Sudanese militia vow to fight LRA rebels

A southern Sudanese militia group has vowed to wage all-out war against Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in apparent retaliation for LRA attacks against civilians inside Sudan. In a statement issued over the weekend, the Equatoria Defence Force (EDF), a militia group formerly allied to the LRA and the Sudanese government, promised to "take the war against LRA rebels in Sudan to all their hideouts". "We shall smoke LRA rebels in their holes and they will be killed like rats when they run out", said the statement signed by the EDF Secretary General Charles Kisanga. Kisanga asked Uganda to help his militia against the LRA. "EDF is appealing to the Ugandan government to help us get rid of this brutal terrorist guerrilla force," he said. "It has been years since UPDF [the Ugandan army] started pursuing LRA in south Sudan, but Uganda can rest assured that EDF has the capacity to do this job in a much shorter time and at a lesser cost if we are afforded the facilities we need to get the job done." For 18 years since northern Uganda's insurgency began, the LRA and its leader Joseph Kony have mainly operated out of the regions of Sudan bordering Uganda. After launching attacks against the Ugandan army or civilians in the north, the rebels often retreat back to Sudan where they keep their supplies, according to former LRA captives and other sources. But they have also attacked villages in south Sudan, as they do in Uganda, to loot food and abduct children for forcible recruitment. In June 2002 the Uganda government launched Operation Iron Fist, a military effort to rout the rebels, following an agreement with Khartoum that permitted the Ugandan army to enter southern Sudan. The agreement strictly forbids the UPDF from fighting against Kony alongside Sudanese rebel groups. The EDF statement followed an interview alleged to have been conducted with Kony by a Sudanese magazine in which he threatened members of the EDF and Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) and promised to burn villages in southern Sudan. "I want to tell the Sudanese lords to keep away from us because if they attack us as they have done this month [March], we will fight and set their villages on fire," Kony was quoted as saying by the magazine, which is published in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. SPLM/A spokesman in Kampala George Machar told IRIN the EDF and SPLM/A were "now in regular joint operations against Kony" and were "days away" from signing an agreement which would merge the two former enemies into a single force under SPLM/A control. "We are together targeting the LRA. It is our duty to our people to destroy these guys wherever we find them," he said. "We really want them wiped out once and for all". Machar reiterated that once the peace process between Khartoum and the SPLM/A was in place, and the SPLM/A was part of the government, Kony would no longer be able to use southern Sudan as a rear base for the LRA rebellion.