Uganda: Reasons for the U.S. Deployment in Central Africa
October 18, 2011 | 2108 GMT
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BEN SIMON/AFP/Getty Images
Ugandan soldiers search the Congolese jungle for Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony
Summary
The United States announced the deployment of some 100 U.S. special operations troops to Central Africa on Oct. 14. The troops will serve as advisers with the objective of facilitating the capture or killing of Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel militant group that began in Uganda but now is scattered throughout the region. However, the deployment has much more to do with regional security, domestic politics and trade relations than it does with the LRA leader.
Analysis
U.S. President Barack Obama on Oct. 14 announced plans to deploy approximately 100 U.S. special operations troops to Central Africa to facilitate the capture of the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), Joseph Kony. For more than 20 years, the LRA has roamed parts of northern Uganda, present-day South Sudan, the Central African Republic (CAR) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and presently the group remains largely scattered and nomadic. However, with no noticeable uptick in LRA activity this year, the U.S. deployment has come as somewhat of a surprise.
In reality, the deployment has little to do with Kony. Instead, the move is about improving regional security, strengthening U.S.-Ugandan bilateral relations and Obama’s attempts to shore up support from his political base.
U.S. Efforts Against the Lord’s Resistance Army
The LRA was first established in the mid-1980s as the Holy Spirit Movement, led by the supposed cousin of Kony. The movement originally consisted of northern Acholi people and has always had the goal of overthrowing the Ugandan government. The LRA moves throughout the region using primitive weapons like machetes and stones while pillaging and converting villages to their cause, traditionally relying on the conversion of children into child soldiers. Most reports indicate that Kony is no longer in full control of the LRA, instead passing command to regional leaders in charge of smaller cells in remote forest areas of South Sudan, the CAR and the DRC. Presently, the LRA, estimated to have 200-400 fighters, lacks the numbers and weapons for a sophisticated insurgency and only operates in places where there is minimal government presence.
Since 2008, the United States has helped finance regional military efforts to capture LRA commanders, concentrating its efforts in Uganda, where Washington has spent more than $497 million strengthening the Ugandan army. Former U.S. President George W. Bush dispatched 17 counterterrorism advisers to train Ugandan troops to fight the rebel group in 2008. In May of last year, the U.S. Congress passed the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009, which officially labeled the LRA and Kony as terrorists. The bill also launched a program to share satellite intelligence with Kampala and to boost the Ugandan military’s capabilities with equipment like RQ-11 Raven miniature unmanned aerial vehicles and helicopters.
Uganda and neighboring countries, such as the DRC and Rwanda, for years have conducted joint operations against the LRA. As part of the U.S. deployment, many of the roughly 100 U.S. soldiers will serve as trainers for regional forces while a small number will be sent to locations in the field, potentially linking up with neighboring countries’ forces, such as the DRC armed forces, which previously have received training from U.S. Africa Command forces. Once fully deployed, the U.S. troops will be able to monitor for LRA activity in Uganda, South Sudan, the CAR and the DRC.
How Uganda Benefits
Both Kampala and Washington stand to benefit from the deployment of U.S. forces in Central Africa. Since his inauguration in 1986, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has led an active campaign to thwart LRA violence. Though he has experienced success in pushing the LRA further north, Museveni has been unable to capture Kony. U.S. support over the years has greatly increased Museveni’s operations against the LRA, and additional U.S. forces could help the Ugandan regime further by improving the country’s intelligence capabilities. U.S. troops, in concert with regional forces, also could help secure the Ituri region in the DRC, which is physically closer to Kampala than the DRC’s own capital of Kinshasa, while continuing to strengthen security in the remaining LRA areas in the neighboring corners of Uganda, South Sudan, the DRC and the CAR.
Museveni, who just last week took control from Parliament of local oil agreements, is facing heavy criticism from Parliament over corruption in the oil sector. Last week, the Ugandan Parliament asked three of Museveni’s top advisers to step down for similar corruption charges related to oil agreements with China. The U.S. advisers first and foremost will enhance the intelligence collection capabilities of the Ugandan security forces, which could enable Museveni, who already controls a strong internal security apparatus, to maintain internal oversight of his political opponents in Parliament.
Washington’s Motives
For the United States, the deployment provides an opportunity for increased leverage in combating security threats in East Africa and the Horn of Africa, especially the Islamist militant group known as al Shabaab in Somalia. No country has supplied more troops for the African Union Mission in Somalia than Uganda, and Kampala has offered to send additional troops, if needed, once the expected deployment of Burundian and Djiboutian forces to Mogadishu takes place. The U.S. deployment can thus be seen as a display of Washington’s gratitude to Museveni for his country’s efforts in Somalia.
Moreover, Uganda offers access to northern Kenya, and by extension southern Somalia, where al Shabaab is known to operate. U.S. special operations forces supported the successful operations in August by Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government and African Union forces that pushed al Shabaab out of Mogadishu. Yet al Shabaab elements are still concentrated in southern Somalia and northern Kenya, a fact that itself has sparked instability, with a large demonstration taking place recently in Lamu to protest recent kidnappings and demand more military action from the Kenyan government.
Positioning in Uganda gives U.S. forces the ability to monitor the southern and western spread of al Shabaab and allows them to respond more quickly to threats than do their sporadic positions in Mogadishu and their base in Djibouti. This position — with an accommodating government and, by extension, army — also enhances the United States’ positions in Camp Simba naval base in Kenya and several locations in Ethiopia. Finally, the positioning offers the ability to monitor activity in South Sudan, where Sudan’s ruling party historically has supported the LRA as a bulwark against Uganda’s — and therefore the United States’ — influence in Sudan.
The deployment also allows Obama to garner political support from his base in the United States. Obama has been heavily criticized at home for his lack of aid in Africa and his general lack of attention to the international theater. Sending troops to Central Africa to help in the fight against a rebel militant force allows Obama to show his support for African stability. The capture of Kony, while largely symbolic, would be a low-cost foreign policy win ahead of the 2012 presidential election. The deployment already has proven difficult for Republican presidential candidates to criticize because, when pushed, Obama can point to the Bush administration’s efforts to combat the LRA and state that he is trying to finish the job.
Finally, with little established presence in the region, Washington could use its new deployment as leverage in beginning to create a sphere of influence for regional trade. Despite its size, Uganda has considerable mineral and energy resources and acts as a regional hub in the northern and southern export corridors that facilitate trade to ports in Mombasa, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam and Tanga, Tanzania.
In particular, the United States would like to counter China and India, which already are well-situated to benefit from East African Community (EAC) trade, in which Uganda plays a key role. (Uganda’s Lake Albert basin is home to 2.5 billion barrels of oil, and the neighboring DRC is the world’s leader in copper deposits, with notable diamond, iron ore and bauxite deposits.) Additionally, South Sudan is quickly moving toward EAC membership, a move that could over the next decade provide Juba an alternative oil export route. Kampala is the first centralized hub in exporting many of these regional resources, and over the last 10 years, China has increased its sphere of influence in the area through resource deals with which the United States cannot compete. Museveni has championed Chinese investment, especially in his country’s oil sector, but his military cooperation with Washington has given the United States more resonance in continuing its approach into Uganda and East Africa. By deploying troops into Uganda, the United States, which has simultaneously increased its sphere of influence in Tanzania and Rwanda through large aid projects, can continue to assert itself in the region, aiming eventually to usurp the favorable Chinese business environment in the region.
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