Sudan possibly helped Ugandan rebels to cross to DR Congo – SPLA
Oct 6, 2005 (ARUA, Congo-Uganda border) — A Sudanese People Liberation Army (SPLA) official on Tuesday told Ugandan authorities that the Sudanese government could have probably assisted the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels to cross west of the White Nile and pitch camp in Congo’s Garamba parkland.
According to the Ugandan Daily Monitor, Aggrey Cyrus Kanyakwa, the acting Commissioner and Executive Director for Yei River county told this to Arua Resident District Commissioner (RDC) Alfred Omony Ogaba when he paid a courtesy call in the southern Sudanese town of Yei.
Ogaba told Daily Monitor in his office yesterday that authorities in southern Sudan have launched investigations to establish what role Khartoum government could have played to enable LRA cross to the DRC.
The RDC quoted Kanyakwa as saying that the marauding LRA fighters abducted four Sudanese mid last month on their way to the jungles of Oriental province, released two of them and that the other two captives have since escaped.
“They (Southern Sudanese authorities) believe that LRA could not have crossed the white Nile without assistance from somewhere. They are trying to find out who assisted them and naturally, Sudan government is the suspect because it has been helping LRA who had never crossed the White Nile before”, Ogaba said on record.
This is the first formal explanation on how LRA rebels easily moved across the vast swathes of land in South Sudan without being detected by the local intelligence operatives.
Late last month, Ugandan intelligence officials told Daily Monitor that a Sudanese government Antinov plane dropped supplies to the bandits at Dimo as they relocated to Congo, through Kagulu – southwest of Yei town.
Ogaba said they are organising a tripartite security meeting next week with his counterparts in eastern Congo and South Sudan to chart out common ways of handling the LRA menace and improving intelligence exchange and information flow between the three states.
(The Monitor/ST)