Mennonite Weekly Review

WASHINGTON — Mennonite Central Committee is urging the Obama administration to pursue diplomacy instead of military force to disarm rebels in central Africa.

MCC sees a bill recently passed by Congress as opening the door for increased U.S.-supported military involvement in the region.

The Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act is intended to stop the kidnapping and raping of civilians and the conscription of child soldiers by the LRA, a rebel group. It also includes development and justice initiatives that many nongovernmental organizations support.

MCC, which has operated in Uganda since 1979, is concerned that this bill will prioritize funding to Uganda’s military and thereby incite backlash attacks on civilians, rather than promote stability and reconciliation, according to Gann Herman, MCC Uganda representative, from Durham, N.C.

For the past year, the MCC U.S. Washington Office and MCC Uganda, along with constituents of MCC and other like-minded organizations, have advocated for stronger peacebuilding initiatives in the bill instead of military options. Although their efforts resulted in an amendment to the bill that encouraged diplomatic efforts, the military option remains.

“Despite the legislation’s admirable language about a multilateral, interagency approach to disarm and demobilize the LRA, it is apparent that, in practice, the military far outweighs diplomacy and development in U.S. foreign policy today,” said Rachelle Lyndaker Schlabach, director of the Washington Office. “Civilian agencies such as the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development receive much less funding and have far fewer personnel than the Defense Department.”

Northern Uganda has experienced consistent economic and political marginalization by the central government in the south. The LRA formed in 1987 as a resistance movement claiming to represent northern Uganda’s Acholi people. However, LRA members eventually started attacking the people they initially claimed to protect.

For two decades, the LRA has terrorized communities in northern Uganda.