Joseph Kony’s violent career as leader of the guerrilla Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda has won him the dubious distinction of being the first person ever to be indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
For nearly two decades, Kony has conducted a rein of terror across northern Uganda, kidnapping and conscripting young boys in the cover of darkness to carry out his twisted and religiously distorted mission of mutilation and sexual abuse.
By its own admission, Khartoum has fuelled Kony’s exploits with money and weapons in years past. The Sudanese government insisted last year that it had severed all ties, but interviews conducted in February by Refugees International, a relief group, with children previously abducted by the LRA suggest otherwise. Those questioned said they witnessed the rebel movement receiving and distributing ”new guns with Arabic inscriptions and Kony being escorted by Arabs”.
Now Kony appears to be expanding across southern Sudan, drawing both Khartoum and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) government into his chaotic pursuits. For the first time in years, he appeared in public long enough to film a video and pocket a satchel of $20 000 cash from his southern Sudanese patrons. And then he slipped away again.
Why? In the past decade, African leaders have signed dozens of pledges and protocols meant to entrench the rule of law and establish greater and lasting stability on the continent. They have repeatedly expressed their multilateral commitments to the United Nations and the ICC. And there have been admirable examples of African diplomacy producing resolutions to some of the continent’s most difficult and enduring conflicts — namely Burundi, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Yet Kony persists, not in spite of, but now with financial and material support from, African leaders espousing peace.
Article Four of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism mandates that all member states, including Sudan, are committed to preventing ”their territories from being used as a base for the planning, organisation or execution of terrorist acts or for the participation or collaboration in these acts in any form whatsoever”.
The convention defines terrorism as ”any act which is a violation of the criminal laws of a state party and which may endanger the life, physical integrity or freedom of, or cause serious injury or death to, any person … intended to: intimidate, put in fear, force, coerce or induce any government, body … to act according to certain principles”.
The LRA, made up of diverse spiritualists and remnants of the former government disposed by President Yoweri Museveni, has displaced about two million people since 1986, according to Human Rights Watch, and the UN Children’s Fund estimates it has abducted more than 20 000 children ”to serve as child soldiers and sex slaves”. These and other crimes are listed in the ICC warrant.
Even under the most forgiving assessments, the LRA’s modus operandi of pillaging, abduction, mutilation and perversion qualifies under the OAU (now African Union) definition of terrorism. Lest, however, there be any ambiguity, UN undersecretary general Jan Egeland classified the conflict in northern Uganda as ”one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world”. In 2001, Washington added the LRA to its official list of terrorist organisations.
There are plenty of reasons to see that Kony is brought to book — his farcical pursuit of power in Uganda makes a mockery of the many earnest attempts at democratisation across Africa — but none is so compelling as the most obvious: the LRA’s gross violation of the most basic and universal precepts of humanity.
What can and should be done?
Museveni has offered Kony impunity for peace. That hardly seems constructive. In 16 years the LRA leader has shown no interest in contesting for power openly through Uganda’s democratic processes, which has included three presidential elections in the past decade. Under Museveni, the state is viable and stable, unlike in countries such as Burundi and Côte d’Ivoire where government collapse and multiple belligerents have required protracted peace processes.
The LRA case raises the need for different approaches. How, for instance, can governments like Khartoum be deterred from supporting groups such as the LRA or held to account for breaching AU protocols by doing so? The counter-terrorism convention does not provide for punitive measures against states that violate its provisions.
Fixing multilateral accords is laborious and time-consuming. In the interim, the AU can and should consider more immediate steps. It should begin by reminding violating member states of their commitments. In the UN system, for example, such notices set the ground for further and more serious rebukes, such as official condemnation and public shaming, if the offense continues. Should punitive action be required, the AU could follow the example of both the UN and the Commonwealth in applying sanctions or suspension. Another possible intervention is referral to the UN Security Council.
Even without such provisions, however, the AU should urge member states to band together to meet two existing requirements of its counter-terrorism framework. First, in line with the AU plan of action for countering terrorism, which criminalises terror finance, member states should be compelled to cut all support to the LRA.
In southern Sudan this means, above all, addressing the incentives. The SPLA has resorted to paying Kony to keep him at bay. Even a modest deployment of African troops under the auspices of the AU would bolster the new southern Sudanese government at what remains a fragile juncture in the north-south peace process.
Second, more effective border surveillance is vital. Kony has been highly successful in evading capture, but pursuing him has been extremely destabilising. In 2002, for instance, the LRA slipped through the Ugandan army’s ”Iron Fist”, crossing back into northern Uganda from southern Sudan and ultimately displacing 800 000 people.
The OAU convention, meanwhile, requires member states to ”enhance border control and surveillance … [and upgrade] security procedures including land, sea and air exit and entry points so as to curb infiltration and promote cooperation among police agencies”. With the LRA now conducting attacks into Sudan from a base in Garamba National Park in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, better boarder control is essential to reducing LRA escape routs. This can only be done through regional cooperation.
In recent years African leaders such as South African President Thabo Mbeki have made eloquent arguments for a broader and more nuanced global dialogue on what constitutes terrorism, what causes it and what is required to counter it. They have also made important strides in addressing the continent’s many conflicts from within. But as long as Kony is allowed to mock the AU’s many protocols through the wanton slaughter of innocents, the Afro-sceptics win. In the forests of northern Uganda, an African problem awaits an African solution.
Alec Wescott is an intern on the security and terrorism research project at the South African Institute of International Affairs