Kevin Kelley
18 December 2011
Uganda has fulfilled commitments it made to the United States in regard to efforts to destroy the Lord’s Resistance Army, a senior State Department official has said.
Johnnie Carson, head of the department’s Africa Bureau and a former ambassador to Uganda, told a forum in Washington that the Obama administration recently agreed to commit 100 US military advisors to the hunt for the LRA in part because of the Ugandan government’s actions.
The UPDF has remained focused on this mission, Ambassador Carson said. He added that Uganda had co-operated with three other states in central Africa that share the goal of eliminating the LRA. Ugandan troops have also not committed human rights abuses in the search-and-destroy operations aimed at the estimated 150 to 200 fighters led by Joseph Kony, Ambassador Carson declared.
Some of his assertions were indirectly challenged by the head of a US-based non-governmental organisation who took part in the same forum.
The coalition of countries that have targeted Kony’s group is actually “falling apart,” said Michael Poffenberger, director of Resolve, an anti-LRA advocacy group. Officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo have asked Uganda to withdraw its troops from the DR Congo, Mr Poffenberger noted.
He also suggested that Uganda has not remained focused on the mission of tracking down and eliminating the LRA. “Two-thirds of the Ugandan forces have been pulled back” from the campaign, Mr Poffenberger said.
Ambassador Carson did not respond to these points. He instead elaborated on US satisfaction with Uganda’s performance.He said in response to a question that the Ugandan judicial system, which he described as “impartial, fair and thorough,” is just as capable as the International Criminal Court to conduct a trial of Kony if he is captured. “He would get a fair trial in either place,” Ambassador Carson said.
In defending President Obama’s decision to dispatch US military personnel to central Africa, Ambassador Carson made only passing mention of a similar initiative by the Bush administration that ended in failure.
The US had assigned 17 military advisors to a hunt for Kony launched in December 2008 under the code name Operation Lightning Thunder.
AllAfrica – All the Time