Over 2,000 UPDF children reportedly left behind

Over 2,000 children fathered by Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF) soldiers are estimated to have been left behind in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), The New Vision, the Ugandan government-owned newspaper, reported on Tuesday from the northwestern DRC city of Gbadolite. The report follows last week's withdrawal of the final 120 UPDF soldiers from the headquarters city of Jean-Pierre Bemba's Ugandan-backed Mouvement de liberation du Congo (MLC). The New Vision reported that about 1,000 Ugandan troops had been stationed in Gbadolite, the home of the late Congolese leader, Mobutu Sese Seko. On Monday, The New Vision reported that as the Ugandans pulled out, Congolese "wives" of the UPDF soldiers, some of them carrying babies on their backs and a few belongings, stormed the airport demanding to go with their “husbands”. However, UPDF commanders and their MLC counterparts refused to transport Congolese women. Speaking to the newspaper on 23 September, Bemba was reported to have said that the UPDF wives issue was a "private affair" and which his leadership had nothing to do with it. The UPDF deputy spokesman, Capt Felix Kulayigye, was quoted as saying, "Tell me one country which has ever helped to transport home wives and girlfriends of its soldiers?" As an example of the soldiers’ ability to produce many children, the newspaper cited two soldiers who said they had left 11 and 16 children respectively in the towns of Bondo, Isala and Gbadolite. "It's true we have left so many children in the Democratic Republic of Congo, probably above two battalions," Cpl Abdalla Okello was quoted by The New Vision as saying. Uganda sent at least 7,000 soldiers to the DRC to fight rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces and to support Congolese fighting the government of late President Laurent-Desire Kabila in 1998. The arrangements for the final UPDF withdrawal are set out in the Luanda agreement signed by DRC President Joseph Kabila and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on 6 September.