Lord’s Resistance Army

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Grand Committee

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

My Lords, perhaps I may add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for initiating this debate and for bringing to it, in his usual way, his extensive expertise and understanding of the subject. The conviction last week of Thomas Lubanga by the ICC, which was just mentioned, represents real progress for international justice and confirms that the judges were being scrupulously fair. Now, attention must focus on the others accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including war criminals such as Charles Taylor, Gbagbo, Bashir, Saif al-Islam and, of course, Joseph Kony and his collaborators in the terrible crimes that they have committed. All these need to remain a priority for the court.

I do not want to say too much about the Invisible Children video, except to observe that it is somewhat simplistic, patronising to Africans and—in some respects, as many noble Lords have said—misleading, particularly on the issue of where Kony is. He may be in Uganda; he moves in and out of the borders of the DRC, the Central African Republic and South Sudan. That is how he operates; you never really know where he is. Even with its limitations the video does, however, prove the power of celebrity and social networks, as other noble Lords have said. We have learnt a serious lesson for when we want to get a message across.

Now Obama’s boys, as the US contingent in the region is called, operate from bases in all the threatened countries, and military efforts effectively operate alongside efforts to persuade Kony’s followers to defect. When one of Kony’s many so-called wives saw a photo recently of another “wife” smiling out of a leaflet, proving that she had escaped to safety, she also decided to flee. Incidentally, that leaflet was another Invisible Children initiative and was published in three local languages.

It is estimated that Kony’s force now totals something in the region of 200 to 500, down from thousands at its peak. That is encouraging but it emphatically does not mean that the LRA is a spent force, or that it has lost the capacity to attack or to terrorise communities. Last year we saw 278 attacks, and there have been 20 this year in the DRC, forcing 3,000 people to flee their homes. The affected countries will need assistance and support and, as a US State Department official recently said, what we think about where Joseph Kony is is not as important as where the four regional armies think he is. The four countries—the DRC, Uganda, the Central African Republic and South Sudan—have agreed to work together on this, which represents real progress. We should strongly emphasise the need for African government leaders, institutions and civil society to have a central role in these efforts.

The reality is that we will certainly not see a US “Black Hawk Down”-style military debacle, such as we saw in Somalia. The campaign generated by the video in recent weeks has succeeded in hardening the US commitment to engagement against the LRA, however, and has led to more co-ordinated and concerted action. But there are justifiable anxieties in America, especially ahead of the US election, about US servicemen being killed in Africa, which will naturally prevent the US Army from going beyond its “advise and assist” role. We may, therefore, see other kinds of interventions such as the use of drones and other technologies, including the essential building of cellphone towers and early warning systems in the regions. These provisions will allow for “find and capture” Special Forces operations without resorting to more heavy-handed military intervention. It is also important that the AU has launched its “regional co-operation initiative” to end the LRA—the first time that has happened. This has taken time because of reconciling the demands of its own member states and its main financial backer, the European Union.

All the evidence shows the need never to underestimate the ability of the LRA to resist capture. We hear that approximate locations are known to Governments, the UN and NGOs. What apparently is missing is the ability to act in a timely and effective way.