Military plans to capture LRA leader will trigger retaliatory attacks on civilians and endanger child soldiers, say NGOs
Charities working in the central African regions violated by the Lords Resistance Army are warning that renewed military action to capture its leader, Joseph Kony, risks triggering retaliations, threatening more deaths and displacement.
Oxfam, Cafod, Christian Aid and Conciliation Resources – along with several NGOs in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, and South Sudan – warn that previous military interventions have been followed by massacres of hundreds of people. There are also concerns for the abducted children who have been forced to join Kony's rebel army and will be on the frontline of any fighting.
Thousands of people across America are expected to take part in a rally on Friday night to campaign for Kony's capture. It has been organised by Invisible Children, whose film about the LRA went viral on the internet last month and has been viewed more than 100m times, putting pressure on governments to take action.
On 24 March the African Union announced it was convening a 5,000-strong brigade, backed with intelligence support from the US, to hunt down and capture Kony. America already has 100 agents in the region to support communities and gather intelligence on the LRA, which over the past 25 years has killed more than 100,000, abducted 70,000 and forced more than 2 million people from their homes across four countries. The LRA is now believed to number a few hundred core members. The African Union plans pre-dated the Kony 2012 campaign.
"We really question how any military intervention now will help to protect all these people against retaliation attacks from the LRA," said Ernest Sugule, president of the Congolese organisation Solidarity and Integrated Assistance to Vulnerable Populations.
"The LRA is a guerrilla group mainly comprised of ruthless commanders and forcibly abducted children. The new military offensive cannot discriminate between combatants and non-combatants and will only result in further loss of innocent lives."
Over three weeks starting on Christmas Eve 2008, 865 women, men and children were killed and hundreds more abducted in DRC and South Sudan in what was widely seen as a retaliation to the operation "Lightning Thunder", a joint military campaign by the Congolese, Ugandan, and South Sudanese armies, supported by the US. The offensive failed to capture Kony or end the activities of the LRA.
Figures from the UNHCR show that the number of LRA attacks in DRC has gone up markedly this year – before the Kony 2012 video launched. But local workers point out that the severity of attacks has decreased; that this is an army pillaging in order to feed and clothe itself rather than one now terrorising people on a daily basis.
The charities' warning comes after senior UN officials argued for alternatives to combat. Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN secretary general's special representative for children and armed conflict, called for the considerable sums that Invisible Children has raised through its campaigning to be put into rehabilitation for child soldiers rather than supporting military action.
"We would prefer the focus on the children and the funding going to the children, rather than focusing purely on a military solution. We think, absolutely, that Kony should be arrested and sent to the ICC [international criminal court]. But how we get him is crucial to us, because a lot of Kony's fighters are children," Coomaraswamy said last month.
Thousands of people – mostly college and university students – are expected to take part in the "cover the night" protest in the US, plastering the streets with Stop Kony posters to put pressure on the government to support military moves to remove Kony and the LRA.
The agencies called on UN peacekeeping forces to actively patrol areas at risk of attack and to strengthen its work encouraging rebels to defect from the LRA.
Anne Street, a humanitarian policy analyst with Cafod, said: "Without greater support and protection for those who have escaped the LRA, or more emphasis on reintegrating former combatants into communities, there will not be peace or reconciliation in the region. A sole military approach will make things very dangerous for innocent people."
The 10 agencies are made up of four international and six local organisations: three from DRC – Justice, Peace and Reconciliation Commission, Aru-Faradje; Solidarity and Integrated Assistance to Vulnerable Populations, and the Network of Women Organisations in the Ueles – one from South Sudan – the Interchurch Peace Committee – and two from Uganda – Justice and Peace Commission and Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative.