The LRA strikes back (on civilians)
Although Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony thinks he is a messiah and claims to be a fundamentalist Christian, he apparently had no qualms about ordering his notoriously brutal rebel army to commit horrific acts of death and destruction against local Congolese populations as the LRA fled their outpost in Congo’s Garamba National Park following the launch of “Operation Lightening Thunder,” joint offensive begun in mid-December by the armies of Uganda, Congo, and southern Sudan.
On Christmas day, the L.R.A killed 40 people in the village of Faradje; the BBC reported that the LRA. cut off peoples’ lips as a warning to others to keep quiet about the new atrocities being committed. The New York Times reported that as the L.R.A. fighters fled, they “hacked to death dozens of villagers in their path.” The Ugandan army also accused the LRA of killing more than 100 people in a Catholic church in another Congolese village near the south Sudan border.
For an idea of where the L.R.A. has recently been operating (read: wreaking havoc and committing mass atrocities against civilians), see this helpful map from the U.N.
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LRA Attacks along the Congo-Sudan border
I have just returned from a five day reporting trip to Yambio along the Congo-South Sudan border and would like to add a couple of points. First, Southern Sudanese Military Commanders as well as the Governor of Western Equatoria--lying along the Congo border--maintain that the SPLA has not moved into Congo in pursuit of LRA rebels. Second, one of the many consequences of operation "Lightning Thunder" is that the LRA has been bombed into ever smaller groups that have begun attacking villages to steal food, supplies and in some horrible instances children. This coming from many refugees fleeing the Congo border up to Nabiapai (which was recently destroyed by LRA rebels) and on to Gangura (the largest refugee camp of the nine now in existence along the border and now home to some 2,500 refugees) eventually ending in Yambio, the state capital. This route has gone from seeing a trickle of refugees into accommodating a steady stream. Most disconcerting perhaps is the fact that the threat level has precluded some NGOs, including UNHCR, from accessing a good number of these people. The vast border region has little infrastructure to accommodate these incoming refugees and IDPs without the sustained involvement of many of these agencies.
Thanks for the Yambio update
Dear reader,
Thanks for the insightful comments and for the update from your Yambio trip. Stay tuned for Enough's readout on Operation Lightening Thunder.
Best,
Maggie Fick