operation lighting thunder: next steps

operation lightning thunder (the name for the joint military offensive launched in december) has largely been viewed as a failure. after over a month of military activity, uganda is no closer to apprehending LRA leaders, rebel retaliatory attacks on civilians in DRC have skyrocketed, hundreds more children have been abducted, and the civilian death toll is nearly 1000. there is disagreement among NGOs and civil society groups as to what the next course of action should be. some push for a complete withdrawl of coalition troops from DRC. others feel that withdrawl at this point would only pave the way for further violence, as the ugandan-rwandan-sudanese troops would be unable to protect civilians and counter LRA attacks. still others believe the operation should continue as planned. in the debates around this situation, i even seeing some striking similarities to the debates around the iraq war.

i'm a bit uncertain as to where i fall on this spectrum of opinions. while i don't think that the operation should have been launched in the first place and agree that its implementation has been disastrous, with its disregard for providing security to civilians, i think a complete troop withdrawl right now might do more harm than good. i'm leaning more towards agreeing that it's best to continue the operation, but change the strategy to be much more discriminate in its activities--to focus solely on apprehending the LRA leaders and to put a much greater focus on protecting civilians and limiting attacks where civilians would be caught in the crossfire. i know that's much easier said than done, but hopefully if that path is taken, something could be salvaged from this mess and it might even bring uganda closer to peace.

thoughts on the recent developments in the civil war

so in the past week, the war in uganda has turned upside down. as it’s an issue i’ve been following rather closely for the past few years, it’s really big news to me. plus i’m wondering if it will have an impact on me when i go to uganda for 5 months starting in february.

the ugandan president yoweri museveni recently announced a massive tri-nation military strike against eastern DRC to wipe out the bases of the ugandan rebel group the LRA, who have relocated there in the past few years. it makes sense, in a way—since the peace talks fell apart last spring, the LRA has grown increasingly violent against congolese civilians, which is really the last thing congo needs considering its problems with domestic rebels.

the military alliance between uganda, DRC, and sudan is interesting, considering that uganda backed rebel groups in the DRC less than a decade ago, and sudan and uganda each funded rebel groups in the other’s country in the 90’s, so relations in the region have obviously been rather tense since then. anyway, the military strategy has been very “successful”— up to 70% of the rebel bases have been destroyed in the recent strikes, which goes a long way towards eliminating the rebellion and ending the war.

some people say that “force is the only language the rebels understand; we have to fight fire with fire.” but i’m not so sure, considering some of the implications of this strategy. i remember discussing with my boss, at resolve uganda last summer, whether a military solution was the best option. for one thing, from a moral standpoint, i’d like to think that there are peaceful solutions to conflict, that dropping bombs and shooting people, whether this is done by governments or rebels, isn’t the way to resolving political disputes.

lots of people say that viewing the LRA as a politically-motivated group is inappropriate, that they’ve ceded their legitimacy as a politically motivated insurgency by their excessive brutality. they did have a political motivation, though—they claim to be fighting for the rights of the northern people, and it’s quite true that northern groups have been subjected to human rights abuses and politically, socially, and economically marginalized for decades. further, they claim a religious motivation—guided by the spirits believed to possess the rebel leader, with an ideology of mystic Christianity mixed with traditional spiritual practices, they are supposedly fighting to purge the sins and evil from the people and create a new order based on the rule of God, in particular to rewrite uganda’s laws to align with the ten commandments. i suppose it’s true that rebel groups can devolve from their original high motives to groups simply fighting for survival, once they realize the futility of their struggle and their incapacity to run a country even if they did successfully take over the government.

but we can’t just push them into the category of irrational, violent monsters, either. lots of authors have made the same argument about genocide—it’s so horrific that we prefer to just call it unthinkable and squeeze our eyes shut against it and set it aside. but this does absolutely nothing to advance the cause of “never again”—if we never address the political and psychological causes behind such horrific tactics, we’ll do nothing to prevent it happening again. and i’d like to believe that we don’t live in a world where people will massacre babies, kidnap and brainwash children, rape women and hack off people’s limbs without at least some twisted idea that they’re doing it for some higher cause and not simply for the sake of the violence itself.

a second complication with the military strategy is the fact that 90% of the LRA’s soldiers weren’t voluntary recruits, but were kidnapped as children and brutally forced into becoming child soldiers raises questions as to whether they deserve to be killed for what they’ve done. even if some of them grew up to eventually develop a loyalty to their fellow fighters and the rebel cause itself, they clearly had little agency in the situation, and blowing them up by the hundreds doesn’t seem to be the most just option for dealing with them. on the other end of the blurry rebel-captive spectrum, hundreds of children were kidnapped by the LRA in the past four months, and are being held by the rebels essentially as hostages. the military strikes have been completely indiscriminate, killing recent captives along with rebel soldiers. lots of NGOs, including resolve uganda (i saw my boss quoted in an article about the issue) have spoken out against the strikes because of concern for children in the rebels’ control.

another concern is for civilians in general. the government’s last major military offensive, operation iron fist in 2002, had disastrous consequences for civilians. the LRA had moved its bases to southern sudan, and before the offensive, the civilians in northern uganda had a brief break in the violence. but when the military launched strikes into sudan, the rebels poured back into uganda and began brutally retaliating against civilians. it wound up doing a lot more harm than good for the people of northern uganda. and it seems likely that such a backlash might happen again. with the massive reduction in rebel numbers as a result of the strikes, their power will be greatly diminished, but the LRA has always been effective at guerrilla tactics, using small numbers to spread terror across a wide area. so there is the potential for things to get much more dangerous and unstable in the next few months in uganda.

however, there is also the potential that they will capture the rebel leaders and force them to sign a peace deal, or that they will entirely wipe out the rebel army, ending the war. at any rate, there will be lots of work to be done in terms of recovering and rebuilding. so should the war end, it will be an opportune time to go study post-conflict development in uganda. anyway, i’ll be glad to get back to work at resolve uganda come january so i can be closer to the hub on these things and follow the issue more closely.

EDIT 1/1/09 -------------------------------------------------------------------

as feared, the LRA has responded with massive retaliation. the death toll in eastern congo has reached over 1000 since the announcement of the joint offensive, and none of the top LRA leaders have been apprehended.

on christmas day alone, over 867 people were killed in one village when the LRA attacked a church. here's a good photo essay and a report on the massacre, both published by human rights watch.