High Time to End the LRA
by paco on 07 Feb 2009 | Comments
It’s high time to make a concerted and sustained international military intervention to capture Joseph Kony and bring the nightmare of his crazed militia group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to an end. Today’s story in the New York Times, describing the atrocities inflicted on the peaceful rural people of the remote northeastern corner of the Congo, in and around Garamba National Park, is truly a horror story of innocent civilians being hacked to death and babies’ heads being torn off. I hope no one is still talking about lifting the ICC warrants for the arrest of Kony and his top leaders. It’s good that the US military has chosen to contribute tactical advice and information, as reported in the NY Times story, to help the Ugandan forces in their effort to rout and apprehend Kony, but the hapless Ugandan army will need more than advice and information to get the job done. Even the “Kaibiles”, Guatemalan special forces sent after the LRA by the UN a couple of years ago, were decimated by Kony’s forces - let’s stop underestimating the LRA and send out some serious troop numbers, like the UN peacekeeping force sent into East Timor in 1999, to end his reign of terror once and for all, restore peace and stability, and put Kony on trial for war crimes at the ICC.
LRA Leader Joseph Kony. (photo: Stuart Price/AP)