LRA rebel commander capture boosts hunt for Kony

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By Max Delany (AFP)

KAMPALA — The capture of one of the Lord Resistance Army's top commanders is a major blow for the rebel group and will provide a boost for those hunting its leader Joseph Kony, analysts say.

Caesar Acellam, the most senior LRA leader ever captured, surrendered after a brief clash with Ugandan soldiers in the Central African Republic who had spent around three weeks waiting to ambush him.

"This is a major asset to have on your side," Angelo Izama, a political analyst with the Kampala-based security thinktank Fanaka Kwawote, told AFP.

"It will be like walking into a house with the lights on rather than the lights off. Now with Acellam they can see much better where they are going."

The Ugandan army called Acellam, who was previously the LRA's intelligence chief, a "big fish" and said that his capture could help end the rebel group's 25-year insurgency.

Analysts said that Acellam had fallen out with Kony several years ago over failed peace negotiations, and had been close to defecting on a number of occasions.

However, Acellam had remained in the bush and -- given reassurances over his future and a possible amnesty deal -- could provide a treasure trove of information, including Kony's possible location and strategy.

"On the face of it, it is a huge opportunity and I think this could be the final blow," said Sunday Okello, from the Institute for Peace and Security Studies in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.

"We didn't know so much about the LRA structure, how they operate, what they really do, so this is really very good," he added.

Recruited into the LRA as a student in 1988, Acellam said he had left his group of 30 -- including 14 fighters -- in Democratic Republic of Congo days earlier and claimed he was trying to defect.

Acellam tried to downplay his role within the rebel ranks, saying that his importance had dwindled since he was injured in 2002, but admitted that his detention would be a big psychological blow to the rebels.

"My coming out will have a big impact for the people still in the bush to come out and end this war soon," he said, addressing journalists dressed in camouflage fatigues and a claret beret.

Tim Allen, a professor at the London School of Economics and author of a book on the LRA, supported the suggestion it could encourage others to surrender.

"Maybe there will be others that will follow Acellam if there is publicity about him being given amnesty," Allen said. "If they are sure they will not be killed by the Ugandan forces, they may do that at some point."

However, Allen said the situation is "different" for the top three commanders -- Kony, Okot Odhiambo and Dominic Ongwen -- wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, including mutilation and murder.

If he cooperates with intelligence officers, Acellam could also shed light on his liaison role with the Sudanese government, which supported the LRA in the early 2000s -- and allegations Khartoum has continued backing the rebels.

Acellam is "an important catch particularly since he can describe the present relationship with the Sudanese," said Ledio Cakaj, an independent researcher who was previously based in LRA-affected regions for the Enough Project group.

Around 100 US special forces were deployed to the area late last year to bolster the regional forces hunting the LRA -- above all with intelligence and logistics support.

Ugandan and US officials refused to comment directly on the role played by special forces in Acellam's capture, but Acellam's group was being monitored in DR Congo, where the Ugandan army is not currently deployed.

Regardless, Acellam's apprehension was a sign that increased efforts to end the LRA threat are paying off, analyst Izama said.

"The pressure on the LRA is acute and that pressure contributed to these circumstances," Izama said.
Kony started his rebellion in northern Uganda more than two decades ago, but has since been chased to the jungles of neighbouring central African states.

Kony's global notoriety soared over the past year through the Internet video campaign "Kony 2012" which has been watched tens of millions of times since it was posted online by the US advocacy group Invisible Children.

The video was criticised by some who said it oversimplified the root causes of the LRA's devastating insurgency.

The African Union is currently setting up a 5,000-strong force made up of soldiers from affected countries to help better coordinate the cross-border hunt for the LRA.

But analysts also warned that increased pressure on the group could spark an angry reaction.

"I think one of the biggest threats the LRA are still able to pose is they know they're cornered so they will kill and they will rape," Okello said.

Copyright © 2012 AFP. All rights reserved.

Some work starts getting done?

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KAMPALA, UGANDA — Ugandan forces captured a senior commander of Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army after a brief fight with rebels near the Congo-Central African Republic border, an army official said Sunday, in what an analyst said was an “intelligence coup” for forces hunting for Kony.

Lt. Col. Abdul Rugumayo, intelligence chief for Uganda’s military operation against the LRA, said Caesar Acellam was captured Saturday with two other rebel fighters as they tried to cross a river called Mbomu.

Although Acellam is not one of the LRA commanders indicted along with Kony in 2005 by the International Criminal Court, Ugandan officials say he was one of Kony’s top military strategists and a reliable fighter.

“He is in good condition,” Rugumayo said of Acellam. “He was captured with two other rebels. They were in a group of 30 rebels.”

He said the others escaped.

Details of precisely how Acellam was captured were not available, but some analysts said it was possible he had just walked into the hands of Ugandan army officials.

“He’s been on the defection shelf for a long time,” said Angelo Izama, a political analyst with the Kampala-based security think-tank Fanaka Kwawote. “This is a big intelligence coup for the Ugandan army.”

A Ugandan army official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said losing Acellam was a big blow to Kony, whose forces have become increasingly degraded by a lack of food and having to constantly move to elude capture.

“He is big fish, very big fish,” the official said of Acellam, who has been with the LRA for over 20 years. “He is one of the top division commanders.”

The official said Kony, who Ugandan officials suspect to be hiding somewhere in Sudan, has traditionally lived in bush camps significantly far from where his top commanders hide, apparently as a security precaution.

“Kony does not want his commanders near him,” he said. “He wants to be alone.”

Kony recently became the focus of international attention after the U.S. advocacy group Invisible Children made an online video seeking to make him famous. In 2005 the ICC indicted Kony, along with four other LRA commanders, for crimes against humanity and war crimes. Two of them have since died.

Last year U.S. President Barack Obama sent 100 troops to help regional governments eliminate the LRA. But the manhunt for LRA leaders has proved tough, with the rebels moving in very small groups and avoiding technology. Encounters between Ugandan troops and the rebels are very rare.

Only about 200 LRA members remain the jungle, according to Ugandan officials.

Results of a cause

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LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Kony 2012, the movement that streaked across global media like a righteous comet in early March, was meant to shake the world with a night of action on April 20, last Friday.

But Cover the Night fizzled.

"Paltry turnouts on Friday at locations across north America, Europe and Australia left cities largely unplastered and the movement's credibility damaged," wrote the Guardian, one of the few news outlets to actually cover the lack of action.

Sure, there were some activists who put up posters. A few.

The Kony 2012 website posted a slick video about it. But by Sunday night, the video had only 108,531 views, a pittance compared to the 88 million-plus who viewed the original documentary and were inspired to join up.

On my street in Santa Monica, one lone Kony poster was left hugging a tree on Sunday.

My daughter Alexandra, a student at Columbia University who has been wearing a red Kony bracelet since March, wrote me sheepishly that she was busy in the library and came late to the Friday night event.

"No one showed up :( ," she wrote. "It was quite sad. Even Fox called (an organizer) that day to ask if they could interview students on campus and they never showed up, either... don't know what that says about the movement."

Julie Halpin, a spokeswoman for Invisible Children, the group behind the anti-Kony effort, disagreed that Cover the Night failed. "For Invisible Children, Cover the Night was a huge success," she told me on Monday. "People all over the country and all over the world participated. But the mainstream media didn't cover it the way they covered the first video. So it's a perception."

In fact, the mainstream media didn't cover it at all.

To me, Kony 2012 was another extraordinary step in testing the boundaries of social media. The movement took an issue from zero public awareness to headline news in every major news outlet to the embrace of the White House, fueled by the enthusiasm of hundreds of thousands of kids across the nation.

But it didn't last. Quickly came the wolves of the internet, who howled about how the nonprofit spent its money, criticized the naivete of the activists and questioned the utility of the protest. The web-savvy activists of Kony 2012 reacted quickly, but the pressure took its toll.

The founder of the movement, Jason Russell, collapsed. He was arrested in San Diego, detained by police and hospitalized after witnesses saw him running through streets in his underwear, screaming and banging his fists on the pavement.

Said a spokesman at the time: "The past two weeks have taken a severe emotional toll on all of us, Jason especially, and that toll manifested itself in an unfortunate incident yesterday."

That, combined with the criticism, turned the newfound zeal of some into tempered curiosity.

Or did the kids just get bored? I asked my 18-year-old, who had pronounced the original 29-minute video one of the most important films he'd ever seen.

"Once I started hearing negative things, I thought, ‘I don't feel as strongly as I did,'" Jeremy told me. "But what he (Jason Russell) did, and the idea definitely overpowers anything else."

But not enough to make him participate.

"I guess not," he said.

My daughter wrote that the problem was timing. "Personally, I think the event should have taken place a week after they leaked the video because most people just forgot about it."

Indeed. The fizzling of Kony says a lot about our era of short attention spans.

Also telling: The comments on the new Kony video on Youtube had been disabled. And Cover the Night was framed not as crowning effort but as merely the next step in the effort to bring the Ugandan warlord to justice.

We'll see whether that's the case.

Kony 2012 at The New School

Come join us for a screening of the much talked about Kony 2012 about war criminal Joseph Kony. Monday, April 30, 8:00 p.m. Kellen Auditorium, 66 Fifth Avenue, ground floor Free; no reservation required, seating is first come, first served Presented by Invisible Children, an organization supporting the African children soldiers and trying to end the use of children soldiers in Joseph Kony's rebel war. Their goal is to increase awareness around the world by spreading the word to the public. Sponsored by the Office of Student Development and Activities. For more information, email studev@newschool.edu.

Outrageous, Meaningful, Or Both? (A Way To Get People Talking About Female Circumcision In Africa)

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Activism via an elaborate art project:

An Act Gets Added Thanks To An Online Video?

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Current View Total: 25,695
Allows Youtube user comments
What it's about: In 2009, WITNESS and National Council on Aging (NCOA) produced An Age for Justice: Confronting Elder Abuse in America, a film providing proof of the financial, emotional and physical abuse that up to an estimated five million older Americans face every year. The goal of the video campaign was to support the passage in Congress of the Elder Justice Act (EJA), the first comprehensive legislation that protects older Americans from abuse. The premiere screening of An Age for Justice took place on Capitol Hill in October 2009 and has since screened in hundreds of communities across the U.S.

(Witness.org)

What it's done: In March 2010, EJA was passed as part of the historic Healthcare Reform Bill. EJA creates a foundation from which the U.S. can begin to protect the rights of older Americans by providing support for programs on prevention and detection of elder abuse, dignified treatment of victims and fair prosecution of perpetrators.

(Witness.org)

Small Video Has Big Results

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Current view total: 11,431
Allows Youtube user comments
What it's about: Segregated education for Romani students in Bulgaria exacerbates existing racial inequalities, leaving these youth isolated from the wider society and ill-equipped to compete in the labor market. A 2001 study by the Open Society Foundation-Bulgaria paints a bleak picture of the country’s educational ghettos, with only 5 percent of the Roma pupils in these schools given even “the slightest chance” of finishing their secondary education.

Our partner Organization Drom works to promote the inclusion of Roma in all spheres of Bulgarian society, and in particular to promote the educational integration of Roma children. In June 2006, Drom and WITNESS produced “Equal Access: Integrated Education for Romani Children in Bulgaria” a video that raises awareness about the model of educational desegregation, which Drom has been successfully implementing since 2000. Targeting local, national, and international audiences and policymakers, the video called on the Bulgarian authorities to fully implement its policy of equal access to quality education for Romani students.

(Witness.org)

What it's done: The video was widely distributed in the Romani communities and throughout the region, helping to dispel the fears and misconceptions that accompany the public debate about integrating Romani children in the school system. The advocacy efforts incorporating the video resulted in funding by the European Union Structural Funds, marking the transition of school desegregation projects from grassroots initiative to state-supported programs.

(Witness.org)