President Obama's decision to deploy a small cadre of US troops to help Ugandan forces track down and destroy the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is a step in the right direction.
For too long, Joseph Kony and his cohorts have waged a ruthless campaign of murder, rape, mutilation and abduction against civilians, first in northern Uganda and now in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.
While I've certainly had my reservations about this Administration's Africa policy, I whole-heartedly support President Obama's commitment to rooting out the LRA and its terror campaign. In my visits to Gulu in northern Uganda over the years, I have listened to horrific accounts of LRA atrocities – children abducted from their families, the boys to serve as child soldiers, the girls to be sex slaves to LRA troops. Some have died from hunger and exhaustion during the arduous journey to LRA camps in Sudan, some have been mutilated or killed as punishment for trying to escape. Some have even been forced by Kony and his henchmen to kill their own mothers or club to death other children.
It is outrageous that the US has waited 25 years to offer the Ugandan government tangible assistance in putting an end to this horror. At least since 2005, when then-Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Jendayi Frazer called for a strong response to LRA violence against civilians, there have been voices raised within the US government to act. The Bush Administration did provide intelligence and other support to Uganda in this just cause. Always, however, the rationale for inertia has been that the US cannot inject itself into every situation where people are the victims of terrorism. But, in reality, we have always been willing to act when we feel it suits our interests, most successfully in the Balkans in 1999 where the US used its military might to stop Serbia's genocide in Kosovo.
Our reasons for helping Uganda deal with the LRA are as much strategic as humanitarian. Uganda has shown itself to be one of America's strongest allies in Africa. It has 8,000 troops acting as peacekeepers in Somalia – 8,000 troops, I might add, who could be engaged in pursuing the LRA. In 1998, following the bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam, Ugandan intelligence foiled a plot to bomb the US Embassy in Kampala. And, right now, over 3,000 Ugandans are working as security guards on US military bases in Iraq.
While putting US boots on the ground anywhere is likely to spark controversy, I believe that in this instance there is a convergence of interests across the political spectrum. Liberal groups like Resolve and Invisible Children have long advocated US involvement in the fight to defeat the LRA. Those who are interested in Africa's development have a strong concern for the economic impact the LRA's activities have on northern Uganda (and now the new nation of South Sudan). Conservatives, and especially those on the religious right, should be outraged at the LRA's desecration of God's name and Word to justify their brutality.
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Deploying 100 US troops to help Uganda fight the LRA is a small investment that could yield big returns for the US. Stabilizing Somalia's neighbors will help contain the dangerous expansion of al Qaeda in the region and help spur economic growth. In this instance, fighting (especially in a non-combative role) on the side of "right" is simply the right thing to do.
Rosa Whitaker, President of the Whitaker Group, was the Assistant US Trade Representative for Africa in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush
