Army bringing pressure to bear on LRA rebels

The sustained offensive by the Ugandan army against the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in southern Sudan, code-named Operation Iron Fist, is forcing its leader, Joseph Kony, to release and allow his noncombatant captives to return to northern Uganda, according to a senior army official. The Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) have been in southern Sudan since April in pursuit of the LRA, with the permission of the Sudanese government, which at one time supported the rebel group. Maj Shaban Bantariza, the UPDF director for information, told IRIN that the pressure of the army offensive on the LRA was forcing Kony to "get rid of his excess baggage", mainly comprising young children and weaker women. The Ugandan media reported on Friday that some 57 children and 43 women had been released by Kony's right-hand man, Vincent Otti, who this week was reported to have crossed the border into Uganda from Sudan with a group of 400 fighters. Most of the ex-captives, who were subsequently interviewed, said their release was effected at Kony's express orders to his commanders to either release or kill those who were "unable to walk", according to Uganda Radio. "We think he can no longer hold the women and the children, because of pressure. He released them, because it was dangerous for him to keep up with these people [the weaker captives]," Bantariza said. On Thursday, the international Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children (WCRWC) said thousands of parents in northern Uganda were still desperately trying to find out what had happened to their children who had been abducted by the rebel group, 10 weeks after the launch of the UPDF operation in southern Sudan. The organisation urged the international community to send a team of monitors to southern Sudan to assess the situation of the abducted children and those of them used as soldiers. "Operation Iron Fist has yielded no results. Parents are concerned that their children have been sacrificed in a war that does not distinguish between hostages and fighters," Alison Pillsbury, the programme manager of WCRWC's project for children and adolescents, said. Although the Ugandan government had committed a full army division - comprising 10,000 troops - to the offensive, forcing the rebel group to scatter in small bands and flee into a mountainous region in southern Sudan, nothing concrete was known about the fate of the children, according to WCFWC. In early May, humanitarian agencies in Uganda laid down contingency plans in anticipation of the rescue of at least 3,000 children from rebel captivity expected to result from the UPDF's offensive. There had, however, been "no children emerging, even as prisoners of war", according to the WCRWC statement. "The tragedy unfolding in southern Sudan is a manifestation of the horrors that child soldiers face," Pillsbury noted. "Thousands of children have been forced to participate in atrocities and military combat outside their control and making. Although children, they are also considered soldiers or even terrorists, and thus are viewed as legitimate military targets, while in reality they are being used as human shields," she added. The WCRWC's concerns for the child abductees echo those of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), which on 6 June noted in its latest donor update that the situation of relative stability obtaining in northern Uganda - boosted by improved relations between Uganda and Sudan, and the UPDF's subsequent assault on the LRA - had translated neither into reduced displacement in the troubled region nor the return of the children. Almost 400,000 people were still living in "protected camps" for internally displaced persons in northern Uganda, and the anti-LRA campaign being conducted by the UPDF had not resulted in any significant increase in the numbers of returns from the thousands of the abducted children, it said. Since 1986, when the insurgency began, the LRA has abducted an estimated 12,000, according to the UNICEF official figure, some of which have been rescued. Some 5,555 children, were still unaccounted for by the time the UPDF began its campaign in southern Sudan, according to UNICEF. Adding its voice to that of the WCRWC and UNICEF, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its April/May 2002 humanitarian report that was a broadly held belief that the UPDF offensive had not improved security in southern Sudan, prompting civilian movements across the border. Responding to these mounting concerns, Bantariza said the UPDF's sustained pressure on the LRA group, which had forced Kony to release some of his captives, was part of the success of the offensive. "If we hadn't done that, it would mean that the children would still be in captivity. If they are looking for any fruit of the operation, then this is one ripe fruit," Bantariza said. "Nothing comes accidentally, there must be some human effort."