US Troops in Four African Countries to Fight Christian Militants

Forces Spreading Out After October Deployment

by Jason Ditz, February 22, 2012

In mid-October, President Obama announced his decision to send a number of combat troops to Uganda with the hopes of hunting down and killing Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a Christian militant faction in the region.

Today Rear Admiral Losey, the Special Operations commander for Africa, says those troops have spread out and are now deployed in four nations in central Africa, adding Congo, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan to the Uganda combat deployment.

Losey predicted that the “counter-LRA” offensive would escalate in the coming months, while the State Department added that the offensive was no longer targeting just Kony but the entire LRA.

The deployment was announced entirely unilaterally, without any public discussion of the invasion of Africa. State Department official Karl Wycoff added that the LRA is “some kind of cult” and that the US is determined to defeat it because it “has no clear agenda.”

The LRA’s operations center around Northern Uganda, but stray into neighboring regions on occasion. Despite President Obama’s claims that the conflict is a “national security interest” the LRA has no history of fighting against the US.

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