Uganda: Running Through the Jungle

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May 2, 2006: In the last two weeks, approximately 15,000 Kenyan herders had moved across the Kenya-Uganda border into Uganda. The reports said the herders fear attacked by various armed cattle-raiding tribes and militias. There are several dozen casualties.

April 29, 2006: The UN is investigating reliable reports that Ugandan Army troops have crossed the Uganda-Congo border. The Ugandan troops are supposed to be pursuing LRA rebels. On April 26 a Congolese Army unit reported that it encountered Ugandan troops near the town of Aba (northeast Congo). On April 27 the UN said that the Congolese forces and Ugandan forces "clashed" south of Aba. One Ugandan soldier may have been killed (a Congo government report said the death was unconfirmed). Uganda denied that the firefight occurred, but a Ugandan military spokesman in Kampala said that Uganda have moved military units closer to the Uganda-Congo border. UN peacekeepers in the Congo have been pursuing the LRA, which has a base in the Garamba National Park area. Uganda has said that it now believes almost all LRA rebels are in the Congo, having left base areas in Sudan and northern Uganda.

April 26, 2006: The Ugandan Army said it had attacked a rebel base belonging to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). One rebel was killed and two were wounded. The base was in Uganda near the Congo border. The Ugandan military said that it had killed eight other ADF rebels in operations earlier in April. Most of the operations took place in the Rwenzori Mountains (western Uganda). The Ugandan military has been chasing a group of approximately 40 ADF rebels who have moved back and forth across the Uganda-Congo border. In the past the ADF has cooperated with the Congolese Revolutionary Movement (MRC), an anti-Congo government militia which operates in northeastern Congo. In 1998 The Ugandan military crossed the Uganda-Congo border to fight the ADF in Congo's Ituri region. The ADF is now a hodge-podge rebel coalition. Members of the National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (NALU) are the core of the ADF. The NALU originally drew its members from tribes in central Uganda. The NALU is vehemently opposed to Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni. Uganda claims there are some Islamist elements involved with ADF as well, drawn from Ugandan Muslims in northwestern Uganda. There are also reports that Rwandan Hutu militiamen joined the ADF in the Congo.