Uganda rebels trading ivory for supplies
2013-02-07 21:19
Kampala - Uganda's army on Thursday recovered a cache of
elephant tusks that it says was hidden by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA)
rebel group in the jungles of the Central African Republic.
In a statement the army said that a squad of soldiers
that is part of a mission hunting rebel leader Joseph Kony found the small
stash of ivory following a tip-off from an LRA defector.
"These tusks, believed to have been hidden by the
LRA, were located in a remote area of the bush to the north of Djema," the
statement said, referring to a town in the southeast of the Central African
Republic.
Believed to now number around 250 fighters, the LRA has
waged a brutal 25-year insurgency against the Ugandan government, becoming
infamous for mutilating victims and seizing children to use as sex slaves and
porters.
The Ugandan army - backed up by around 100 US special
forces troops - is spearheading the hunt for Kony in a vast area of sparsely
populated jungle.
In the statement the Ugandan army said that US military
representatives had "secured, documented and photographed" the tusks
and that it was now in contact with Central African authorities to dispose of
the ivory.
On Monday, a coalition of US advocacy groups working on
solving the LRA threat said that rebel groups operating in the Garamba national
park in northeast Democratic Republic of Congo had poached elephants and could
be looking to sell their tusks.
"This has raised concerns that LRA groups may be
using the illegal ivory trade as a method to acquire new supplies or forms of
support," said the statement from the anti-LRA coalition that includes
Invisible Children, the group behind the wildly popular Kony 2012 internet
video.
The LRA has split up into small groups and Kony is
currently thought to be hiding out close to where the borders of the Central
African Republic, South Sudan and Sudan meet.
