US Uses Advanced Intelligence to seek LRA in Central Africa

In a one-room radio station deep within the forests of the Central African Republic, an announcer broadcasts a message to these kidnapped by the Lord's Resistance Army.

Come home, the message says, your loved ones will accept you, it doesn't matter what atrocities you have got committed.

Emmanuel Daba, one of many hosts on the U.S.-funded Radio Zereda, was kidnapped by the LRA in 2008 and served as a porter for the rebels for a year, before he escaped.

“We conducted raids on villages in South Sudan and the Congo,” he said. “We killed many people, with machetes, with sticks and clubs.”

Daba was among the thousands abducted by the LRA because it first launched an insurgency in Uganda two decades ago, led by the notorious and elusive commander Joseph Kony.

Since then, the gang has opened up into South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. Once numbering within the thousands, the LRA now could be believed to have very few hundred fighters at most.

While their numbers have diminished, their ability to inflict terror has not. The United Nations estimates that 465,000 people were displaced last year due to LRA threat.
VOA

Guiding the 'pointy end'

Last year, U.S. President Barack Obama authorized the deployment of about 100 U.S. special forces troops to aid capture or kill members of the LRA.

Small teams of soldiers have helped established operating centers in five locations across central Africa.

The head of U.S. counter-LRA operations, Navy Captain Ken Wright, said the soldiers' role is to work within the background, to actively support regional militaries.

“They are those who will exit and affect the capture of Joseph Kony at the battlefield,” he said, “We need not be on the pointy end of a patrol to impact and support their actions.”

In Obo, U.S. soldiers share information with their counterparts from the Ugandan and Central African Republic militaries on the Counter-LRA Operations Fusion Center [COFC]. The middle is housed in a small building that after belonged to a physician murdered by the LRA. Maps of central Africa adorn the walls of the meeting room, together with pictures of the LRA commanders, including Kony.

The room is open to members of the local communities, in addition to hunters and nomadic herdsmen who could have information to share in regards to the LRA's whereabouts.

Wright said this data sharing is bringing the joint forces in the direction of tracking down the group's senior leaders.

“Every day we're out here working with our partner nation forces, we develop an improved understanding of the LRA and their location within the battle space,” he said. “Every day that view is refined further and further.”

Ugandan military spokesman Colonel Felix Kulayigye said U.S. intelligence support may be the turning point in quest of Kony.

“As you're aware, an army without intelligence is nearly as good as a blind person,” he said. "We believe this support will certainly help us capture Kony, or kill him.”

Where is Kony?

Tracking the rebel leader is a chief challenge. LRA fighters have all but abandoned using mobile or satellite phones to speak with each other, making them very difficult to track.

Dispersed across a neighborhood the dimensions of California, the LRA moves in small groups, only occasionally meeting up at pre-determined rendezvous points.

Kulayigye says the newest intelligence reports suggest Kony is somewhere within the Central African Republic, though he previously said the rebel leader was inside the southern Darfur region of Sudan.

Mathew Brubacher, the political views officer for the U.N. peacekeeping mission within the DRC, was studying the LRA for nine years, and frequently interviews abductees who've been released or free of the gang, searching for details about their leaders.

Brubacher also had heard Kony could have been in Sudan, but said that information is tough to confirm.

“I imagine he's just moving around,” he said, “crossing borders frequently, probably with a reasonably small group with an even bigger group providing extra support. That is the way he usually moves.”

Wright said the LRA's small group numbers pose a singular challenge, but that military pressure is operating.

“Their ability to negatively affect the surroundings and the folk around them is greatly reduced,” he said. “They are almost on a survival mode at this point.”

From WhatNewsToday.net

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