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National Security

Obama sends troops to Africa to help fight Lord’s Resistance Army guerrilla group

By William Branigin,October 14, 2011

View Photo Gallery - The Lord’s Resistance Army: President Obama announced the deployment…

President Obama said Friday he is sending a small number of U.S. combat troops to central Africa to assist in a regional effort to neutralize the Lord’s Resistance Army, a guerrilla force originally from northern Uganda that has been accused of terrorizing civilians in several countries.

In a letter to congressional leaders, Obama announced the deployment of “approximately 100” combat-equipped personnel to act as “advisers to partner forces” that are targeting the leadership of the insurgent group.

He said he ordered the deployment under a law enacted in May 2010, the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act. His letter to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and the president pro tempore of the Senate, Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), said he was keeping Congress informed of the move consistent with the War Powers Resolution.

“For more than two decades, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has murdered, raped, and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women, and children in central Africa,” the letter said, adding that the group “continues to commit atrocities across the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan.

With limited U.S. assistance, Obama wrote, “regional military efforts have thus far been unsuccessful in removing LRA leader Joseph Kony or his top commanders from the battlefield.” Therefore, he said, “I have authorized a small number of combat-equipped U.S. forces to deploy to central Africa” to help regional forces achieve that goal.

An “initial team of U.S. military personnel with appropriate combat equipment deployed to Uganda” on Wednesday, and additional forces are to be sent during the next month, Obama said. Those forces will include “a second combat-equipped team and associated headquarters, communications and logistics personnel,” he said.

Subject to host nation approval, the U.S. forces are to deploy into Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Obama wrote.

“Although the U.S. forces are combat-equipped, they will only be providing information, advice, and assistance to partner nation forces, and they will not themselves engage LRA forces unless necessary for self-defense,” Obama said.

Led by Kony, the LRA has been accused of killing, torturing, maiming, raping and abducting large numbers of civilians and local government officials and employees over the past two decades. Civilians, including children, have been kidnapped by the LRA to serve as soldiers, and young girls have been seized as sex slaves and forced laborers, human rights groups have reported.

“In addition to being beaten, raped, and forced to march until exhausted, abducted children were forced to participate in the killing of other children who had attempted to escape,” according to the GlobalSecurity.org Web site. It said human rights groups have estimated the number of abducted children held captive by the LRA at about 3,000.

In 2005, the International Criminal Court in the Hague issued arrest warrants for Kony, his deputy Vincent Otti and three top LRA commanders, charging them with crimes against humanity and war crimes. Otti and at least one of the accused commanders has since been reported killed.

Kony, 50, styles himself as a prophet and spirit medium and practices a blend of mysticism and apocalyptic Protestant Christianity. He formed his Lord’s Resistance Army from the remnants of the Holy Spirit Movement, an armed group led by his aunt that fought the Ugandan government in the late 1980s.