LRA felons are Khartoum’s flunkies
By Peter Lokarlo Marsu
Dec 2, 2006 — A meticulous observation of the trajectory of the frozen peace talks between the Uganda government and the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army in the South Sudanese Capital city of Juba, following the rebels’ official unilateral declaration of suspending the talks, reveals a chain of absolute control of the LRA Desperadoes by the government of the National Congress Party in Sudan, and that explains the temperament and the official stance of this contemptible bunch of wicked entity at the Juba peace talks. Incontrovertibly, the LRA have been hijacked by Khartoum and the outcome of the talks in Juba would regrettably depend much on how and what Khartoum stands to gain from the intricate web of geopolitical configuration in South Sudan.
We should all recall that a little while ago, the National Parliament (Khartoum’s rubber stamp of legitimacy) in Omdurman, Sudan demanded the withdrawal of the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Force (UPDF), from South Sudan. This is precisely the position of the LRA at the moment. The gangsters have just repeated what Sudan’s Parliament has stated as their cardinal condition for the talks to move on. They also want the UPDF forces to move back to Uganda. Their masters in Khartoum have simply ordered them to procrastinate the peace talks, in order to usher in a tumultuous situation characteristic of an epoch of uncertainty and woe in South Sudan.
The plausible and logical interpretation of this demand rests on Khartoum’s policy makers’ conviction that the presence of the Uganda Army in South Sudan would certainly hamper and affect their comprehensive cloak-and-dagger policy already calculated for South Sudan. This scenario could be substantiated by the early exit from the talks in Juba by the LRA louts. The claim that LRA forces were attacked by the UPDF is apparently a fiction concocted by the thugs to justify their lack of commitment to peaceful means of resolving the 19-year old conflict in northern Uganda.
The ICC indicted fugitives clearly don’t see themselves as criminals who merit capital punishment, but as statesmen who should be accorded red carpet treatment as heads of state. This can be deduced from Vincent Otti’s irresponsible and puerile utterances. He has the audacity to call for the immediate replacement of Dr. Riek Machar as the official mediator and facilitator of the Juba peace talks, thus undermining and denigrating the efforts of the government of South Sudan. He has also forgotten too soon that he is calling for the removal of the same Dr. Riek Machar who had previously handed to him $20,000 cash for the purchases of food items for his marauding and ill-disciplined soldiers.
The recent clashes between the SPLA forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces in Malakal city fall within the purview of this convoluted web of the malevolent strategy of the National Congress Party in Sudan, the regime that is now sowing seeds of split and distraction in Sudan, and tarnishing the portrait of the great people of Sudan who were once reputed the world over, for generosity and sociability in the entire African continent.
Technically speaking, the LRA’s combat capabilities as a credible and effective fighting force have been grievously impaired, albeit Vincent Otti’s breast beating and nude statements that the LRA combatants would be ready to return to the battle ground if the peace talks failed. Such exhibition of bravado is archetypal of desperate and helpless fugitives, like a boxer who has effectively been trapped in a corner of a boxing ring with less hope of surviving the round.
A combined and coordinated major assault, jointly mounted by the SPLA, the UPDF and UN contingents with assistance from the Congolese government in Kinshasa, could easily break the backbone of this criminal group once and for all. After the capture of Joseph Kony and Company they could then be tried either in Uganda or sent to The Hague to defend their multiple crimes against Humanity. The LRA turncoats won’t find a wherewithal and safe haven to carry on their incessant spate of murders, theft, kidnappings, and rapes including the spreading of HIV aids.
Khartoum would never be able to assist them directly as it used to be the case before the Sudan’s civil war came to an end, though, they could still have their military supplies dropped to them by air at night, they would definitely lack bases for their forces to operate from.
Al Bashir and other parties, whom I would prefer not to name, were the benefactors and military guarantor of the LRA, in the latter’s bid for power in Uganda. It is time that the government of South Sudan reconsiders its commitment to the peace talks in Juba. The Thugs are not free to make independent decisions for themselves, Khartoum possesses abundant leverage on them and makes for them and Khartoum maps out the direction of the talks in Juba, through the effective control of this outrageous hoodlum group.
I am specifically appealing to H.E Dr. Riek Machar Teny in his dual capacity as South Sudan’s Vice President and the Official Mediator and Facilitator of the Peace Talks in Juba to evaluate the uncompromising position of the LRA in the context of the NCP’s persistent meddling in South Sudan affairs. The attention and resources of the government in Juba is fully deployed in containing acts of terrorism as well as the mediating role to resolve the conflict in Northern Uganda. I am similarly drawing the awareness of H.E. Mr. James Wani Igga, the Speaker of the South Sudan Legislative Assembly and the members of the Assembly to reflect on both the LRA file and the NCP destabilisation programme destined for South Sudan.
We can neither develop the South nor consolidate our autonomous government in order to deliver the basic services to the people of South Sudan at this hour of need. Hence, it would be in the supreme interest of South Sudanese and the government of South Sudan to have the LRA highwaymen thrown out of the region if they continue to rebuff all efforts and peaceful endeavours of ending the two-decade war in Northern Uganda. This would enable the deleterious activities of their bloodthirsty backers in Khartoum and elsewhere to be appropriately kept under intense surveillance by GOSS and effectively contained.
* The author is a Sudanese based in Australia. He can be reached at [email protected]