False hope or is Kony nightmare finally drawing to an end?

Members of the LRA when their leader Joseph Kony met with a delegation of Ugandan officials and representatives from non-governmental organisations in 2006.FILE 

By  JULIUS BARIGABA, The EastAfrican

In Summary

• Joseph Kony's demands have an all too familiar echo, raising fears that the reported offer to surrender could be his latest charade.

The world was last Wednesday gripped by a new sense of anticipation when the BBC reported that the government of the Central African Republic had been in contact with Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony, with a view to the latter’s surrender.

This could end 25 years of rebellion in which Kony has turned northern Uganda, parts of Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Sudan and Central African Republic into a theatre for one of the Great Lakes region’s most brutal conflicts.

However, it has emerged that the reported proposition by Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony to surrender could be far from real, but it still points at fault lines that are becoming more pronounced in the rebel force’s camp.

The EastAfrican has learnt that there has been no contact between the CAR government and the evasive Kony. However, talk of his surrender was triggered by contact between the CAR government and a small group of LRA fighters a few days ago.

“What we know is that one group of LRA fighters, between four and 15, mostly of mid-level ranks and one senior officer, made contact with the government in Central African Republic. It’s this group that gave the impression that Kony is under a lot of pressure and would be willing to surrender,” said Kasper Agger, field researcher for the US-based NGO Enough Project, which has been tracking the LRA conflict.

READ: Are LRA fighters being drafted into CAR army?

This development of a small group talking of surrendering indicates that there is growing apathy and disagreement within LRA ranks on how the rebel force can continue to execute its insurgency in territories distant from the Uganda government, the main target of the LRA uprising in 1987-88. Another top LRA commander, Caesar Acellam, surrendered with his family in CAR in May last year.

In September this year, the UN issued a statement saying that some 1,200 LRA fighters wanted to defect, but this raised questions of credibility, as the entire rebel force is believed to be down to a core of 250 fighters, and another 200 auxiliary members who include children and wives of LRA fighters.

Mr Agger argues that the credibility of Kony’s surrender proposition of Wednesday 20 should have been accompanied by letters or announcements from LRA spokespersons.

Indeed, other organisations like Invisible Children and the International Crisis Group that have kept tabs on this conflict — especially in the DRC and CAR, where it has mostly played out since 2005 when LRA fled northern Uganda — also argue that a rebel leader keen on surrendering, should by now have made goodwill gestures, by starting to release women and children that the LRA has been holding in captivity.

The UN, the 100 United States Special Forces troops and the African Union regional task force that are hunting the LRA are not sure of Kony’s current whereabouts after he got away in March this year following a raid by the Ugandan contingent of the regional task force on the LRA hideout in the Sudanese controlled Kafia Kingi area of South Darfur.

Indeed, the US Special Forces and Uganda troops are yet to make a decisive strike at Nzako in CAR, the location where Kony is suspected to have fled after he was driven out of Kafia Kingi.

According to a new report by Enough Project released on November 20, titled “Blind Spots: Gaining access to areas where the LRA operates,” the LRA is a much weakened outfit but the regional forces hunting it down are hampered by specific political and logistical challenges to access the remote areas where the rebel force operates.

But the report concludes that LRA’s surrender for now is still a farfetched proposition unless the rebel group’s safe havens are completely eliminated.

“Military pressure and defection programmes have reportedly reduced the number of LRA fighters to approximately 250 and largely pushed the group into hiding.