Abstract
Uganda's army, the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF), has been operating on Sudanese territory since the late 1990s. From 2002 to 2006, a bilateral agreement between the governments in Khartoum and Kampala gave the Ugandan soldiers permission to conduct military operations in Southern Sudan to eliminate the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Instead of conducting a successful operation against Uganda's most persistent rebels – who had withdrawn into Sudanese territory and acted as a proxy force in Sudan's civil war – the UPDF conducted a campaign of abuse against Sudanese civilians. Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted over several years, this article documents local experiences of a foreign army's involvement in the brutal Sudanese civil war. It outlines why continued operations of the UPDF outside their borders recreate the same problem they purport to be fighting: abuses of civilians. Since 2008, US military support for the UPDF mission against the LRA has called into question the viability of continued militarisation through an army that has committed widely documented human rights abuses. The foreign military has not brought peace to the region. Instead, it has made a peaceful environment less likely for residents of South Sudan.
Highlights
On October 14, 2011, US President Barack Obama announced that he had in the interest of US national security and foreign policy authorised approximately 100 military personnel including ‘‘a small number of combat equipped U.S forces to deploy to central Africa to provide assistance to regional forces that are working toward the removal of Joseph Kony from the battlefield’’.1 In March 2012, an unprecedented internet campaign by the US organisation Invisible Children used a videoclip entitled ‘‘Kony2012’’ to drum up support for continued US military engagement in the region and assistance to the Uganda army.2 Two months after President Obama’s announcement the Ugandan Daily Monitor quoted US Maj
Margaret Woodward as saying that she was personally impressed with what the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) has done to counter the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and their tenacity to go after Kony
The UPDF presence in Sudan contributed to the failure of peace talks between the LRA and the Government of Uganda and more generally hindered Southern Sudan’s transition to peace after the signing of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Sudanese government and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A)
Summary
On October 14, 2011, US President Barack Obama announced that he had in the interest of US national security and foreign policy authorised approximately 100 military personnel including ‘‘a small number of combat equipped U.S forces to deploy to central Africa to provide assistance to regional forces that are working toward the removal of Joseph Kony from the battlefield’’.1 In March 2012, an unprecedented internet campaign by the US organisation Invisible Children used a videoclip entitled ‘‘Kony2012’’ to drum up support for continued US military engagement in the region and assistance to the Uganda army. Two months after President Obama’s announcement the Ugandan Daily Monitor quoted US Maj. In March 2012, an unprecedented internet campaign by the US organisation Invisible Children used a videoclip entitled ‘‘Kony2012’’ to drum up support for continued US military engagement in the region and assistance to the Uganda army.. Neither President Obama, the Invisible Children, nor Major General Woodward detailed what the deployment of US military advisers and the continued presence of the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) in foreign countries would mean for civilians. As similar patterns of UPDF engagement are being repeated with international support in an attempt to end LRA violence, the article concludes that disregard for the realities of UPDF intervention points to a larger problem. Evidence is limited that military engagement by an unmonitored army will end LRA violence or create a peaceful environment.
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