The Security Council is poised today to endorse a plan from the African Union to send a multinational force of 5,000 troops to South Sudan, the Central African Republic and DRC to find and capture Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army. This plan has been in the works for a while and several African countries are contributing troops to the cause. They will receive some backing from the 100 or so US special forces in the region.
The troops have already been committed to the cause. The problem? There’s no money to feed, clothe, transport, or train them.
“These troops lack almost everything,” AU special envoy on the LRA Francisco Madeira told a news conference at U.N. headquarters in New York on Tuesday.
“They lack boots, they lack uniforms, they lack food rations and sometimes they lack training. So there is a need for these things to be supplied.”
Abou Moussa, U.N. special envoy and head of the U.N. Regional Office for Central Africa, is slated to brief the 15-member U.N. Security Council on Wednesday on the U.N. regional strategy to address the threat and impact of the LRA.
The strategy, obtained by Reuters, requires U.N. countries and agencies to ensure the AU force is “adequately equipped, including with regard to air capabilities, communications, office and living accommodations, medical support, and fuel and rations, as soon as possible, and no later than December 2012.”
As is typically the case for these AU deployments, the local countries supply the troops but wealthier countries to help pick up the tab. Right now, it seems that the United States and EU are not quite willing to pony up for this mission.