Report sees spike in LRA kidnappings this year

More than 200 people have been kidnapped in eastern Central African Republic this year, already nearly double last year’s level, in a wave of abductions blamed on the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), an organisation tracking the rebel group said yesterday.A quarter of the 217 abducted were children, 41 of whom are still missing or in captivity, LRA Crisis Tracker said in a statement.The kidnapped children may be as used as soldiers, sex slaves or labourers, it said.The LRA, run by warlord Joseph Kony, is known for massacring and mutilating civilians as well as abducting children to use as soldiers or slaves.“The LRA is once again abducting children in central Africa, betting that the international community will fail to protect those most vulnerable to Kony’s forces,” said Paul Ronan, director of The Resolve, one of the organisations behind the crisis tracking project. “So far in 2016, that bet has paid off.”Those snatched from their homes this year included 54 children, 41 of whom are captives or otherwise unaccounted for, said the new Crisis Tracker report called The State of the LRA in 2016.The LRA has targeted the former French colony, which is reeling from years of inter-religious bloodshed.In January, the group killed a villager and abducted dozens of others during two weekend raids in a remote diamond-producing area of the country.The abductions occurred despite the presence of troops in a UN peacekeeping mission in CAR, MINUSCA, as well as an African Union military task force and soldiers from the United States, the report said.LRA Crisis Tracker said the rebel group has been responsible for attacks and abductions in eastern Congo too, but those had slowed since August.Uganda led a crackdown against the rebel group about 10 years ago, at which point its fighters began to roam portions of the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan.Despite a US-backed regional effort and the fact that the group’s ranks are believed to have dwindled to several hundred fighters, the LRA has continued assaults on civilians.The LRA first emerged in northern Uganda in 1987, the year after current President Yoweri Museveni seized power, but remnants of the rebel force and its elusive leader have been driven out of the country and operate abroad.Key leaders have been captured or defected, but the movement has not been crushed.“The LRA is one of the most resilient rebel groups in modern history,” Ronan said.The Resolve is part of a broader US-based project gathering detailed information and lobbying for an end to the insurgency.Kony was indicted in absentia by the International Criminal Court in The Hague in 2005 for crimes against humanity and war crimes after numerous massacres of civilians, kidnappings of villagers to be used as labourers, sex slaves and child soldiers.One of Kony’s former deputies, Dominic Ongwen, was caught last year and is currently imprisoned in The Hague facing trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.The LRA has killed more than 200,000 people and kidnapped more than 60,000 children, first in the north of Uganda and then in neighbouring countries, according to the United Nations.Rebel activity has displaced tens of thousands of people in the DRC, where many attacks in 2015 were aimed at supporting an LRA operation to collect dozens of tusks from elephants slaughtered in Garamba National Park, the report said.“A holistic approach to protecting people, wildlife, and natural resources in the region is urgently needed to end this ongoing cycle of violence and exploitation,” said Invisible Children president Lisa Dougan.