Kony hiding under Sudanese army’s wing, says Kampala

KAMPALA, June 25, 2004 (IRIN) — Uganda has written to Khartoum asking for help
to locate Joseph Kony, the commander of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army
(LRA), saying he was hiding beyond the scope of Sudanese territory within
which the Ugandan army is mandated to operate, diplomats said on Thursday.

“The Hon Noble Mayombo [the chief of military intelligence], yesterday
[Wednesday] delivered the letter to the embassy, and we have since brought
it to the attention of our foreign ministry in Khartoum. The Sudanese
defence ministry has also been alerted. Investigations will be carried out
and action taken,” the Sudanese ambassador in Kampala, Siraj al-Din Hamid
Yusuf, told IRIN.

The letter was prompted by Uganda’s insistence that Kony was hiding near
Sudanese army bases in Nsitu in the south. Uganda said Nsitu was out of
reach for its army, which is deployed under Operation Iron Fist – an
operation agreed by the two neighbours which authorises Ugandan troops to
enter, search and destroy LRA bases within Sudan.

The Ugandan army spokesman, Maj Shaban Bantariza, told IRIN that President
Yoweri Museveni had directed the defence minister to write the letter.

“We have deployed in southern Sudan, but the LRA has fled to areas under
the control of the Sudanese army. We want the Sudanese government to do
something as per the protocol that indicated that when the LRA flee to
areas under their [Sudanese army] control, then they [the latter] take
over from us,” Bantariza said.

Yusuf said Museveni had brought up the issue of Kony hiding in territory
controlled by the Sudanese army during a bilateral meeting with Sudanese
President Umar Hasan al-Bashir on the sidelines of a recent summit of the
Common Market for East and Southern Africa, in Kampala.

Since March 2002, when the Operation Iron Fist was signed, Uganda has
overrun some of the LRA bases, but the rebels have continued their violent
attacks on civilians in northern Uganda, displacing more than 1.6 million
people.

Yusuf said the operation would be extended. “Two days ago, we had a
meeting with the [Ugandan] minister of state for defence at the embassy to
agree on when the extension will be signed. A date is yet to be set, but
the extension was agreed upon in principle,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Ugandan army said on Wednesday it regretted that some
children abducted by the LRA had been killed in combat. NGOs believe that
the LRA has abducted over 20,000 children in its 18-year old war. The
children are either forced to fight in its ranks or to become “wives” to
rebel commanders.

Bantariza told IRIN that the army faced a dilemma while defending
civilians from what he called “armed kids”, and at the same time rescuing
the children without killing some of them. “In the past one year, we have
rescued about 15,000 abductees, mainly children, from rebel captivity. But
it is also true that we have killed slightly over 1,000 rebels [including
children], which is regrettable,” he said.

Earlier this week, the retired Anglican bishop in Kitgum, Macleord Baker
Ochola, told journalists: “We have been telling the world for a long time
that over 90 percent of the LRA are children, and you cannot kill so many
people without killing these children. When the army kills LRA fighters,
it says they are rebels, and when it rescues some, it says they are child
abductees. Where is the rationale?.”