EU Ready to Join US Intervention in East, Central Africa

A column of Ugandan soldiers operating in southern Sudan against rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). There have been joint operations between the Ugandan, Rwandan and DRC governments against various rebel groups operating in the region., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

EU ready to join the hunt for Kony Share45

By Charles Akena

THE European Union (EU) is ready to commit its troops to join the hunt down of Lord’s Resistance Army rebel leader Joseph Kony and other commanders perpetuating violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Central Africa Republic (CAR) and South Sudan.

‘This is not a forgotten conflict, the international community is getting concern with wave of LRA violence now in CAR, DRC and South Sudan,’ the German ambassador to Uganda Klaus Dieter Duxmann revealed.

Klaus said the LRA conflict has taken long and dragged out of northern Uganda because neighboring countries were not coordinating and working together to end the conflict.

‘We in the EU are ready to commit our troops and financial support to join the hunt for Joseph Kony to end this LRA menace,’ said Duxmann.

Klaus who was closing a four day workshop in Gulu on ‘Memory, Truth, Justice and how the LRA affected communities can deal with the burden of the past” further revealed that in July this year when Germany had the presidency of the United Nations Security Council they placed the issue of the LRA as an urgent issue to be addressed by the international community.

The workshop organized by Arch Diocese of Gulu, Personnel Agency of the German Catholics for International Cooperatio, and the German Commission for Justice and Peace included clerics engaged in civil peace service under the Justice and Peace Commission from the LRA affected region of northern Uganda, DRC, South Sudan and other countries like Kenya, Siera Leone, Zimbabwe, Germany, Sri Lanka and Colombia

The ambassador said the new wave of LRA violence in DRC, CAR and South Sudan has displaced several civilians from their villages and killed hundreds of innocent people.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs over 400,000 people are displaced in the three countries affected by the LRA.

President Obama’s administration on 14th October 2011 announced that his government had dispatched a team of 100 US soldiers that would provide technical and advisory support to the LRA affected countries to bring an end the conflict.

The clerics at the workshop however cautioned that military intervention being undertaken to flash out the LRA should be taken carefully because the LRA have a tendency of retaliating against civilians.

‘We strongly believe that this problem can only be addressed through peaceful solutions,’ John Baptist Odama of Gulu Arch Diocese and Silvestor Kimbezi from DRC noted.