by Mirco Keilberth, October 2011
President Obama’s marching orders may have come as a surprise, but they were not entirely unexpected. The President has said he will send 100 marines to Uganda, where the US army’s elite soldiers will not go looking for Joseph Kony directly, but will aim to support the Ugandan and Congolese army units, who are uprising against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). "The US soldiers will not fight the LRA themselves, except when acting in self-defence; their mission is to provide their local partners with information", Barack Obama announced, making it clear that more American soldiers would be stationed in the region if required.
It is clear from the Commander in Chief’s statement that the planned operation symbolises a comprehensive shift in the American government’s policy in the Great Lakes region of central Africa. For a quarter of a century, the West has avoided Africa’s "Heart of Darkness", and has remained largely uninvolved in the numerous conflicts there. According to information from Ugandan journalists, the US soldiers will be posted in South Sudan and the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Shame on those who presume that this engagement has anything to do with the newly discovered oil sources on the Ugandan-Congolese border.
Oil, war, corruption and a brave backbencher
Many people in the east of the DRC will know from personal and painful experience that the discovery of natural resources is inherently linked to conflict, a fate which Uganda is now almost certain to suffer as well. Together with the child soldiers of the LRA, the so-called Mai-Mai militias and the FDLR Rwandan opposition fighters have, in recent weeks, driven out more than 7,000 Congolese and Ugandan families from the border district of Mutungo. Furthermore, according to reports from the International Crisis Group, the LRA have kidnapped more than 100 children from the Congolese province of Orientale. These militias are all funded by money made from natural resources.
The ADF, a Ugandan rebel group that has long fought against President Museveni’s rule, is now threatening to attack the new oilfields, whilst there have already been cases of kidnappings and the recent murder of a British oil expert in August.