KAMPALA, Uganda, Sept. 19 - Ugandan troops pursuing the elusive leader of the Lord's Resistance Army rebels killed 25 fighters in one of their biggest clashes with the guerrillas in weeks, the president said Sunday.the LRA happens to be one of my many fixations--although unlike some of the others, the derth of coverage means this one doesn't take up much of my time.
Ugandan forces say they are hunting the rebel leader, Joseph Kony, and a small group of followers near a range of hills in southern Sudan, hoping to stamp out a rebellion that has terrorized northern Uganda for much of the past 18 years.
"This was a combined attack by air force reconnaissance planes locating exactly where those people were, infantry on the ground and gunships," President Yoweri Museveni said at a news conference. He said the 25 killed Saturday had belonged to a larger group of 50 who had been moving with Mr. Kony in southern Sudan, citing an account by a deserter. Sudan has given permission to Uganda to pursue the rebels in southern Sudan.
Mr. Museveni, himself a former guerrilla leader, has battled the rebels since he took power in 1986, but has failed to meet self-imposed deadlines to wipe out the force, reviled for kidnapping thousands of children for use as fighters.
and on rare occasions that the rebellion is mentioned, it is interesting to watch how the LRA is described. the LRA is a christian fundamentalist insurgency. joseph kony is fighting to bring the ten commandments back to uganda and to put the state under his own brand of fundamentalism. the LRA has been known to kidnap and brutalize young ugandan girls (which is usually the focus of the rare articles that do run in the u.s.) what is fascinating is that the words "christian fundamentalist" are almost never employed in american articles. but that's what they are. joseph kony is pretty up front about his religious-inspired goals.
as far as i can tell, there is no analogous coverage of any muslim-based political violence in the world. when a group of muslims kill someone, we are immediately notified of their religion--even when religion itself is not necessarily the motive. it's always tacitly, at least, a suspected motive. but the LRA gets a total pass.
