The ceasefire ending the 20-year insurrection by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda appears to be holding, with the rebel leader, Joseph Kony, making plans to go home.
Some of his LRA fighters have started moving into cantonment areas in the north of the country, after Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni ordered his forces not to fire on the insurgents.
Kony is reportedly preparing to leave his bolt hole in the Central African Republic (CAR) once he has been given security guarantees.
Museveni is insisting that Kony go into the cantonment areas with his fighters, which might prove problematic.
The process could also trip up over Museveni’s insistence that a comprehensive peace agreement be signed by mid-September. Such high-pressure tactics have never had much success in the region — particularly after struggles as long and as bitter as Kony’s.
The ceasefire surprised many observers, coming as it did days after Kony requested political asylum in the CAR and the rebels asked South Africa to play a mediating role.
The response from Pretoria was that the existing mediator, Sudanese Vice-President Riek Machar, is doing a fine job and does not need assistance.
The truce appears to have survived one setback, with rebels and soldiers of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) exchanging fire this week at Mahagi in the DRC’s Ituri region.
The LRA was boosted after DNA tests this week revealed that the man killed in an ambush by government troops a fortnight ago was not the rebel’s third-in-command Raska Lukiya.