LRA Remains a Threat

Months after Operation Lightening Thunder—the Ugandan-led joint military offensive against the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, in northeastern Congo’s remote Garamba National Park—ended, the LRA continues to wreak havoc in northeastern Congo.
Recent reports from the United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, are a stark reminder of the LRA’s continued predations. They note that during the first two weeks of July, the LRA carried out 33 attacks in northeastern Congo’s Orientale province, killing 26 people and abducting 144.

Alan Doss, special representative of the Secretary-General in Congo, said in a report to the U.N. that the LRA “remains a serious security challenge that will require the sustained commitment of all governments and U.N. missions in the sub-region,” but support from U.N. member states to address the LRA threat through a bolstered U.N. presence in Garamba National Park has not been forthcoming.

As Enough argued in “Finishing the Fight,” our strategy paper on the fallout from military operations against the LRA, Lightning Thunder did not end the threat of the LRA in northeastern Congo, and it continues to spark harsh reprisals against civilians throughout the region. Absent a reinvigorated international and regional effort to finally bring an end to the LRA’s devastating reign of death and destruction, attacks will likely (and tragically) continue unabated.

To learn more about the Lord’s Resistance Army, visit Enough’s special page on the LRA.

Maggie Fick contributed to this post.

• Lord's Resistance Army