US troops now in 4 African countries to fight LRA

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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — U.S. troops helping in the fight against a brutal rebel group called the Lord's Resistance Army are now deployed in four Central African countries, the top U.S. special operations commander for Africa said Wednesday.

The U.S. announced in October it was sending about 100 U.S. troops — mostly special operations forces — to Central Africa to advise in the fight against the LRA and its leader Joseph Kony, a bush fighter wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
Rear Adm. Brian L. Losey, the top U.S. special operations commander for Africa, said the U.S. troops are now stationed in bases in Uganda, Congo, South Sudan and Central African Republic.
"We've already seen a decrease in the lethality of LRA activities, which we think is attributable in part to the pressure we and our partners are applying," Losey said in a telephone briefing to journalists.
Losey said counter-LRA actions will increase in frequency and effectiveness in coming months.
The LRA began its attacks in Uganda in the 1980s, when Kony sought to overthrow the government. Since being pushed out of Uganda several years ago, the militia has terrorized villages in Central Africa.
A top State Department official, Karl Wycoff, said that Kony has shown the ability to mobilize combatants and militant leaders to carry out "horrible atrocities" for the LRA, which he called "some kind of cult," given that the group has no clear agenda. He said the U.S. effort was not just aimed at Kony but at all the LRA leaders.
However, Col. Felix Kulayigye, the spokesman for Uganda's military, said the hunt for Kony was an important aspect of the anti-LRA effort.
"Kony is the LRA and the LRA is Kony," he said. "Other than Kony the only other person who had the capacity to sustain the LRA was (Vincent) Otti, who is gone. You get Kony and you have the LRA done."
Otti, Kony's former deputy, has been presumed dead since the failure of peace talks mediated by South Sudan ended in 2008. Ugandan army officials say Kony ordered his death, fearing he was about to defect.
The LRA's tactics have been widely condemned as vicious. The U.S. troops are helping to fight a group that has slaughtered thousands of civilians and routinely kidnaps children to be child soldiers and sex slaves.
The anti-LRA group Resolve in a report released Wednesday urged the U.S. to encourage Uganda to dedicate more troops and helicopters to their counter-LRA operations. The group also urged the U.S. to fund more transport helicopters and improved communications equipment for Ugandan troops, and to increase intelligence gathering by expanding the use of aerial surveillance.
Losey said there are no drone aircraft currently being used by U.S. troops involved in the counter-LRA fight. U.S. forces are working on improving communications in the region and how to integrate intelligence.
Many of the U.S. forces are stationed in Uganda. Others are based in Obo, Central African Republic; Dungu, Congo; and in Nzara, South Sudan, Losey said. Each of those locations had established bases where troops from partner countries have been based.
The LRA operates in an area the size of California, Losey said.
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Associated Press reporter Rodney Muhumuza in Kampala, Uganda contributed to this report.
news.yahoo.com/us-troops-now-4-african-countries-fight-lra-170955126.html

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UPDATE
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States said on Thursday it was making progress with its African allies in its push against Uganda's notorious Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), but gave no clear end date for the shadowy U.S. military operation unfolding in central Africa.
U.S. President Barack Obama announced in October that he was sending about 100 U.S. troops to help and advise central African countries battling LRA rebels accused of murder, rape and kidnap in a reign of terror dating back to the late 1980s.
The U.S. troops, mostly Special Forces, hope to speed the hunt for fugitive LRA leader Joseph Kony, and operate with the militaries of Uganda, the Central African Republic (CAR), South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)across some of Africa's most remote and hostile terrain.
The LRA, which says it is a religious group, emerged in northern Uganda in the 1990s and is believed to have killed, kidnapped and mutilated tens of thousands of people. Pushed out of Uganda in 2005, LRA fighters now roam remote jungle regions in neighboring states.
Kony has been indicted by the Hague-based International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Karl Wycoff, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Africa, said the intervention was showing some positive results, noting that LRA attacks were sharply down and defections were rising.
"With our support, these four military forces continue to make some progress in reducing the LRA's numbers and keeping them from regrouping," Wycoff told a briefing at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington.
"We believe it is critical that the militaries in the region continue to work together to keep the pressure on the LRA," Wycoff said.
"In the last several months, scores of people have defected, escaped or been released from the LRA's ranks. This is a welcome development," Wycoff said, adding that LRA attacks and abductions had also "decreased significantly" in the latter half of 2011.
ESCALATING PRESSURE
Attempts to negotiate peace failed in 2008 after Kony refused to sign a deal, and past efforts to defeat them militarily have tended to result in brutal retaliation taken out against local villages.
Obama's decision to send U.S. forces to join the fight marked a significant escalation of pressure on LRA, known for hacking body parts off victims and the abduction of young boys to fight and young girls for use as sex slaves.
It also thrust the United States into an expanded role in conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa, putting U.S. troops in the field to support local forces in direct combat with insurgents.
While the U.S. mission has drawn wide support in Congress, which passed a law requiring the United States to do more to fight the LRA, some analysts are skeptical that the new U.S. push will succeed where others have failed.
They have also voiced concern that the United States, by joining up with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, is strengthening the hand of an African leader increasingly accused of human rights abuses and political oppression at home.
"This is a regime that is basically slowly collapsing from within," said Joel Barkan, a Uganda expert and senior associate in the Africa program at CSIS.
"In terms of a long-term bet in respect to providing peace and security in Uganda, a country that held out such promise for a while, those days are over."
'NOT OPEN ENDED'
U.S. officials have underscored the limited nature of U.S. military involvement, and originally said the Africa deployment would last only months and would provide help on tracking, intelligence assessment and conducting patrols
Wycoff said on Thursday that the mission "was not open ended" but declined to give any further specifics.
The U.S. advisers, armed for self defense but not tasked with a combat role, work primarily with Uganda's military, which has fielded about 1,200 troops in the LRA fight.
The LRA itself is believed to have just a few hundred fighters, but their exceptional mobility and the difficulty of the terrain has made them hard to capture.
Wycoff said the overall military cooperation was going well, with U.S. advisers helping to promote information sharing, training and joint operations planning in a region riven by military and political rivalries.
A U.S.-trained Congolese light infantry battalion working with the U.N. Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) successfully prevented repeats of Christmas massacres that occurred in 2008 and 2009, he said.
The United States has also backed civilian efforts, such as a high-frequency radio network and new cellphone towers in northern Congo to help local communities trade information and establish a similar "community radio correspondence network" in the Central African Republic.
Ledio Cakaj, an independent researcher who specializes in the LRA, said the U.S. mission would be under increasing pressure to show results - and that capturing or killing Kony, even if possible, might not resolve the crisis.
"There isn't much time left. The rainy season starts in May and July and August are the wettest months. It's very hard to move in the bush," he said, noting that the LRA had been repeatedly underestimated in the past.
"You cannot kill them all, and (even if Kony dies) you will still have three or four groups operating. As long as they survive, they succeed."
news.yahoo.com/u-cites-progress-shadowy-africa-military-mission-235137636.html