Lords resistance army strategic response: an international strategy for a regional threat - Term Paper Example

?Lord’s Resistance Army Strategic Response: An International Strategy for a Regional Threat The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony, is arguably the most barbaric terrorist organization in the world.1 For over 20 years, it has caused considerable damage in central Africa, particularly in northern Uganda, where it has killed, tortured, maimed, raped and abducted thousands of civilians (particularly children) to serve in its army. Since 2008, the United States supported military operation conducted by the Uganda People Defense Forces (UPDF) against the LRA has disrupted its communications and operational capacity, but the operation failed to kill Joseph Kony and other senior LRA commanders. In addition, the attacks on LRA have splintered the group into small units scattered across broad areas of Central African Republic (CAR), South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Nevertheless, LRA fighters continue to commit terrible atrocities against civilian populations in these three countries. The LRA has reportedly killed over 2,400 and abducted over 3,400 people since 2008 alone.2 As of September 2011, the LRA has displaced an estimated 440,000 people in the Central Africa region.3 While the LRA does not constitute a direct threat to the United State’s national security interests, it does poses a direct threat to regional stability in the Central Africa region. Strategic Estimate of the Situation Geography Since the early 1990’s, the Sudanese government has used the LRA as a proxy force against Uganda in retaliation for Uganda’s support for the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), then a southern Sudanese-led rebel group.4 The Sudanese government provided the LRA with arms and basis in South Sudan to attack Uganda Defense Forces (UDPF) and southern Sudanese rebels. In 1999, Uganda and Sudan reached an agreement to not support rebel groups from each other's territories, and in 2002, Sudan allowed Ugandan troops to enter South Sudan to hunt down the LRA militias. Since 2006, Joseph Kony and his followers, now reduced to a few hundred, scattered in the Central African region of South Sudan, Central African Republic and the DRC. In November 2010, the U.N. Group of Experts on the DRC described a reported meeting between an LRA delegation and Sudanese authorities, as an indication to request assistance, including safe passage and asylum for Kony.5 However, the State Department saw no evidence to corroborate allegations of continued Sudanese support for the LRA6. There is a general consensus among analysts that without Sudanese support in the past, the LRA would have ceased to exist as earlier as 1990’s. Historical and Political From the 1890’s up until 1962, Uganda was under British colonial rule. The Ugandan military was exclusively drawn from northern Uganda and particularly from Acholi’s tribe. However, when the British granted Uganda independence in 1962, northerners assumed power and excluded southerners from power sharing, which let Yoweri Museveni, a southerner, to form the National Resistance Army (NRA) to fight the northern rule. In 1986, Yoweri Museveni took power, ending nearly a decade of rule by northerners.7 Following Museveni’s victory, Alice Lakwena, an Acholi spiritual leader, emerged as a leader among northern rebel factions who sought to overthrow the new government. Lakwena’s Holy Spirit Movement (HSM) was defeated by the Ugandan military in 1987 and Joseph Kony took over the leadership as a successor rebel in the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Kony’s LRA began to target civilians in northern Uganda as part of the drive to recruit civilians into it military by force, which led to mass displacement and erosion of popular support from the community. Since the 1990’s, the LRA political ideology, which originality sought to overthrow Museveni’s government and reinstate democratic rule in Uganda, began to degenerate into a cult-like religion. Its ideology became mysterious, politically disoriented, and reclusively Acholi’s in its manifestation. Kony increasingly started to view Acholi as a sinful community that needed to be cleansed and ruled by the Ten Commandments. However, the fact remains that the rebellion in northern Uganda has deep roots in northern grievances against southern political domination and economic neglect. Social and Economic Historically, British colonial administration did not offer northerners proper education since it expected to employ many of them in the military while offering better education to southerners. This historical disadvantage meant that the northerners could not compete with southerners in the job markets, which formed underlying cause of northern marginalization. When Joseph Kony founded the LRA in 1987, many northerners had hoped that the new movement would address the Uganda government’s marginalization of northerners. The LRA initially enjoyed popular support among the northerner’s population, but immediately lost it when the LRA started to kill, mutilate, and forcefully recruit children into its militia. Contending Frames and Narratives: LRA’s Frames and Narratives The LRA claims to be the defender of the Acholi people. Its goals are to set up a government based on fundamentalist Christian values while upholding Acholi’s culture. The group holds a Nazi-like view. It wants to destroy what it called “a contaminated Acholi society” and wants to replace it with a new Acholi society; one that appeases to God and is sin free. In addition, the LRA views the Uganda government as undemocratic and repressive and believed it would be better served by replacing with one rule formed under the Ten Commandments. USA’s Frames and Narratives The United States views the LRA as terrorist organization that is out to destabilize allies in the Central African region. Apart from human rights concerns due to brutality of the group, the LRA does not pose any national security threat to the United States. However, LRA’s use of child soldiers, rape, and other violent methods against civilians has caused tremendous outrage in the United States, forcing thousands of citizens to lobby for their government to end the conflict in Central Africa. On October 14, 2011, President Obama authorized the deployment of 100 United States Special Forces soldiers to provide assistance to regional militaries that are working to capture or remove Kony from the battlefield. Winning the “hearts and minds” of the local population has a dominate counterinsurgency campaign discourse in recent decades. While winning the trust of the population is always the best policy in fighting insurgencies that have direct link to their population, the LRA has since lost such support among the Acholi people in 1990’s, and in fact, it has turned against them—the very same people whom it claimed to be fighting on their behalf. Essentially, the LRA is an insurgency group that has transformed into a terrorist organization that believes in the logic of violence. Therefore, the use of brute force should be part and parcel of any strategy aim at removing any such organization. The ability of the United States’ Special Forces soldiers to liaison with regional militaries in Central Africa has a potential to provide the United States with an opportunity to capture or eliminate the LRA’s leaders, which could lead to the collapse and disintegration of this brutal terrorist group. Concept of Response The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has become a regional nuisance that needs a strong response. Despite its diminishing numerical strength, the LRA is arguably the most deadly rebel group in Africa. It abducts children and forces them to serve as soldiers or sex slaves in their militia. The International Criminal Court (ICC) based in the Hague, Netherland, condemned the group’s actions in 2005 and indicted the LRA’s leader, Joseph Kony, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. In 2006, Ugandan Forces were able to expel the LRA in northern Uganda to the regions of the Central African Republic, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Kony and his followers continued to kill civilians and abduct children from their homes and schools. The United States backed a regional military operations launch in December. By 2009 armies of South Sudan Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo had put military pressure to eliminate the LRA’s threat. But that alone will not be enough to end the threat. Ultimately, the United States and regional allies must make it a priority to kill Joseph Kony and other senior leadership. In addition, the United States needs to support reconstruction efforts in northern Uganda to minimize the risk of a successor insurgency emerging after the defeat of the LRA. These two measures have the potential to bring to an end the LRA’s violence, which would bring stability to the troubled region. While killing Kony could lead in to the collapse of the LRA, addressing circumstances that lead to LRA’s uprising in northern Uganda will ensure the threat would be completely and permanently eliminated in the region. The centrality of Kony’s leadership to the group’s existence and cohesion makes him the center of gravity. This strategy will seek to kill Kony along with his senior leadership and, therefore, hastens the rapid disintegration of the group. The strategy is based on a belief among political analysts that the LRA will live or die with Kony8. Furthermore, the LRA is critically vulnerable in a number of areas. The LRA has difficulty growing their numbers of fighters, having lost the grass root support in northern Uganda in the 1990’s and subsequently in other communities since 2006. Therefore, denying him links to communities in the region would in turn deny the group future recruits. Contrary to general belief that takes the LRA as a serious military threat with heavily armed militias, the LRA’s prowess has been significantly degraded and their numbers greatly reduced to a few hundred from the thousands the group used to have prior to 2008. The current group consists of hardcore followers and according to the enough projects, the overall command and control structure still exists with Joseph Kony as the chairman and commander, deputized by senior officers who specialize in intelligence, logistics, personnel, training, and religious affairs.9 After the Operation Lightning Thunder, many of the LRA commanders were killed and some defected. At present, several reports indicated that the general strength of the LRA is between 300–400 combatants and more than half of these combatants are believed to be abductees from South Sudan, Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo. 10 The strategy of the United States should put greater emphasis on protecting civilians in South Sudan, Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo plan to ask their armies to help in hunting for Joseph Kony. Although Uganda has a more able military than these three countries, it should not be allowed to participate in this first phase of the strategy. Since the LRA is no longer a threat to Uganda, its army may not have a will to fully engage in this active part of the strategy, whereas the South Sudan, Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo have the invested interests in ending the LRA’s violence and also the political will to get rid of LRA out of their territories to protect their own peoples. The United States and the militaries of these countries should devise a plan in a coordinated manner to prioritize, civilian’s protection, and the neutralization of the LRA leadership using Special Forces and supporting reconstruction in northern Uganda. International Laws and Military Efforts to Dismantle the LRA After the LRA emerged in northern Uganda in 1987 and amassed an army of thousands of fighters under the leadership of Joseph Kony throughout the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, the Ugandan government implored a variety of tactics to dismantle the LRA by supporting local anti-LRA militia groups, and through counterinsurgency operations. In 2002, the Sudan government granted Ugandan troops permission to engage in counter-LRA operations in the south through 2005. After years of unsuccessful missions, the LRA and the Ugandan government engaged in peace talks knows as the Juba peace process, which ultimately broke down in 2008 when Kony pulled out of the discussions. Therefore in response, the Ugandan People’s Defense Force, UPDF, implemented “Operation Lightning Thunder” to capture or kill senior LRA members. Ultimately, the operation failed and the LRA retaliated with brutal force against the Ugandan citizens, and the Ugandan government has since attempted to dismantle the LRA through legislation which would try senior LRA commanders for war crimes. U.S. Laws that impact special force deployment in Central Africa  While the U.S. has passed several pieces of legislation to address the LRA since the late 1990’s, the United States has increased its military engagement. In 2001, the State Department included the LRA on its “Terrorist Exclusion List,” and in 2008, the Treasury Department added Kony to its list of “Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons” under the authority of Executive Order 13224, signed by President Bush which enables the freezing of assets and prohibits transactions with Americans. Furthermore, in 2010, Congress passed P.L. 111-172, the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009, which states that “it is the policy of the United States to work with regional governments toward a comprehensive and lasting resolution to the conflict in northern Uganda and other affected areas.” More importantly, the bill establishes a strategy “to guide future United States support across the region for viable multilateral efforts to mitigate and eliminate the threat to civilians and regional stability.” In October 2011, President Obama, under the authority of the War Powers Resolution, authorized the deployment of military personnel to assist Ugandan regional forces working to eliminate Joseph Kony. Moreover, the United States has provided tactical and intelligence support to the UPDF, coupled with more than $560 million in humanitarian aid between FY2002 and FY2011.   Phase I to be implemented within a year: Neutralizing Joseph Kony and LRA leadership The LRA is more of a threat to South Sudan, Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo more than Uganda due to the fact that the LRA has been out of northern Uganda since 2006 and Uganda’s People Defense Forces (UPDF) lack the political will to fully engage what their political leadership because they might view it as a peripheral national security issue. For this reason, Uganda army will be left out of the kinetic part of this strategy, but it will be included in the reconstruction efforts in northern Uganda. In fact, the reconstruction will take place exclusively in northern Uganda as part of the overall strategy to minimize the risk of successor group emerging in the northern Uganda to pick up Kony’s war on northern Uganda’s behalf. United States support for Operation Lightning Thunder is generally credited to have disrupted the LRA’s command structure and degraded it forces to a negligible levels; however, the fact remains that the operation has failed terribly to achieve its main objective, which was to kill Joseph Kony and senior commanders as originally planned. If anything, Operation Lightning Thunder has even led to increased attacks on civilians. The human rights group strongly criticized Uganda for alleged poor planning, intelligence leaks, and failure to protect civilians in the operation’s aftermath.11 For this reason, the strategy of the United States against the LRA must give greater priority to civilian protection before the kinetic elements of the strategy could be employed to annihilate the LRA’s leadership. Protecting civilians is not only important, but also a tactical strategy that could prove useful to Special Forces operations. The link of operation to civilian would feed forces a timely and invaluable human intelligence from the ground about the LRA’s whereabouts and its activities. The LRA can only survive by stealing food from remote villages as well as abducting civilians to be used as new recruits in its militia. In addition, putting together a civilian protection force would support the overall strategy by ensuring that the LRA’s reprisal attacks are met with immediate force to protect civilians. The plan to protect civilians would involve training a well-regulated armed civilian self-defense forces in each of the three countries. These self-defense armed civilian forces must be properly regulated so that they can be decommissioned once the LRA’s conflict is over without posing any risks of becoming a threat to civilians themselves. Each country’s authorities would take control their self-defense civilian’s armed groups. They have to be registered and put under specific law that would regular their activities for duration of the LRA conflict. In addition, they should be given a clear contract with each of their country’s government so they know that their mandate is temporary and that they will be let go once the LRA is defeated. However, unlike regular forces, civilian armed defense forces will not be paid; they take part in the defense of their communities if they volunteer and if the community approve of their participation in protection of the community. Once they are completely trained, they would be deployed in population centers in the areas frequented by the LRA within their own borders. The priority areas to deploy these local forces can be based upon the recent LRA activities. The operations of all of these armed civilian forces need to be better coordinated through the creation of joint operations centers manned both by United States Special Forces and the three countries whose personnel should aim to share information rapidly and widely on the locations and movements of the LRA’s fighters among the three countries militaries and their civilian counterparts. The strategy would aim to sandwich and isolate the LRA’s fighters among the three countries by creating a security ring with no outlet. This security ring would be guarded by local armed militias in support of wider operations undertaken by their armies and supported by the United States’ Special Forces against the LRA. The Special Forces will hurt and strike the LRA inside the ring while the armed civilian forces operate from the outside the ring, all while protecting civilians and feeding intelligence on the LRA movement to their forces inside their borders. Moreover, this armed civilian defense forces will work more closely with their countries’ forces to enhance information exchanges between each other. To better coordinate these forces, a centralized information dissemination center needs to be created to ensure that information is shared equally among the three countries’ militaries and armed civilian counterparts. This coordinated strategy could accomplish three vital objectives, increased civilian protection, increased intelligence collection and information sharing, and reduced maneuverability of the LRA’s fighters in the vast region of Central Africa. The map below shows the area of LRA activities and where the Special Forces soldiers as well as their armed civilian self-defense forces will be deployed. The militaries will operate inside the security ring, while the armed civilian counterparts operate from the outside the ring to protect civilian and also fight the LRA. Hunting and Striking the LRA Once the civilian protection force is put in place, the search and strike mission by Special Forces backed by the United States Special Forces will begin. In this phase of the actual kinetic action, the United States needs to make available 300 Special Forces soldiers to be divided equally and distributed among the three countries’ militaries to provide assistance to regional forces that are working toward the removal of Joseph Kony from the battlefield. The rule of engagement for the United States Special Forces soldiers would be to not take part in direct combat with the LRA, except in rare cases of self-defense if attacked by the LRA. These Special Forces will mainly provide logistical support to the CAR, DRC, and South Sudan militaries and would not take part in active engagement themselves. Their goal is to create conditions and provide an environment in which regional militaries of South Sudan, Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo can effectively fight the LRA. In addition, they will also be equipped with satellite phones and other communications equipment, tactical equipment such as night vision goggles, signaling devices, and compact pickup trucks so that they can rapidly provide logistical support to allied militaries inside the triangle ring, where the LRA would be cornered among the three countries . Lastly they will be able to provide air support in form of helicopters to be able to quickly move combat ready allied Special Forces soldiers to LRA’s locations for military actions. Demobilization of the LRA Fighters After the removal of Kony and his senior commanders from the battlefield, the next phase of the strategy would be to promote disarmament and demobilization of LRA’s remaining forces and reintegrate them back into their communities in South Sudan, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and northern Uganda. Since the LRA forcefully abducted most of these forces, it would be easier to convince them to abandon the terrorist group. The countries of South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and Uganda need to open reception centers closer to LRA areas of operations and safe enough for the humanitarian agencies to operate and help in the reintegration of former LRA combatants. Phase 2 to be Implemented in year 2: Reconstruction of northern Uganda One year after the defeat of LRA, the reconstruction of northern Ugandan should begin. Even if, the actual conflict could be over, there is still there are possibilities of conflict resurging again in northern Uganda if the root causes of that led to the LRA’s rebellion are not properly addressed. To this end, the next phase of reconstruction will be to restore northern Uganda. This will include rehabilitation of roads, school and health centers. This would be done in collaboration with the government of Uganda so that it can regain the legitimacy of northerners. The LRA’s grievances lie in the perceived marginalization of northern Uganda by the more dominant southern Uganda. Risk Assessment Two main risks may affect this strategic plan. One relates to funding of United States Special Forces soldiers, a critical part of the plan. The United States Special Forces will provide logistical, operational, and intelligence assistance to regional militaries. However, due to budget constrain in the United States’ government; obtaining such funds from Congress to fight other countries wars against other competing policy priorities, which will be a very difficult, especially when there is no clear national interest involved for the United States. This risk can be averted by asking the LRA-affected countries to contribute to a common account to execute the strategy. However, even worse most of these countries are emerging from internal conflicts themselves and may not be able to afford to finance their own defense. The second risk that may affect the implementation of this strategy against the LRA is civilian casualties. Once attacked, LRA has been notorious for reprisal by attacks against civilians. For example, during the Operation Lightning Thunder, the LRA retaliated by killing hundreds of civilians in Central Africa. This risk is very real, especially if the armies of the three countries cannot exterminate Kony and senior leadership right at the beginning of the operation. Conclusion Decapitating the LRA leadership could effectively end the LRA conflict in central Africa. However, defeating the LRA in the battlefield without addressing the root causes of the conflict may not guarantee an end to insecurity in northern Uganda. To stop the LRA conflict, the United States along with the Uganda government must address the root causes that brought about the LRA insurgency, which is the economic and political marginalization of the north. Therefore, addressing northern political and economic grievances meaningfully by reconstructing northern Uganda and rehabilitating social services could ensure that no such brutal terrorist organization could resurge again in the future to destabilize the region. The United States’ efforts to work with African militaries, in providing logistic support to defend against internal and external threats and promote regional stability could provide a framework for future United States’ participation in these small wars on the continent on the continent of Africa. The effectiveness of this strategy lay in the protection of civilian and as well as effective coordination of efforts among the regional militaries with United States Special Forces soldiers. . References. Dunn, Kevin C. “The Lord’s Resistance Army,” Review of African Political Economy (March 2004) Enough Project, “Wanted by the ICC: The LRA’s Leaders: Who They Are and What They’ve Done,” . Final Report of the Group of Experts on the DRC, Submitted in Accordance with Paragraph 6 of Security Council HRW. “Africa's Longest War Still Taking Lives,” 19 June, 2009. Ledio Cakaj. “The Lord’s Resistance Army Today,” Enough Project, November 2010 Olara Otunnu, “The Secret Genocide,” Foreign Policy, July/August 2006 Ogenga Otunnu, “Causes and Consequences of the War in Acholiland,” Conciliation Resources, 2002. Prunier, Gerard. “Rebel Movements and Proxy Warfare: Uganda, Sudan and the Congo,” African Affairs: 2004 Resolution 1896 (2009); U.N. document S/2010/596, November 29, 2010 State Department, U.S. Support to Regional Efforts to Counter the Lord’s Resistance Army, October 14, 2011 State Department, Country Reports on Terrorism 2010, August 18, 2011. U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), “LRA Update: DRC, CAR, and South Sudan,” September 20, 2011. Read More