security meeting in Kampala early this year, the MONUC head of regional relations unit, Gani Are, said: “We carried out intelligence work and know the group we are dealing with.”

He estimated that 1,573 Ugandan remnant combatants were holed up in eastern Congo, of which the LRA combatants and their families number around 1,200.

But Uganda security estimated the number of combatants and non-combatants to be 800. During the past two years of no fighting, some LRA reportedly escaped and the rebels’ fighting spirit had reportedly declined.

Operation Lightning Thunder is co-ordinated by the military intelligence chiefs of the three armies and MONUC.

Published on: Saturday, 20th December, 2008

Is UPDF about to attack Kony’s Congo camps?

IS UPDF ABOUT TO ATTACK KONY'S CONGO CAMPS?
December 07, 2008 article from the Monitor by Tabu Butagira and Risdel Kasasira in Kampala, Uganda:

Last week’s refusal by Lords Resistance Army rebel leader, Joseph Kony to sign a peace deal with Uganda government could give him safer days in the bush, but the trick could soon backfire to trouble, if not a pre-emptive strike against the insurgents amid pronounced shifts in regional geo-politics.

Analysts say Uganda has a number of options to deal with the rebels hiding in Garamba, the DR Congo. One such proposal, that Kampala appears to be considering seriously, is to confront Kony and his fighters militarily or rally regional neighbours for a joint offensive.

Dr Simba Kayunga, a political science lecturer at Makerere University, suggests though that since a scattered LRA, very distant from Uganda’s borders poses no direct threat to the country; they could as well be ignored.

“Instead of chasing for the signature of Kony, I think the best thing for government to do is address the fundamental political grievances that produced the rebellion,” said Dr Kayunga.

Pundits fear that Kony could use the present cessation of hostilities to recruit and re-arm, and return with a more lethal force to terrorise northern Uganda.

Dr Kayunga said war-affected areas should be rebuilt and national jobs/resources allocated in a way that makes disaffected societies feel accepted as part of the incumbent government and Uganda.

It is understood this approach will eliminate pockets of internal discontent and deny any overt or covert indigenous support to the LRA, who have fought President Museveni’s government for the last 20 years.

But radicals within government want quick war. Anti-Personnel Carriers (APCs) and other armoured vehicles that have been idle at the UPDF 4 Division headquarters were early this week serviced and driven around Gulu town, causing tension among civilians.

A group of soldiers in Koboko are reported to be undergoing ‘refresher drills’ near Oraba border post. Col. Sam Kavuma, the commanding officer of the Pader-based UPDF 5 Division has met a joint team of senior security officers, and a press statement issued after the sitting said Uganda was set to tackle the LRA. The officers, sources say, were drawn from the core of the command that will lead what is increasingly looking like the next violent phase in the two-decade conflict.

This paper has heard that the military has intensified security reconnaissance along the porous frontier with Sudan and DRC after Kony, for the fourth time this year, refused to put his signature to the Juba agreement. The army, however, says these are but just routine exercises.

The United States has joined the fray, expressing “disappointment” over the failure by Kony to sign the Final Peace Agreement as scheduled on November 29, suggesting that pursuing negotiations with the LRA is now a futile exercise.

Mr Steven Browning, the US Ambassador to Uganda, said: “This latest failure to sign, combined with recent atrocities committed by the LRA in eastern Congo, indicate that the LRA leadership is not committed to peace. This in turn calls into question the value of continuing the efforts of regional and international facilitators to advance the Juba peace process.”

The Friday statement, sent in reply to inquiries by Sunday Monitor, called on the rebels to immediately halt brutal attacks on civilian targets in the DRC and Western Equatoria State of Sudan, that have suffered the brunt of bloody LRA attacks in the past several months.

“The US continues to encourage the governments of Uganda, the DRC, and southern Sudan to consult together on resolving the LRA issue,” said Mr Browning.

Incidentally, the Tri-partite Plus regional grouping, comprising Rwanda, Uganda, the DRC and Burundi starts meeting tomorrow in Kigali to devise a common strategy to handle the LRA, a group that is believed to have the capacity to destabilise the entire region.

These countries, that ironically are political foes of sorts, will be carrying their differences to the negotiating table. This may impinge on consensus.

It is, however, telling that in writing off continued peace talks, Ambassador Browning appears to revive the push for a military option that Ms Jendayi Frazer, the top American diplomat for Africa, advanced earlier this year.

Uganda is sending State Defence Minister, Ruth Nankabirwa to lobby unconditional support of the neighbouring countries for military action. This would help the country, build an agreeable case for stern action against LRA based on regional consensus, when Mr Joacqim Chissano, the UN secretary-general’s special envoy for LRA war-affected areas, briefs the Security Council later this month.

Ms Nankabirwa said Uganda cannot yet attack Kony in Garamba without authorisation by regional neighbours, particularly President Joseph Kabila’s regime and the Khartoum government.

“We cannot do this (attack) alone, it must be done with the consent of other members because the LRA rebels are hiding in Congo,” she said, adding, “President Museveni is in touch with the Presidents of Rwanda, DRC, Burundi and Southern Sudan to come up with a common position on Kony.”

But the UK, one of Uganda’s key development partners, appears reluctant to support a military campaign against the rebels, which is not endorsed by the United Nations.

The British High Commission in Kampala said, “The UK is a strong supporter of the Juba process.

We regret that, despite commitments, the LRA have not signed the Final Peace Agreement. Reports of the rebels attacking in the region are deeply worrying and must stop. There will be further discussions at the UN after [former] President Chissano presents his report.”

The statement sent to Sunday Monitor urged the Uganda government to fully implement the delayed Shs1 trillion Peace, Recovery and Development Plan, expected to revive the economy and spark development besides restoring State authority in war-affected northern and far eastern regions.

This may explain why the Nairobi-branch of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) says Kony may continue to hibernate in Congo forests as long as his forces do not disturb Congolese or Sudanese citizens.

“If the LRA provoke hostility by causing havoc in the surrounding communities, the regional governments will collectively or unilaterally pay him in the same currency,” said Mr Xavier Ejoyi, a researcher with the think-tank.

The four truckloads of food, delivered to the rebels at the weekend when Kony promised to sign the pact, could settle the fighters, for now. But once the rations run out, they will likely resume raids, attracting immediate counter-attacks?

For now, indications from almost all quarters are that the UPDF are just about to commence a pre-emptive engagement against the LRA. The question is: will it succeed?

Cross posted to Uganda Watch,

DR Congo forces to suspend operations against Ugandan terrorist group LRA on condition that Kony signs Final Peace Agreement by end of Nov

Monday 10 November 2008 (Sudan Tribune) report by James Gatdet Dak - DR Congo forces to suspend operations against the LRA:

Photo: DR Congo President Kabila shaking hands with Government of South Sudan (GOSS) VP, Riek Machar, Nairobi, November 7, 2008. (Photo: J.G. Dak, ST)

November 9, 2008 (NAIROBI) – Regular forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) will cease military operations against the Ugandan rebels, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), said President Lauren Kabila.

LRA forces have been reportedly clashing with Congolese troops for the last two months inside DR Congo as the rebels have been allegedly destroying Congolese villages and abducting children.

President Kabila told the Government of Southern Sudan’s Vice President, Dr. Riek Machar in their meeting in Nairobi on Friday that his forces would ceasefire with the LRA on condition that Joseph Kony signs the Final Peace Agreement with the Uganda government by the end of November.

The DR Congo President who came to attend the AU Summit in Nairobi to resolve the conflict in his country expressed his support to the Uganda peace process and he called on the LRA leadership to re-assemble its forces in the designated area at Sudan’s border with his country.

Machar who also participated in the Summit held a consultative meeting with senior United Nations personnel on the Uganda peace process.

They discussed possibility of stationing some members of the Cessation of Hostilities Monitoring Team (CHMT) with UN MONOC forces based in Dungu and other areas inside DR Congo to monitor the movement and activities of the LRA.

CHMT was established in Juba to monitor the implementation of the cessation of hostilities agreement signed two years ago between the Uganda government and the LRA, and it is composed of senior military officers from Kenya, South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania, DR Congo, Uganda, Southern Sudan and the LRA.

The Team is led by Major General Wilson Deng of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).

MONOC forces would also provide the CHMT members to be based in DR Congo with necessary logistical support.

Vice President Machar, who is the Chief Mediator of the Uganda peace talks, said he had also reached an understanding with UNMIS in Southern Sudan to reconstruct the main road from the Sudan-DR Congo border at Ri-kwangba up to Maridi town in Western Equatoria state.

The UN MONOC forces would also construct a road from the DR Congo side of the border to link the two countries by land.

He said this would also connect Sudan’s UNMIS and DR Congo’s MONOC by land and would make movement and trade between Western Equatoria state and DR Congo possible.

A Stake holders’ Consultative Conference held in Kampala this week called on the LRA leader to sign the peace agreement by November 29, 2008.

Since April 10 this year, the LRA leader Joseph Kony has refused to sign the peace deal, demanding that the Ugandan government should first approach the International Criminal Court (ICC) to defer indictment on him for alleged serious crimes he committed during his rebellion.

President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda on Thursday said his government would approach the ICC to defer the indictment after the LRA leader has signed the Final Peace Agreement.

LRA has proved to be a threat to regional security and analysis say the Government of Southern Sudan’s mediated Juba peace process is the best chance to end its 22 years rebellion.