On 11 June 2015 the UN Security Council adopted a resolution condemning threats to security in Central Africa, with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) as a main culprit. In a statement, the president of the Security Council noted continued violence perpetrated by the LRA, which ongoing military operations have weakened, but which is still operational. Quoting figures from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the statement highlighted the large number of people displaced by LRA violence.
As the statement also mentioned, LRA attacks in the months of April and May 2015 have taken place predominantly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and to a lesser extent in the Central African Republic (CAR). In South Sudan, LRA attacks have been sporadic over the last six months, with only one notable event at the end of April 2015, when local farmers in Western Equatoria’s Ezo county assisted a small group of LRA-associated women and children in neighbouring DRC to leave the bush. An OCHA report on LRA violence in the first three months of 2015 notes only 2 attacks in South Sudan, in which 1 person was killed and 17 were abducted. There are, however, more than 18,000 refugees in South Sudan who have fled LRA violence, 16,000 from the DRC and 2,000 from the CAR.
Other significant findings from the report for the first quarter of 2015 include an increase in abductions in all areas with an LRA presence. Specifically, there was a 50 per cent increase in abductions in the first three months of 2015 compared to the last three months of 2014. At least 200,000 people remain displaced due to LRA violence in the CAR, DRC, and South Sudan. At least 20,000 people were newly displaced in the first quarter of 2015. There were 23 reported attacks in CAR in the first quarter and the 40 in DRC.
While the trend of concentrated LRA violence in DRC over the last few years continued in April and May of this year, a particular concern is the spread of attacks to Province Orientale’s Bas Uele district in the last few weeks. An LRA presence has been frequently noted in Orientale’s Haut Uele, with northern Bas Uélé being used mostly as a transit point to CAR or an area where LRA groups keep a low profile.
In May alone there were two particularly concerning incidents in Bas Uele. On 23 May LRA fighters ambushed a group of cyclists and a car belonging to a local NGO on the Banda–Dakwa road, while on 25 May a suspected LRA group looted a small village 100 km north of Bondo and abducted 17 people. It is likely that the same LRA group carried out another attack on 5 June on the Naparka–Banda road, abducting 16 people (who were then released). The attacks north of Bondo in May followed the 12 April clash in Mangabangu between the LRA and DRC army soldiers. At least eight soldiers are missing, presumed dead. The Mangabangu incident and subsequent attacks in Bondo have caused large displacements of people who, according to Radio Okapi, are being cared for by a local NGO in makeshift camps.
LRA violence in DRC’s Haut Uele was registered in April and May, in Kpaikpa and Tomate, as well as Duru, Kana, Nambia, Ngilima, and Sambia. Most of the attacks involved the looting of food and the temporary abduction of people who were forced to carry looted goods to LRA bases in the bush. Two attacks involving injuries and a death took place on 20 April in Ngilima and Nagero. The former was a particularly brutal attack on civilians, while the latter involved an exchange of fire between an LRA group and rangers from Garamba National Park, who have increasingly clashed with poachers, including LRA fighters and armed groups from South Sudan and Sudan. One LRA fighter was reported dead as a result of the firefight in Nagero.
The LRA’s presence was also indicated in CAR by frequent attacks documented mostly in the south-east of the country, particularly in the vicinities of Banale, Derbisaka, Guinikoumba, Kitessa, Maboussou, and Mboki. According to the LRA Crisis Tracker—an online platform that documents LRA violence—the LRA killed one person in Banale on 16 May, while an LRA assailant was shot in an exchange of fire with local people in Guinikoumba on 25 April 2015. These attacks, particularly on the Zemio–Obo and Zemio–Djemah roads, have caused internal displacement and increased fear among local communities. There was a mass movement of people to Dembia following the Guinikoumba attacks, while local media reported a peaceful demonstration of 300 DRC refugees in Zemio asking for help from the UN organizations in charge of assisting refugees and providing food. More than 3,500 refugees escaping LRA violence in DRC have been based in Zemio, CAR, since 2009.
Because rates of LRA violence have remained steady over the last three years according to OCHA and LRA Crisis Tracker reports, the effectiveness of the African Union (AU) mission to counter the LRA, which has been operational since at least early 2012, remains unclear. The bulk of the AU troops are soldiers from the Ugandan army, which has fought the LRA in Uganda since the late 1980s and in CAR and South Sudan since 2009. The capture of once-prominent LRA commander Dominic Ongwen at the start of 2015 garnered much attention, but Ongwen likely surrendered due to disagreements with LRA leader Joseph Kony rather than AU mission actions. The AU recognized challenges to the mission at a meeting of the AU Peace and Security Council on 2 June 2015, when the council warned that insecurity in CAR and South Sudan had negatively impacted counter-LRA military operations, allowing the LRA to reorganize and carry out attacks against civilians.
The AU also called on the UN Security Council to amend the mandates of peacekeeping operations in the area to allow them to pursue the LRA aggressively and cooperate with the AU forces. There was, however, no mention of the often-repeated allegations, including most recently by Dominic Ongwen, that some LRA commanders, including possibly Kony, at times hide in Kafia Kingi, a disputed territory on the Sudan–South Sudan border that is currently under the control of the Sudan Armed Forces. The Security Council’s statement of 11 June 2015 specifically refers to these claims and calls on the AU to send a verification mission to the area, to which the Sudanese government has apparently consented. The Security Council also noted the Sudanese government’s stated refusal to allow the LRA access to any territory under its control.
Updated 17 June 2015