News | December 20, 2008
Grace Matsiko
Kampala
Details are emerging explaining why the UPDF and it's regional allies have failed to capture or kill Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebel chief Joseph Kony, with some senior government and military officials intimating that there were some loopholes in the war plan.
One major mistake, according to the well placed sources who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, was the failure to have ground troops closer to Kony's headquarters at camp Swahili, about 90km North of Dungu, to re-enforce the air forces when they shelled the camp and four others on Sunday and Monday. "The biggest mistake was not to have ground troops within walking distance from the camps, which gave time to the rebels who were wounded to crawl away or those that were killed to be picked by fellow fighters," a senior military commander monitoring the operation from Kampala said.
The officer said on average most troops took not less than 48 hours to reach the sites hit by fighter jets, which gave the rebels ample time to carry away all they could under the cover of darkness. "The plan should have been that the helicopters attack and immediately the ground forces move in but this did not happen," the officer explained.
Another officer explained that had the UPDF deployed within the surroundings, Kony, who the UPDF had collaborated intelligence that he was at Camp Swahili on the night of Saturday, would have failed to slip through the dragnet.
But the operations spokesman, Capt. Chris Magezi, said, while the best option would have been to deploy the troops in a walking distance from the camps, the terrain could not allow that to happen. "We did not deploy ground troops as fast as we could because of the terrain, the place is forested and surrounded by rivers" Capt. Magezi told Saturday Monitor.
"They (rebels) may have returned to the camps at night and picked the wounded or the dead but for us we are not interested in counting bodies- our strategic objective was to break the LRA organisation, rescue abductees which we did and continue to do," he added.
Capt. Magezi defended the army against claims that they did not make adequate plans to take into account the challenging terrain they were to encounter in the operation. "It was not an underestimate. Our major plan was to carry out air strikes and then send in ground troops," Capt. Magezi said. "When we finished the air strikes, we have sent in the ground troops, we are now going in to cordon-and-search, that how it was supposed to be."
Capt. Magezi argued, "Strategically, we have achieved a lot. We are occupying major food sources and he (Kony) cannot survive on the food he carried away for long." But the military sources say they are receiving intelligence information that a foreign government that had got wind of the operation could have tipped Kony to relocate before the warplanes attacked his hideout.
This information, however, seems to contradict reports within the military and the government that operation "Lightning Thunder" was one of the most discreet military preparations that the UPDF has been involved in the last two decades.
Sources said, other than the overall operations commander, Brig. Patrick Kankiriho, his two deputies, Col. Moses Rwakitarate and Lt. Col. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, President Yoweri Museveni, the Chief of Defence Forces, Gen. Aronda Nyakairima and the military intelligence boss, Brig. James Mugira, no other UPDF commanders knew the details and time the attacks were to take place.
"For the six months the soldiers spent on drills and rehearsals, few knew they were actually headed to DRC," the military source that keenly followed the preparations said.
He added that in the military establishment, other than top commanders, the lower cadre soldiers are kept in the dark on details of operations to avoid excitement that may lead to information leaking to the enemy or at worst having cowards deserting the army.
Capt. Magezi in an interview with Daily Monitor earlier in the week said Kony sneaked from Camp Swahili shortly before the attacks took place. But he could not state whether Kony got wind of the impending attacks. Capt. Magezi also denied reports that the commanders on the ground could have altered the original plan, which contributed to Kony's escape.
But the deputy spokesman for the LRA peace delegation and a close confidant of Kony, Mr Justine Labeja, said UPDF soldiers sympathetic to Kony could have alerted him to move out before the air raids. "Definitely a quarter of the army is on our side. Otherwise if the UPDF themselves say, Kony was in the camp, how come he escaped?" he said. "If you are a fighter and have your intelligence, you ought to know what your enemy is planning."
Shadow foreign affairs minister and member of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) Reagan Okumu insisted that failure by the UPDF to provide pictures of bodies of LRA fighters vindicates his statement at Parliament that the army hit empty camps. "These camps were empty as it is emerging. The rebels were informed in advance and they moved out of these places," Mr Okumu, who is Aswa county MP, said.
However, State Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Okello Oryem attributed Kony's escape to sheer luck. "Kony is just lucky otherwise there was good intelligence on him," Mr Oryem, who is currently in charge of the government peace delegation after the posting of Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda to the UN, said.
Mr Oryem said the thick forest which hindered the faster deployment of troops gave Kony an advantage to escape. Saturday Monitor has established that President Museveni on Wednesday met Gen. Aronda and Brig. Mugira for a review of what could have gone wrong. He has reportedly called the commanders in DRC and held telephone conversations with them on how to re-organise the operation.
The UPDF has been guarded in releasing details of the operation. For instance, no major Ugandan newspaper has managed to get pictures of the operation a week since it was launched. Mr Oryem said the government is preparing to avail pictures and other related information to the public soon.
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