“The LRA is diminished but not yet defeated”, said Ugandan army chief Gen. Aronda Nyakairima, referring to the rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which for over a year is no longer a direct threat to North Uganda, but becoming a problem for a part of the Great Lakes region given to ongoing attacks and raids in the nearby Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and the Central African Republic. In a meeting yesterday with his Congolese counterpart in the town of Kasese on the border between Uganda and the DR-Congo, the Ugandan general urged to step up regional and international collaboration against the LRA. “If we don’t intensify our joint operations and cooperation, the rebels can re-group and cause fresh havoc in the region”, he warned. According to UN data, since a joint Congolese-Ugandan military offensive in December 2008 the LRA split into small very mobile groups, causing an intensification in actions in DR-Congo, Sudan and the Central African Republic. Attacks that have left hundreds dead, displaced tens of thousands of people and resulted in the abduction of hundreds of youths, transforming the problem of the Ugandan rebellion into a security problem for the entire sub-region. Also the UN recently urged coordinated action, also by the international community, to defeat the LRA. In the months after the joint army offensive against the LRA bases in the extreme north-east of DR-Congo, many nations of the region and the international community had too hastily welcomed the end to the LRA threat. [BO]
