Maravi

(MRK, KEITH HARMON SNOW) The Lord's Resistance Army - Who Are They, What Purpose Do They Serve

Merchants of Death: Exposing Corporate-financed Holocaust in Africa
White Collar War Crimes, Black African Fall Guys
by Keith Harmon Snow
www.dissidentvoice.org/,
December 8th, 2008

THE LORD'S RESISTANCE ARMY

If you asked Western media consumers to name a bloodthirsty guerrilla movement in Africa it is likely they would point to 'warlord' Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), this thanks to the one-sided fictional media campaigns waged by National Public Radio, Time magazine, Washington Post, or by Christopher Hitchens who calls them 'a Christian Khmer Rouge' and Vanity Fair.3334

In the simplistic Western media narratives, the LRA is always described as a 'fanatical Christian cult' that abducts children and forces them to commit atrocities. In the dichotomy of 'good' versus 'evil' the LRA is 'wicked' and the forces they are fighting against, President Museveni and the UPDF, are benevolent. Indeed, evangelical Christian missionaries from the United States have been deeply involved with the SPLA war against the 'satanic' forces of the LRA and the Islamic Government of Sudan.35

Spilling over from the wars in Uganda and Sudan and operating a clandestine network of terror and extortion in the north of Congo today, the LRA has waged a low-intensity war against the Museveni regime since circa 1987. The LRA is a Ugandan guerrilla force backed by the government of Sudan (Khartoum) and its allies and clandestinely supported by unnamed factions in Congo, Europe and Washington.

'For 19 years, Joseph Kony has been enslaving, torturing, raping, and murdering Ugandan children,' wrote Christopher Hitchens, 'many of whom have become soldiers for his 'Lord's Resistance Army,' going on to torture, rape, and kill other children.' Parroting the establishment line, Hitchens has no complaints about the UPDF brutalizing children in the refugee camps of Acholiland, and he never mentions the SPLA's conscription of thousands of child soldiers.36

According to a high-level United Nations source working in the DRC, the LRA maintains very high-level political ties in New York and Washington D.C. through Jongomoi Okidi-Olal, a Ugandan-American representative living in the U.S. The Uganda government has purportedly asked the Bush Administration and the United Nations to arrest Okidi-Olal and hand him over to the ICC.37 Other sources claim that Okidi is a fraud.

Interestingly, we find that Mwana Africa?whose vast Kilo-Moto mining concessions sprawl across northern Orientale?is also operating in Angola and South Africa, and at five major mining concessions in the so-called 'failed state' of Zimbabwe.20 The government of Angola has always backed President Joseph Kabila, is very hostile to the Kagame gang, and currently controls Congolese territory (Kehemba) near the Angolan border. Given the spoils to be had, it is likely that factions from Angola or Zimbabwe also back the Lord?s Resistance Army in a bid to displace Mwana Africa and other competitors from mining and petroleum sites in northeastern Congo.38

Congolese sources claim that MONUC moved into the Watsa region in northern Orientale only after the LRA?coming in through Garamba National Park near the Sudan border began threatening the operations of AngloGold Ashanti, Mwana Africa and Moto Gold Mining.39 Additionally, Garamba National Park is rich in diamonds and gold.

While the LRA is also supported by Ugandan factions opposed to the Museveni dictatorship, it is widely believed the LRA is a tool of the Museveni government used to manipulate public opinion, create chaos across the region, gain international sympathy from foreign donors and thereby procure massive financial backing to facilitate some of the world?s most lucrative and unappreciated AID-for-ARMS scandals. It is the perfect ruse to facilitate permanent foreign military intervention.

The LRA also reportedly moved into the northern DRC to displace SPLA troops that had a long history of plundering the area, shooting wildlife and harassing villages.40 Thus while the evil LRA is always in the crosshairs of the international media, the same media protects the saintly SPLA, no matter the justice or criminality of either.41

The mass media and foreign policy discourses are saturated with the writings, op-eds and policy briefs of 'experts' that serve as apologetic propagandists for foreign interventions and hidden agendas. Such 'experts' exercise stark biases in naming or delineating the 'killers' versus 'victims' and for this reason they often gain exclusive access to mass media venues. The system of information control becomes self-perpetuating in favor of power and deception.

Experts working for the Pentagon, State Department, or national security apparatus deploy arguments cloaked in righteous assumptions of higher morality about human rights or humanitarian concern. For example, Sudan ?experts? like Dr. Eric Reeves and Alex De Waal provide a constant barrage of one-sided propaganda to manufacture consent at home and project American power in Sudan.41 This propaganda is unassailable by Western 'news' consumers, because consumers are not otherwise privy to, interested in, or compelled to discover the deeper truths.

Labels: LORDS RESISTANCE ARMY, NEOCOLONIALISM, UGANDA

posted by MrK @ 5:25 PM