Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony with his daughter Lacot and son Opiyo at peace negotiations between the LRA and Ugandan religious and cultural leaders in Ri-Kwangba, Southern Sudan, on November 30, 2008. Photo/REUTERS
The Uganda government is busy cultivating public support for its offensive against the Lord’s Resistance Army in the Democratic Republic of Congo, even though Kampala last week ruled out seeking approval of the assault from parliament.
President Yoweri Museveni and his Cabinet have started a national campaign to get “everybody in the country on our side.”
Okello Oryem, State Minister for Foreign Affairs, who has also been active in the government-LRA peace talks, said the Cabinet would not limit its public relations campaign to the northern region, which has been affected by the war.
“We are not talking only to northern leaders. It is a national issue. The country has paid a high price for this conflict,” he said.
The national propaganda campaign follows a similar one by the Uganda army conducted inside Congo to woo the worn-out rebels back home and to drum up support for the renewed offensive. “We are telling everybody that we are in the DRC to guarantee peace for Ugandans,” Mr Oryem said.
Last week, President Museveni was on state television to galvanise the nation around the military offensive against the rebel group.
However, local politicians warn that Kampala risks losing face in the attack — codenamed Operation Lightning Thunder.
“We are not aware of such a campaign. But even if it takes place, we have already made our position clear. And we are not changing our position,” said Mr Livingstone Okello-Okello, chairman of the Acholi Parliamentary Group.
The armed forces of Uganda, Congo and Southern Sudan, in a joint military operation launched a week ago have been attacking LRA hideouts in Garamba, where the rebel leader Joseph Kony and his senior commanders have set up their base.
Attempts by the Cabinet to sell their new position to parliament met stiff resistance, with a cross-section of legislators calling for the immediate cessation of the operation, but the executive said the MPs’ role was to debate statements on the offensive, not to approve the assault itself.
Security Minister Amama Mbabazi said the Uganda People’s Defence Force Act only permits parliament to approve peacekeeping missions.
Members of Parliament, especially those from northern Uganda, which has borne the brunt of the war in the past two decades, last week denounced Kampala’s decision to attack the LRA, after more than two years of unsuccessful peace negotiations.
“The Acholi Parliamentary Group unreservedly condemns the ill-conceived joint military operation by the armies of Uganda, DRC and Southern Sudan,” the group said in a statement on Tuesday. The leaders caution that the operation will backfire.
“The military option failed to resolve the conflict for 20 years. In 1998, Uganda sent troops into Congo without the approval of parliament as required by the constitution,” said Mr Okello-Okello.
“The troops looted and plundered the resources of DRC. Let us hope the story will this time be different.”
Reagan Okumu, another northern MP, told journalists at parliament that Kony and his group relocated to another area two days before the joint forces bombed their camps.
In fact, three days later, when the commando unit of the UPDF special forces overran Kony’s command post at Camp Kiswahili, about 90km North of Dungu, they found no trace of the rebels.
“I do not see any difference between this assault and those in the past,” Mr Okumu said of claims that the three forces successfully attacked the main body of bandits and destroyed Kony’s main camp, setting it on fire.
Northern Uganda politicians have criticised the attacks on the basis that majority of the LRA combatants — estimated at over 90 per cent — are women and children abducted to join the rebel ranks.
“Government failed to protect those people when the rebels abducted them. So why should they kill them now?” asked Mr Okumu.
The government says it is attacking Kony because he has refused to sign the final peace agreement and his forces continue to kill and abduct people from Southern Sudan, the Central African Republic and Congo.
Kampala also says its want to rescue women and children and further execute the International Criminal Court warrants against three LRA commanders, including Kony.
“I do not support the ongoing military approach,” legislator Hassan Fungaroo said. “Our interest is not whether Kony goes to prison or not but for the conflict to end. Kony isn’t the one who started this war.”
Kony has failed to show up five times for meetings arranged for him to sign the final peace agreement.
The government says this clearly indicate Kony’s lack of interest in peace and his exploitation of the peace process to divert the international community’s attention and expand the organisation’s ability to project military power.
During the conflict, the LRA has abducted over 22,000 children for use as porters, sex slaves and child soldiers. Tens of thousands of Ugandan and Sudanese children are still missing, says the government.
The Uganda military says 157 people were abducted in Central African Republic in February and March 2008, including 55 children; 186 in Congo in October and November 2008, some 90 others in Southern Sudan and over 17,000 Congolese civilians been displaced after LRA attacks on Dungu town in Congo.
Over one million people have been displaced by the LRA between 2002 and 2004 when they returned to Uganda after UPDF attacked their camps in Sudan.
The army estimates that the rebels have killed at least over 60,000 people in the 22-year conflict.
The chief mediator at the Juba peace talks, Riek Machar, who is also Vice President of the Government of Southern Sudan, suspended the talks this month to pave the way for military action.
“Kony has used the negotiations with the government of Uganda to buy time to abduct, retrain, re-arm, and continue killing civilians,” a press statement signed by military chiefs from the three armies of Uganda, Southern Sudan and Congo stated.
Uganda’s Prime Minister Prof Apolo Nsibambi, in an interview with The EastAfrican, said the latest military pressure against Kony is designed to bring the conflict to an end and create an enabling environment for economic recovery.
“The government has tried its best to negotiate but has not succeeded. Kony needs military pressure. Such pressure enabled us to flush him out of Uganda. Since we have embarked on economic recovery in the northern region, we do not want any disruption,” Prof Nsibambi said.
Previously, Kampala had enlisted the co-operation of political leaders, elders and clan heads to corner Kony and his forces.
And it is such co-operation that Kampala is again seeking to bring Kony to book.
