Less than a week after MADRE took a position against AFRICOM, the new US military command for Africa, we learned the horrifying consequences of the command’s first mission in Congo: 900 civilians dead, entire families massacred and whole villages burned to the ground.
The mission, carried out by Ugandan troops, but planned and paid for by the Pentagon, was an attempted raid on the Lord’s Resistance Army, the brutal rebel group that has been killing, raping and enslaving people in Uganda and Congo for years.
The operation “went awry” according to the Times. The fighters from the Lord’s Resistance Army escaped the raid and rampaged through “town after town in northeastern Congo, hacking, burning, shooting and clubbing to death anyone in their way.”
US officials admitted to the New York Times that villagers were left unprotected by the planned operation. As a result of the botched mission,
“The Lord’s Resistance Army is now on the loose, moving from village to village, seemingly unhindered, leaving a wake of scorched huts and crushed skulls. Witnesses say the fighters have kidnapped hundreds of children and marched them off into the bush, the latest conscripts in their slave army.”
This is why we have to press for political—not military—solutions to conflicts in Africa. And this is why we will continue to Build a New Agenda and press the US administration to create a human rights-based foreign policy. We want to hear your ideas on this, so post your comments.
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