[Ugnet] perhaps you can now get a better picture

After which you should be able to add 2+2 together....now that you have read the article posted by Mr. Oracle ...do you get the picture?..you you now getting a better picture of what is happening in Eastern DRC?

Ugandan ex-soldiers who have renounced their rebellion against President Yoweri Museveni's government have refused to leave the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) unless they are paid for participating in the war that overthrew Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997.

The former rebels, who claim they fought alongside the Congolese army under the late President Laurent Desire Kabila, are each claiming up to $5,000 in compensation.

An officer with the Monuc (UN Mission Congo) office in Kampala, which is mandated to get all foreign armies out of Congo, said that their pleas to have the 20 former soldiers give up their arms have fallen on deaf ears, which is frustrating their efforts to restore peace in these areas.

The group demanding compens-ation belonged to the defunct West Nile Bank Front, which was originally led by a former Cabinet minister in the late Idi Amin's regime, the late Lt Col Juma Oris. It was later taken over by Amin's son, Taban Amin.

Last year, Taban returned to Uganda with over 700 ex-rebels under a special peace agreement negotiated with the government.

He was recently quoted in the press as stating that his men had been employed by Kinshasa. Monuc arranged the repatriation of the ex-rebels to Uganda.

They claimed they had been recruited into the Congolese army by the late President Kabila at the height of the rebellion against Mobutu, and promised that they would be paid.

"We are aware that these former rebels are claiming certain amounts of money from the Congolese government, claiming that they fought alongside their army," said Justice Peter Onega, chairman of the Uganda Amnesty Commission, the body set up to persuade ex-rebels to give up rebellion.

He, however, said they had not contacted the Congolese government on the subject, adding that the commission did not have much detail about the group's demands.

Justice Onega said his organisation was encouraging the ex-soldiers to give up demands for compensation and take up the amnesty offer by the Uganda government.

A Monuc official, who spoke on condition of anonymity told The EastAfrican that an estimated 2,000 Ugandan rebels and their families were staying in various camps in Congo.

The UN mission was assisting the Amnesty Commission to open up an office in Beni in Congo to enable them to reach the rebels and persuade them to return home.

Rebels so far identified by Monuc and reported to be still armed but not fighting belong to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) and the National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (ADF/NALU).

"We keep on hearing from the junior fighters that they are tired of fighting and that they want to come back home," said an official of the amnesty commission. "But senior commanders of the ADF/NALU may want to keep on maintaining their power base for their own selfish reasons."

"We have dropped leaflets from the air in the Congo, where rebels are based, telling them that they will be safe should they surrender. They will be given assistance to reintegrate with their societies at home. The leaflets were in English, French and Kiswahili," a Monuc official said. He added that they had repeated the messages on the FM radio stations in the region as well as Monuc's radio

[Ugnet] perhaps you can now get a better picture

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