Breaking News:

Three synchronized bombs exploded in Kampala today during the World Cup final, killing at least fifty (some reports range to over 60). While many will turn their eyes to the LRA and Kony, there is another, game-changing possibility.

D&D Snap Analysis:

Synchronized explosions in crowded soft targets are not typical for the LRA, they are more typical to traditional AQ actions. This possibility is further magnified by comments made tonight by Sheik Yousuf Sheik Issa (al Shabaab Commander) in Mogadishu to an AP reporter:

"Uganda is one of our enemies...whatever makes them cry makes us happy. May Allah's anger be upon those who are against us."

If this is an Al Shabaab operation, it will mark their first outside of Somalia, and a clear shifting in both their capabilities and aims within the region. It may also signal that they are seeking some form of horizontal escalation of their conflict inside of Somalia.

More on this soon, as more details emerge.

We seem to have sparked a debate here about the LRA, and I invite everyone to contribute. This is a complex issue fraught with implications for human rights, sovereignty, and regional politics, and I think it would behoove us all to carefully unpack and analyze each component.
To begin with, commenter "Caroline" raised some excellent points about the desirability of a military approach and other alternatives, and I would like to highlight her thoughts and respond to here.

Caroline:

Dave, Thanks for writing about this important topic on your blog. I generally agree with your arguments here but have to disagree on a few points.

First, you say "America has the power to catch Kony, but not the will." I agree with you that the US will never deploy troops to capture or kill Kony. No matter how many human rights organizations jump up and down decrying the abuses of the LRA, the US will never deploy troops to capture or kill Kony. I am less certain, however, that the US actually has the power to do so -- effectively. Granted, I am not an expert on the tactics and capabilities of US Special Forces, but if faulty US intelligence was one of the reasons why the attack on Kony in December 2008 failed so catastrophically, I am not confident that the US is the best candidate for capturing him. In order to carry this out, the US would have to spend a significant amount of time gathering intel on a region of northeastern Congo and southeastern CAR that I am almost certain they are not familiar with. I highly doubt the US would commit Special Forces to spend the required amount of time gathering this intel if they did decide to launch an operation. And if they don't gather the intel, the operation will no doubt fail. Again.

This leads me to my second point. I believe discussing the military option surrounding the LRA is not a constructive debate. Neither the US nor the EU will commit the time or troops needed to capture Kony, so any operation they launch would likely fail. Continuing the debate on the military option, in my opinion, is not the direction the debate should be going. I realize there are strong vested interests in Uganda that encourage this debate, but it is a dangerous one. One glance through the Human Rights Watch reports on the consequences of the December 2008 operation should lead readers to understand that pursuing this route is both foolish and highly irresponsible given the civilian costs.

What then is the solution? I don't have an easy one. I would advocate for a return to the negotiating table, an increase in MONUC deployments (with contingents ready to use force to defend civilians) to areas at risk from LRA attack, an increase in Ugandan and possibly Rwandan deployments to Obo in CAR, and strong US, EU, and AU pressure on Khartoum to stop its recently renewed support to the LRA. All of these efforts should be focused on the protection of the civilian population, not on killing Kony. Pursuing the military option is entirely irresponsible and disregards the reality of civilian life that is lost in its wake.

Thanks in advance for considering my comments.

First of all, thanks for reading. You make some insightful and important points, and I think you and I agree on most aspects here.

Your first point, about the necessity of good intel to catch Kony, is absolutely true. It's one of the many reasons I believe the U.S. won't become more heavily involved. As you point out, gathering intel requires personnel, time, and money, and I don't believe the Obama Administration is prepared to commit those resources for a sustained effort. The difference between the U.S. and the regional governments is in capacity. The U.S. could put together the required intel if so inclined, whereas the Ugandan, Congolese, Sudanese, and CAR governments simply don't have the ability to undertake such a large, complex operation.

Your second point is also quite astute - I agree that the military option holds little promise so long as the US and EU are not willing to commit. Not only is the military option unlikely to catch Kony, but it also comes with severe human rights consequences, as you point out. This unfortunately is not a new aspect to the campaign against the LRA; the Ugandan military was responsible for despicable human rights violations in northern Uganda when pursuing Kony.

I disagree, however, with your conclusions.

In case you're just tuning in, a few weeks ago Michael Wilkerson wrote a piece for FP entitled "Why Can't Anyone Stop the LRA."  I quibbled with a few points, and wrote up my objections here on D&D.  Michael got wind of my response and wrote a supremely cogent rebuttal on his own blog, at which time the sheer hell of finals derailed me from ever posting a response.  Here, slightly belatedly, is my answer (could we call it a re-re-response?).

While it's tempting to allow this to degrade into a snarky blog-war, (because, let's face it, that's fun) I prefer more serious analysis, and in fact Michael and I agree on most points.  And even where our opinions differ, I wouldn't say we disagree so much as we have slightly different interpretations.

We agree (and Michael, please correct me if I err here) that the regional governments, South Sudan, CAR, and DRC, are extremely weak.  Michael notes that "regional governments are working together - at least on paper" and I agree, and it seems as though we concur in our analysis that this coordination is, practically speaking, essentially worthless.


We also share the belief that if the U.S. was seriously committed the LRA would soon be eliminated.  He has a great line here about the level of American commitment:

But that’s akin to saying if Congress really wanted to balance the budget it would eliminate corn subsidies. There may be a lot of truth there but that doesn’t put it very far within the realm of political possibility.

I agree wholeheartedly here; and Michael I would like to eventually discuss the merits of the increasing U.S. military presence in Africa.  My point in raising the specter of greater U.S. involvement in the chase for Kony is to critique those very factors that make it an infeasible outcome - America has the power to catch Kony, but not the will, and this must be considered among the sad reasons the LRA is still at-large.

But we do have our disagreements.  At the end of his rebuttal, Michael objects to my characterization of the Ugandan forces as "rag-tag" and points to the presence of former LRA fighters in their midst to substantiate his point.  I respectfully disagree.  Perhaps the term "rag-tag" is altogether too vague.  I take the point that these are not bottom-of-the-barrel troops - certainly these Ugandan units are superior to their Congolese colleagues.  And they appear to be better behaved than other branches of Ugandan military, which committed innumerable human rights violations in the campaign to chase the LRA from Uganda.  The Gettleman article Michael cites even quotes a representative from Human Rights Watch praising their behavior, a welcome change from the past.

But talk about damning with faint praise - those are some weak comparisons.  Militarily, perhaps the best way measure of the competence of the Ugandan troops is to look at their results, and they are not positive.  Kony is still roaming free, and reportedly has popped up everywhere from the DRC to Darfur.  And even with logistical aid from the U.S., as Michael touts, and intel contributions prior to Operation Lightning Thunder, they have been unable to corral Kony.

This is where Michael and I differ most sharply, though on a theoretical rather than practical level.  I believe that part of the reason the LRA remains at large is a failure to accurately conceptualize and analyze them as an organization.  The LRA lacks serious political goals (Kony occasionally pays lip service to the idea of ruling Uganda, but his actions belie that goal).  Nor do they have the support of the populace, on ethnic or ideological lines, to conduct a classic Maoist Peoples War.  But, on the other extreme, they don't seem to be engaged in criminal trafficking except to support their own existence.  In short, who the hell are the LRA?  If they aren't traditional insurgents or guerrillas, but they aren't criminals, who are they?

This is not simply an academic question.  How can you effectively target a group if you don't understand their motives and goals?  Overlooking the nature of the LRA is one of the reasons Operations Lightning Thunder was such a spectacular failure.  The Ugandan military (and, presumably, their U.S. supporters) were stuck in the old RMA mindset about the superiority and universal applicability of air power.  The massive bombing raids that characterized the operation would have been appropriate for the skies over Nazi Germany, but not for finding and eliminating a small group of fighters.  New enemies call for new tactics, and that lesson has gone unheeded.

There is some promise of innovation in the Ugandan's use of former LRA members as trackers, but it is an incredibly risky move and I think it also speaks to the paucity of ability among Ugandan units.  I have seen no coherent attempts to understand the existence of the LRA as anything but a band of cult killers and their brainwashed followers.  Even if that is their raison d'etre, there needs to be some work done on utilizing that information to form a coherent strategy.  Simply hunting Kony across such a vast area with little idea of where he will go next, or why, is an awfully tall task.

I don't pretend to know how to understand the LRA, and so I'll bounce that (possibly impossible) question back to Michael.  But I do think it's important to become familiar with the enemy, otherwise any strategy risks being misguided. 

In the final tally, Michael and I seem to see eye-to-eye on most aspects of the LRA.  But, Michael, what do you make of the LRA, and can we use that information to better formulate a strategy for stopping them?

Thoughts on the LRA from Louisa Seferis,  
Demagogues and Dictators Sudan Region Analyst

I'd like to point out 2 things:

Michael Wilkerson over at FP poses a fairly simple question - why can't anyone stop the LRA? - and then fails to satisfactorily answer is own query.  The short answer - regional governments are too weak to do anything, and nobody with sufficient resources (read: U.S.) is interested.

Why is the LRA still around? The Ugandan government has been trying to wipe out the group for ages, with some recent support from the United States. The governments of the DRC, South Sudan, and CAR have pitched in, all to no avail.
On top of it, the LRA should, in theory, be quite easy to defeat. It's relatively small -- according to a Ugandan Army spokesperson it has just 200 active fighters. The Enough Project estimates that there are another 800 or so kidnapped civilians on top of that -- two-thirds of which are likely children. The LRA has little firepower -- most of the DRC attacks were committed with blunt weapons like sticks and axes. It has no support from the civilians it preys on. Of course, its leader, the elusive and still at-large Joseph Kony, claims to commune with spirits and have mystical powers. But setting aside the supernatural, how is it possible that the LRA -- with no support base or weaponry -- is still thriving?

First of all, Wilkerson overplays the role of the U.S.  Yes, in recent years, the America military has provided some intel and perhaps even a bit of training for the Ugandan Army.  It's a nice PR gesture and an attempt to highlight the "good neighbor" aspects of the newly established AFRICOM.  But that token support has been extremely limited, and there's only so much help AFRICOM can provide to Ugandan forces operating far outside their own country.  If the U.S. was seriously committed to killing or capturing Kony, and provided a fraction of the resources going to Afghanistan, the LRA would no longer exist.

Second of all, the notion that "the governments of the DRC, South Sudan, and CAR have pitched in" is laughable. [READ MORE]

The disaster in the Democratic Republic of Congo continues unabated, and, as expected, the UN is moving to withdraw the controversial MONUC peacekeeping force.  The short version of the story is that Congolese President Joseph Kabila is flexing his muscles, "requesting" the UN to leave.  MONUC has long received mixed reviews, but the past year has been particularly difficult.  Allegations of assisting brutal warlords and a general inability to affect change in the restive eastern provinces have plagued the UN, and the end appears nigh.

Contributing to the regional instability is the continued presence of the Lord's Resistance Army, which has migrated from it's birthplace in Uganda across the DRC, Central African Republic, and Sudan.  Kudos to the New York Times for having an excellent reporter, Jeffrey Gettleman, there to cover the area (read his great piece on Somalia from 2009).  Unfortunately he misses part of the story about the LRA.