Obama sending troops to aid Africa anti-insurgency

BRADLEY KLAPPER, MARK S. SMITH

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Inter­ven­ing in a volatile and bru­tal cri­sis, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama said Fri­day he has dis­patched 100 U.S. troops to cen­tral Africa to sup­port a years-long fight against a guer­rilla group accused of hor­rific atroc­i­ties. Obama said they were sent to advise, not engage in com­bat, unless forced to defend themselves.

In a let­ter to Con­gress, Obama said the troops will act as advis­ers in a long-running bat­tle against the Lord’s Resis­tance Army, con­sid­ered one of Africa’s most ruth­less rebel groups, and help to hunt down its noto­ri­ous leader, Joseph Kony.

The first of the troops arrived in Uganda on Wednes­day, the White House said, and oth­ers will be sent to South Sudan, the Cen­tral African Repub­lic and the Demo­c­ra­tic Repub­lic of the Congo.

While the size of the U.S. foot­print is small, Obama’s announce­ment rep­re­sents a highly unusual inter­ven­tion for the United States. Although some Amer­i­can troops are based in Dji­bouti and small groups of sol­diers have been deployed to Soma­lia, the U.S. tra­di­tion­ally has been reluc­tant to com­mit forces to help African nations put down insurgencies.

It demon­strates the Obama administration’s esca­lat­ing atten­tion to and fears about secu­rity risks in Africa, includ­ing ter­ror net­works, piracy and unsta­ble nations. The move was intended to show some engage­ment to lessen the impact of one of the worst pro­tracted wars in Africa.

Obama declared his deci­sion to send troops as in keep­ing with the national secu­rity inter­ests of the United States. The White House announced it in a low-key fash­ion, releas­ing the Obama noti­fi­ca­tion and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of the troop deploy­ment that the pres­i­dent sent to con­gres­sional leaders.

Pen­ta­gon offi­cials said the bulk of the deploy­ment will be of spe­cial oper­a­tions troops, who will pro­vide secu­rity and com­bat train­ing to African units. The move raises the pro­file of U.S. involve­ment on the con­ti­nent — and rep­re­sents an appar­ent vic­tory for admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials who have argued for more robust inter­ven­tion in human­i­tar­ian crises.

The change in pol­icy could reflect the long-standing con­cerns of a num­ber of high-ranking Obama advis­ers left scarred by the U.S. fail­ure in the 1990s to inter­vene to stop the geno­cide in Rwanda and the belated action to finally halt the vio­lence in Bosnia. For a cur­rent par­al­lel, the Lord’s Resis­tance Army’s 24-year cam­paign of rebel­lion, rape and mur­der rep­re­sents one of the world’s worst human rights crises today.

“This case is some­what excep­tional,” said Richard Downie, an Africa expert at the Cen­ter for Strate­gic and Inter­na­tional Stud­ies in Wash­ing­ton. “There are few more clear-cut cases of evil in the world today than the Lord’s Resis­tance Army.”

Downie noted that the U.S. has once before, at the end of 2008, sent advis­ers and logis­ti­cal backup to help the Ugan­dan army root out the LRA. Intel­li­gence leaks, poor coop­er­a­tion between the Ugan­dan and other African armies, and bad weather ham­pered the operation.

Since then, nearly 400,000 peo­ple in north­ern Congo have been dis­placed due to the LRA’s activ­ity, he said. Downie cau­tioned that the oper­a­tion shouldn’t be viewed as short-term. Even if the LRA is dis­banded quickly, the effects of years of war will require lengthy reha­bil­i­ta­tion efforts.

Com­ing off the administration’s suc­cess­ful, if lim­ited, inter­ven­tion in Libya, the Uganda deploy­ment rep­re­sents a con­tin­ued effort by Obama to use mil­i­tary force for human­i­tar­ian pro­tec­tion in areas where atroc­i­ties are occur­ring. Send­ing 100 troops may not be sig­nif­i­cant in terms of mil­i­tary num­bers, but the com­po­si­tion of the force gives the United States a new coun­tert­er­ror­ism foothold in a region of the world with ter­ror­ist net­works, pirates and unsta­ble nations.

A spe­cial forces unit can be highly effec­tive beyond what the num­ber of sol­diers might sug­gest. They are highly skilled in dis­rupt­ing insur­gency net­works by dis­cov­er­ing where rebels are based and how they pro­cure guns, money and other logis­ti­cal support.

Obama’s let­ter to Con­gress said the deploy­ment “fur­thers U.S. national secu­rity inter­ests and for­eign pol­icy and will be a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion toward counter-LRA efforts in cen­tral Africa.”

The Lord’s Resis­tance Army has been push­ing west­ward since it began its attacks years go, and the admin­is­tra­tion and human rights groups say its atroc­i­ties have left thou­sands dead and have put as many as 300,000 Africans to flight. They have charged the group with seiz­ing chil­dren to bol­ster its ranks of sol­diers and some­times forc­ing them to become sex slaves.

Kony is wanted by the Inter­na­tional Crim­i­nal Court under a 2005 war­rant for crimes against human­ity in his native Uganda. A self-styled prophet, who mixes Chris­t­ian mys­ti­cism with pol­i­tics, he is believed hid­ing along the Sudan-Congo border.

The deploy­ment drew sup­port from Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who has vis­ited the region.

“I have wit­nessed first­hand the dev­as­ta­tion caused by the LRA, and this will help end Kony’s heinous acts that have cre­ated a human rights cri­sis in Africa,” he said in a state­ment. “Today’s action offers hope that the end of the LRA is in sight.”

But Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., while prais­ing the goal of com­bat­ing the Lord’s Resis­tance Army, cau­tioned that some past deploy­ments with human­i­tar­ian goals resulted in unin­tended tragedies.

“For this rea­son, it is essen­tial for the pres­i­dent to con­sult with Con­gress about any deploy­ment of our mil­i­tary forces into harm’s way,” McCain said. “I regret that this was not done in the case of today’s announced deploy­ment of U.S. troops to cen­tral Africa, and I urge the pres­i­dent to keep Con­gress and the Amer­i­can peo­ple fully informed.”

Obama’s let­ter stressed the lim­ited nature of the deployment.

“Our forces will pro­vide infor­ma­tion, advice and assis­tance to select part­ner nation forces,” it said. “Although the U.S. forces are combat-equipped, they will … not them­selves engage LRA forces unless nec­es­sary for self-defense.”

Most of the troops will deploy to regional cap­i­tals to work with gov­ern­ment offi­cials and mil­i­tary com­man­ders on coun­ter­ing the rebels and pro­tect­ing civil­ians, Pen­ta­gon offi­cials said.

In recent months, the admin­is­tra­tion has stepped up its sup­port for Uganda, which has played a key role in bat­tling extrem­ists in Somalia.

In June, the Pen­ta­gon moved to send nearly $45 mil­lion in mil­i­tary equip­ment to Uganda and Burundi. The aid included four small drones, body armor and night-vision and com­mu­ni­ca­tions gear and is being used in the fight against al-Shabab, an al-Qaida-linked group that U.S. offi­cials see as an increas­ing threat and that African peace-keeping troops in Soma­lia have been bat­tling to suppress.

At the State Depart­ment, offi­cials por­trayed the new troop deploy­ment as part of a larger anti-LRA strat­egy that dates to the Bush admin­is­tra­tion but also includes leg­is­la­tion passed by Con­gress this year.

Vic­to­ria Nuland, a depart­ment spokes­woman, said the U.S. troops will aid in “pur­su­ing the LRA and seek­ing to bring top com­man­ders to jus­tice.” The broader effort includes encour­ag­ing rebel fight­ers to defect, dis­arm and return to their homes, she said.

The admin­is­tra­tion briefed human rights activists ahead of the announce­ment, and the groups’ offi­cials were encouraged.

“These advis­ers can make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence on the ground by keep­ing civil­ians safe and improv­ing mil­i­tary oper­a­tions to appre­hend the LRA’s top com­man­ders,” said Paul Ronan, direc­tor of the group Advo­cacy at Resolve.

Col. Felix Kulayi­gye, Uganda’s mil­i­tary spokesman, said of the troops: “We are aware that they are com­ing. We are happy about it. We look for­ward to work­ing with them and elim­i­nat­ing Kony and his fighters.”

Posted by AP News on Oct 14 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.