The creation of AFRICOM was announced by President George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in February 2007 and it was activated in October of that year. The New York Times was the first to report about how 17 U.S. military advisors from AFRICOM helped the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces plan the December 2008 attack against the LRA. In addition to donating satellite phones and $1 million worth of fuel for the attack, the Pentagon has been helping train the Ugandan military for years, and Lightning Thunder constituted the first opportunity to see how the Ugandan army would hold up in battle. Ugandan soldiers did manage to scatter LRA forces as a result of the assault, but by no means was the rebel army subdued. In fact, the LRA turned around and went on the offensive, killing nearly 1,000 Congolese civilians, displacing over 180,000, and abducting hundreds of new child soldiers—while the Ugandan army did little to protect villagers.

 

General Ward’s report of the mission won over Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), who said Operation Lightning Thunder was a “huge success,” and that it was a good thing Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has a military background. Museveni has received substantial amounts of US military support for decades.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

AFRICOM's Ugandan Blunder (by Beth Tuckey, Foreign Policy in Focus)

U.S. Aided a Failed Plan to Rout Ugandan Rebels (by Jeffrey Gettleman and Eric Schmitt, New York Times)

URDF Commanders Behind “Operation Lightning Thunder” (Daily Monitor-Uganda)