“They forget what they came for”: Uganda's army in Sudan

Abstract

This document is the author's final accepted version of the journal article. There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. ''They forget what they came for'': Uganda's army in Sudan Mareike Schomerus Uganda's army, the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF), has been operating on Sudanese territory since the late 1990s. From 2002 to 2006, a bilateral agreement between the governments in Khartoum and Kampala gave the Ugandan soldiers permission to conduct military operations in Southern Sudan to eliminate the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Instead of conducting a successful operation against Uganda's most persistent rebels-who had withdrawn into Sudanese territory and acted as a proxy force in Sudan's civil war-the UPDF conducted a campaign of abuse against Sudanese civilians. Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted over several years, this article documents local experiences of a foreign army's involvement in the brutal Sudanese civil war. It outlines why continued operations of the UPDF outside their borders recreate the same problem they purport to be fighting: abuses of civilians. Since 2008, US military support for the UPDF mission against the LRA has called into question the viability of continued militarisation through an army that has committed widely documented human rights abuses. The foreign military has not brought peace to the region. Instead, it has made a peaceful environment less likely for residents of South Sudan.

Improvising border security: ‘A situation of security pluralism’ along South Sudan’s borders with the Democratic Republic of the Congo

“…Since 2010, LRA activity has been largely absent from South Sudan, despite alleged incidents in late 2013. Initially, the Ugandan army took the major role in pursuing the LRA (Schomerus, 2012), but currently a regional task force of the African Union (including Ugandan, South Sudanese and Central African Republic troops), supported by US military advisers, is responsible for eliminating the relatively small remaining group of LRA fighters. Security concerns due to LRA activity have hence generally been more intense at the western end of the border than the eastern.…”

Deals and Dealings: Inconclusive Peace and Treacherous Trade along the South Sudan-Uganda Border

“…In a perfect proxy war, the Ugandan government supported the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) soldiers, while in turn the government of Sudan delivered weapons and supplies to the LRA (Prunier 2004). As a result, Uganda's army has had a problematic presence in South Sudan, helping the SPLA and purportedly fighting the LRA (Schomerus 2012). A number of other rebel groups were part of these "regional conflict formations" as Sudan and Uganda used proxy rebel groups, as Prunier writes, to run "an undeclared war on their common border" (Prunier 2004: 359).…”

An assemblage approach to liquid warfare: AFRICOM and the ‘hunt’ for Joseph Kony

“…The very soldiers who were deployed to fight the LRA and protect civilians were reportedly posing a threat to the local population. For years, the Ugandan military has been renowned for its human rights abuses and looting of resources across its borders in the DRC and South Sudan ( Schomerus, 2012 ). True to its reputation, the Ugandan military has faced allegations that soldiers committed rape and sexual violence against women and girls in the CAR during their hunt for Kony ( Hattam, 2017 ).…”