Punishment

This post originally appeared today on Foreign Policy.

The Lord's Resistance Army has come to Darfur, Sudan, and that is not good news for anyone. The Lord's Resistance Army is a vicious militia led by self-proclaimed messiah Joseph Kony, and though he does not appear to be with the contingent that has moved into Darfur, Kony is widely and rightly regarded as one of the most heinous war criminals still on the loose in the entire world.

The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has long operated as a hybrid between a cult and a rebel army. Kony and the LRA originally sprang up in northern Uganda and waged a brutal campaign trying to overthrow that country's government. Millions of Ugandans fled the fighting, and the LRA engaged in virtually every depravity known in warfare. The LRA's ranks have been swelled with kidnapped child soldiers, girls are regularly treated as sex slaves, and innocent civilians are maimed and killed in a fashion too brutal to describe.

In recent years, Kony and his forces have fallen on harder times, though their brutality has not diminished. Dislodged from northern Uganda, Kony and his troops first fled into northeastern Congo and
then the Central African Republic. However, the Ugandan army -- with quiet assistance from the United States -- has remained in dogged pursuit of Kony and his forces. The LRA is a relatively small force these days, probably numbering less than 1,000 hard-core fighters who remain loyal to Kony, but it is still causing mayhem and suffering well disproportionate to its size. Kony and his men have killed around 2,000 civilians in the last year and driven another 450,000 from their homes. Although the Ugandan offensive against Kony has suffered some significant missteps along the way, it has put increasing pressure on the LRA.

Just this week, the Enough Project learned from multiple, credible sources in the field that elements of the LRA had crossed into Darfur. These forces appear to be seeking safe haven under the protection of the Sudanese military, and Sudan's notorious president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, has been a longtime LRA patron, so this does not come as a surprise. Clearly, Kony and his deputies believe that Sudan is one of the few places left where the Ugandan army will not pursue them, and they are likely increasingly desperate.

The even larger story is what all of this says about Sudan and Bashir at a time when U.S. diplomacy has been geared to striking a new tone in the relationship. Although Bashir has been eager to portray himself as willing to repair relations with the world after last year's International Criminal Court indictment, and the United States in particular, giving safe haven to the LRA is yet another slap at Darfuris, at Washington, and at fundamental human decency. The evidence clearly suggests that advance LRA scouts coordinated with Sudanese armed forces well in advance of the LRA's arrival in Darfur, and it seems implausible that local Sudanese armed forces commanders would welcome the group in Darfur without seeking approval from Khartoum, including Bashir. There are also suggestions that the LRA has received direct logistical support from the Sudanese army since arriving in Darfur.

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Photo: Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir

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The Senate bill aimed at devising a strategy for stopping the brutal, 24-year insurgency by the Lord’s Resistance Army passed last night with a record 65 co-sponsors. After weeks of uncertainty when Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn (R) put a hold on the bill, the victory for anti-LRA activists – a contingent of whom camped out in front of Coburn’s office for 11 days – is particularly poignant.

In a statement issued by lead co-sponsors and longtime champions on the LRA issue, Senators Feingold (D-WI), Brownback (R-KS), and Inhofe (R-OK) noted the delay in passing the bill but were enthusiastic about the outcome. Feingold said:

“The passage of this bill sends a message that the United States will no longer stand by and watch the Lord’s Resistance Army terrorize innocent civilians across central Africa, kidnap thousands of children and force them to become child soldiers. This legislation also sends a clear signal that the United States is committed to working with regional stakeholders to change the conditions that have allowed this war to persist for so long."

Brownback expressed his gratitude to Senate colleagues for appreciating the importance and urgency of the bill, and Inhofe called last night’s affirmative vote a “victory for the countless lives destroyed at the hands of [LRA leader] Joseph Kony.”

But even as Enough, along with advocacy partners Resolve Uganda and Invisible Children, celebrate this progress in Congress, new alarming reports have emerged that a dangerous contingent of the LRA has made its way to Darfur. Based on field research and analysis, Enough confirmed today that a group of LRA fighters have found safe haven in areas of Darfur controlled by the Sudanese government. This development – signaling renewed collusion between Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and LRA leader Joseph Kony, both wanted war criminals – demands investigation by U.S. policymakers and the international community.

Enough Co-founder John Prendergast reacted to the news in a press release issued this morning:

"The Khartoum regime's principal tool of war during its 21-year reign has been support for marauding militias such as the Janjaweed, the Murahaliin, and the Lord's Resistance Army," said Enough Co-founder John Prendergast. “Facing no consequences for this destructive method of governing, it is unsurprising that the regime is again providing safe haven for the LRA. Absent a cost for this, we will likely see the LRA unleashed again later this year to destabilize the referendum in southern Sudan."

Amid news of the passage of the Senate LRA bill and revelations about the insurgency spreading to Darfur, Enough’s LRA researcher Ledio Cakaj published his latest report documenting abuses by both the LRA and the Congolese army on civilians in northeastern Congo. It’s a damning look at how civilians bear the brunt of the violence from both sides, while the U.N. mission remains relatively futile when it comes to protecting civilians. The report is a sobering reminder of what’s likely in store for the already traumatized people of Darfur as the LRA continues its march north. It is also a compelling case for why last night’s passage of the Senate LRA bill couldn’t have come soon enough. Now we must focus attention on pushing the companion bill through the House.

Technorati Tags: Advocacy Darfur and Southern Sudan Eastern Congo Genocide Northern Uganda Prevention Protection Punishment Sexual Violence United Nations Violence Against Women War Crimes

After 262 hours protesting on the streets of Oklahoma City, activists focused on ending the senseless violence perpetrated by the Lord’s Resistance Army claimed a victory yesterday when Senator Coburn (R-OK) signaled he would remove his hold on a popular, bipartisan bill.

The Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009 (S. 1067) calls on the Obama administration to devise a strategy for addressing the 24-year insurgency led by Joseph Kony, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The legislation also request that a modest amount of funding be allocated to rehabilitating child soldiers from the LRA ranks and rebuilding communities in northern Uganda. Senator Coburn, who has made it his policy to oppose legislation that raises the national deficit, objected to this final piece, which amounted to $40 million (the equivalent of 25 cents per U.S. taxpayer).

Senator Coburn spoke to activists and Resolve Uganda yesterday afternoon to formalize a compromise proposed by two of the bill’s leading co-sponsors, Senator Feingold (D-WI) and Senator Inhofe (R-OK).

In Capitol Hill-speak, the bill’s authorization of appropriations was replaced with Sense of Congress language, which basically conveys the message to the Senate Appropriations committee that the Senate strongly recommends allocating the requested funding. While this written request doesn’t bind the Appropriations Committee to provide the funds, backing from the bill’s 64 co-sponsors (more than any other piece of legislation on sub-Saharan Africa since 1973) makes the priority clear.

The bill will now be sent to the Senate floor for final passage, so barring any unforeseen objections from other senators, expect another victory for the anti-LRA movement in the next day or two.

The Hold Out campaign in Oklahoma City, led by Resolve Uganda and Invisible Children, lasted 11 days, generating lots of local news coverage and thousands of phone calls to the senator’s office. Check out the local news coverage of the victory:
 

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The United Nations Mission in the Congo, known by its French acronym MONUC, is once again facing public criticism. An article in today’s Washington Post shows how MONUC’s support for the Congolese army’s operations against rebel groups in eastern Congo continues to support some of the army’s most abusive commanders.

The U.N. faced withering criticism last year for its support role in operation Kimia II, which led to more than 1,000 civilians killed and 900,000 displaced. Pressure from human rights groups and activists was instrumental in forcing the U.N. to include greater safeguards to prevent support for abusive units.

As of this past November, senior MONUC officials, including its head Alan Doss, have been adamant that they are doing their due diligence in hand-picking which Congolese army commanders to support and blacklisting those responsible for attacks on civilians. But as the stark testimonies in today’s article by the Post’s Stephanie McCrummen reveal, things are not exactly going according to plan.

McCrummen follows the story of a Congolese army lieutenant colonel named Innocent Zimurinda. In October, Zimurinda’s name appeared on a list of problematic army commanders (beginning on page 276) compiled by the U.N. group of experts, tying him to massacres, executions, gang rapes, and recruitment of child soldiers. Yet, according to Zimurinda and his officers, U.N. support continued through December and January. “Anytime we ask [MONUC] to supply us, they supply,” one of Zimurinda’s officers told McCrummen.

A MONUC spokesman acknowledged that while the U.N.’s support to Zimurinda officially ended in November, provisions “in the pipeline” may have continued to flow to his units while the U.N. sorted out legal issues related to the case. In a rare interview with the Washington Post, Zimurinda commented on his ties to MONUC: "We cannot say we are happy with the level of support,” he said. “But anyway, we want to say 'thank you' to the U.N."

The support to Zimurinda is occurring within the context of operation Amani Leo, the new name for joint Congolese/United Nations military operations against the rebel group Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR. According to MONUC, Amani Leo (Swahili for “peace today”) puts much greater emphasis on civilian protection than the maligned Kimia II. Yet despite the rebranding, little change has been seen on the ground. Military operations supported by the U.N. continue to endanger civilian lives and FARDC commanders, like Zimurinda, with known abuses in the past continue to operate.

Last week, 50 Congolese human rights and civil society organizations and Human Rights Watch logged a complaint about Colonel Zimurinda with General Amuli Bahigwa, the top ranking Congolese army commander for operations in the eastern region. The four-page complaint detailed abuses committed by troops under Zimurinda’s command since 2007 and called for an immediate investigation into the allegations. Responding to a question in a press conference last week, likely spurred on by the organizations’ complaint, Under-Secretary for Peacekeeping Operations Alain Le Roy said:

“We have made clear to the Congolese Government officials…that MONUC does not support units with which Mr. Zimulinda is involved; in the same manner, Mr. Bosco Ntanganda [sic] is not in the chain of command of operations we support.”

Amid the many questions raised in McCrummen’s piece today – in particular, Zimurinda’s evasion of a question about backing from Rwanda raises red flags – what’s clear is that a thorough investigation into Zimurinda’s ties is overdue. The U.N. Group of Experts already laid the foundation; it shouldn’t require being called out by the Washington Post to motivate Congolese authorities to follow up.

Photo: Mugunga camp in North Kivu province (Enough/Laura Heaton)

Technorati Tags: Conflict Minerals Eastern Congo Prevention Protection Punishment Sexual Violence United Nations Violence Against Women War Crimes

“The will and the capacity of the United Nations and Member States to deal with natural resource-fuelled conflicts is weak.” This is the opening sentence to a new report released by Global Witness detailing the challenges posed by resource-fueled conflicts to the United Nation’s peace efforts around the world. With case studies of Angola, Cambodia, Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Sudan, the report is a commendable effort to compare and contrast international efforts in a range of settings where natural resources can make the difference between war and peace. 

The ongoing crisis in eastern Congo, a war fueled by the international trade in conflict minerals is a strong focus of the report. The failings of the U.N. and Member States in creating a “coherent and committed international approach” to conflicts such as that in the Congo are highlighted throughout the report. But, with each page turn, there is new reason to believe the international community can do far more to address one of the world’s deadliest conflicts. Specifically, Global Witness states that “de-linking armed violence and natural resource exploitation is critical to resolving conflict and re-launching development and democracy,” given the following two conclusions reached by academics and policy experts:

1.    The governance of natural resources, who accesses them and why is the primary problem with such resources. 
2.    Economic activity, particularly when connected to natural resources, can be a driver of conflict. 

The broad range of recommendations cover virtually every aspect of U.N. and Member States’ involvement in natural resource-driven conflicts, spanning from enhancing the role of peacemakers, peacekeepers, and peacebuilders, to strengthening U.N. initiatives such as by creating a high level panel to address self-financing wars, to enhancing Member State support of pre-existing operations in countries like Congo. The focus on the role of sanctions, and the role of the private sector in funneling conflict minerals into the global economy, illustrates the vital importance of initiatives such as the Conflict Minerals Trade Act. 

The conclusion of the Global Witness report highlights the critical need for more vigorous involvement by the international community in resolving the conflict in Congo:

Many years after the U.N. first began to recognize the links between natural resources and conflict, international capacity to deal with them remains weak and fragmented. There is no more troubling illustration of these weaknesses than the collective failure to deal with the role of the international minerals trade in stoking an incredibly violent war in the Congo. In short, lessons have not been learned.

Photo: Tin ore mined in eastern Congo (Grassroots Reconciliation Group/Sasha Lezhnev)

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This post co-authored with Enough policy advisor Omer Ismail originally appeared in the Christian Science Monitor.

Most governments don’t acknowledge it. The Sudanese president dismisses it. Darfurians demand that it be recognized. Academics, activists, and lawyers dispute whether it is still occurring or whether it occurred at all. International Criminal Court (ICC) judges debate standards of evidence surrounding it. The nature of recent attacks this past week by Sudanese government forces and militia allies against defenseless civilians potentially augurs its resurgence. And if a fledgling peace process continues to move forward, then any evidence of it ever happening may well be swept under the rug.

The “it” in question is Darfur’s genocide. Seven years after a small rebellion in western Sudan by Darfurian insurgents unleashed a massive counter-insurgency strategy by the Sudanese government and its Janjaweed militia allies, the debate continues: What should be done about the genocide? How can justice and peace simultaneously be pursued?

The ICC’s recent ruling that genocide charges against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir are possible gives new life to the issue. And responding to a YouTube question posed by the Enough Project, President Obama appeared to reverse his administration’s stated policy of an “ongoing genocide” by referring to it in the past tense. How do we make sense out of all this?

In our eight trips into Darfur over these past seven years, we have never met a Darfurian who does not believe genocide has occurred. But genocide is ultimately the subject of international law. The Genocide Convention states that the crime pertains when a party intends to destroy – in whole or in part – a particular group of people based on their identity. Although judges will ultimately rule on this, we believe the evidence for genocidal intent is there.

Eyewitness reports this past week of aerial bombardment of villages followed by attacks on civilians populations by armed horsemen echo back to a period just a few years ago when much of Darfur was literally on fire. These reports are emerging simultaneous to a series of framework ceasefire agreements, thus complicating the Darfur landscape further. What we do know, though, is that these recent attacks and their aftermath reinforce a disturbing trend: evidence of the human rights crimes that have been and are being committed is being concealed and compromised.

The ruling party in Sudan responsible for the bulk of the crimes in Darfur is covering up the evidence for previous and ongoing human rights crimes in five unique ways.  The international community must act now – in the context of peacemaking efforts – to blow the lid off this elaborate and deadly cover-up.

First, most of the aid agencies that were thrown out last year by President Bashir were working quietly to support survivors of sexual violence and to protect thousands of women and girls from rape. One of the principal tools of war in Darfur has been systematic rape, a factor in any argument supporting the existence of genocidal intent. By removing most of the groups that were protecting or caring for rape survivors, the cover up is on.

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Photo: Darfuri women carry firewood

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This post originally appeared on Foreign Policy.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is not an obvious candidate to be Africa's turnaround story of the coming decade. This is a country that has been pillaged by outsiders for more than a century, cursed by its extraordinary natural resource base to unparalleled levels of death and destruction. With a seemingly intractable war in the east, one of the worst corruption-fighting records in the world, and some of the highest rates of sexual violence ever recorded, Congo does not, understandably, lend itself well to optimistic prognoses. But sometimes a situation deteriorates so badly that it catalyzes transformative responses. And things can actually change, no matter how entrenched the troubles. That opportunity for real progress is exactly what I found on my recent visit to Congo.

Congo's conflict, the world's deadliest since World War II, is not really a war -- it's a business based on violent extortion. There are numerous armed groups and commercial actors -- Congolese, Rwandan, and Ugandan -- that have positioned themselves for the spoils of a deliberately lawless, accountability-free, unstable, highly profitable mafia-style economy. Millions of dollars are made monthly in illegal taxation of mining operations, smuggling of minerals, and extortion rackets run by mafia bosses based primarily in Kinshasa, Kigali, and Kampala. The spoils are tin, tungsten, tantalum, and gold, minerals that go into laptops, cell phones, MP3 players, and jewelry stores in the West. Armed groups use terrifying tactics such as mass rape and village burning to intimidate civilians into providing cheap labor for this elaborate extortion racket.

For decades, this illegal economy has thrived in the shadows. Atrocities committed against Congo's civilian populations are both a means of social control and retribution for the perceived support of military (and hence commercial) opponents. It's all about controlling the minerals and gaining a handsome profit. And until this logic of unaccountable, violent, illegal mineral extraction changes, all the peacekeepers and peacemakers in the world will have very little impact on the levels of violence there.

Here's where the good news begins. A light is increasingly being shone in, illuminating this ugly reality. And it might just be enough to start altering the deadly supply chain in a way that will be the key to transforming eastern Congo's torturous history.

The first sign of hope comes from consumers of these electronic and luxury goods. Shoppers are beginning to put pressure on the companies selling cell phones, laptops, MP3 players, and other electronic devices, along with gold-jewelry retailers, to stop using the conflict minerals mined in eastern Congo. If consumers demand conflict-free electronics products and jewelry strongly enough, just as they do green technologies and fair trade products, big companies can place downstream pressure to clean up the supply chain for these minerals. In fact, this has already begun. Where companies six months ago shrugged off the issue as niche, they are today thinking seriously about how to tackle the problem.

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This post originally appeared on the website Politics3.com.

The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel force originally from Northern Uganda, continues to be a threat to civilians after twenty-three years of war. In 2005, the International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted the head of the LRA, Joseph Kony, and four other commanders for crimes against humanity, including murder, sexual enslavement and rape.

During the last eighteen months, the LRA has been killing and abducting civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Central African Republic (CAR) and South Sudan, becoming a destabilizing force in an already volatile region. Despite an ongoing military offensive led by the Ugandan military with the support of regional armies, the rebels have continued to wreak havoc. In the last year and a half, the LRA has killed close to 2000 civilians and abducted over 2600 people. More than 700 abductees are children who were forced into fighting or sexual slavery.

Presently, a new US legislative bill aimed at addressing the situation created by the LRA has very good chances of passing in both the House and Senate this March. If passed into law, the ‘LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act’ will require the Obama administration to develop a multilateral strategy that would focus on helping communities devastated by LRA violence and eliminating the LRA threat.

As part of my work covering the LRA, I have been traveling to most of the LRA affected areas, where I have conducted numerous interviews with victims of LRA violence and policymakers alike. Based on my findings on the ground, there are at least five important actions that the policy team in charge of designing a multilateral strategy to address the LRA issues should focus on.

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Photo: A victim of an LRA attack in eastern Congo (Enough/Ledio Cakaj)

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With an estimated death toll of six million, the Holocaust is widely viewed as the singularly most devastating period in modern history. The word holocaust, derived from the Greek words meaning “burnt whole,” is now used almost exclusively to describe the state-sponsored massacre of European Jews. In the aftermath, countries came together to create the United Nations and craft international treaties intended to build a more cohesive international community that would be better prepared to respond in the future to horrors like they had just witnessed in Nazi Germany.

Yet despite the increased interconnectedness of the world and the international provisions in place to respond to humanitarian crises, the conflict in eastern Congo rages on even today without an effective international response –- surpassing the Holocaust in number of years and now, even in number of lives lost.

In 2007, the International Rescue Committee, or IRC, released the results of a pivotal study, which found that 5.4 million people had died in eastern Congo since 1998. They also found that the death toll was mounting at a rate of about 45,000 people per month. But those figures are now nearly three years old. In a New York Times op-ed this week, Nick Kristof’s calculation caught my attention: “That would leave the total today, after a dozen years, at 6.9 million.”
Think about that … 6.9 million. It’s hard to fathom.

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This post is part of a new series that will appear every Thursday on Change.org's Stop Genocide blog.

Photo: Dusk at Mugunga IDP camp, North Kivu (Enough/Laura Heaton)

Technorati Tags: Advocacy Conflict Minerals Eastern Congo International Criminal Court Protection Punishment Sexual Violence United Nations Violence Against Women

It seems the pressure may be rising against a Congo warlord known as The Terminator who is a regular at eastern Congo’s most posh establishments.

Wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, Bosco Ntaganda was given a command position in the Congolese army when his rebel group, the CNDP, agreed to fight alongside the Congolese government as integrated units, rather than against it.  The integration came about after the Congolese and Rwandan governments struck a quiet deal that landed the charismatic CNDP leader, Laurent Nkunda, under house arrest in Rwanda.  (As an upcoming Enough strategy paper will explain, the integration has been anything but smooth.) Perhaps one of the most alarming developments to emerge from this deal-making is that it left the United Nations peacekeeping force essentially in cahoots with international war criminals.

True, the U.N. mission monitors the rosters of the Congolese army units it supports to ensure that its resources aren’t directly funneled to people accused of committing atrocities, but as a recent piece in the Guardian examines, the association between some of Congo’s most unsavory characters and the U.N. certainly conveys a distressing message in a part of the world where impunity is blamed for facilitating, or even encouraging, violence. Describing Bosco as a “casual sportsman in this oasis of luxury amid the poverty of Goma,” the Guardian piece offers this indictment:

"[Bosco] is the personification of what critics say is a ‘pact with the devil’. While the eyes of the world are distracted by wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere, many believe the thickly forested hills of eastern Congo are witnessing another shameful chapter in UN peacekeeping that ranks alongside the impotent displays in Srebrenica and Rwanda."

In his most recent op-ed from Bukavu, South Kivu today, Nick Kristof also identifies apprehending Bosco as one of the key steps necessary for changing the calculations of would-be killers and rapists in Congo.  (He also gave a shout-out to the Enough-backed conflict minerals legislation currently gaining momentum in Congress, which is appreciated.)

The more we see the names of obscure Congolese wanted war criminals in the mainstream media the better, especially when they seem to flaunt their liberty, giving leaders in the region no excuse for letting them walk free.

Photo: Bosco Ntaganda

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