A multinational offensive aimed at wiping out Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels seems to have backfired, scattering fighters who've unleashed a wave of brutal massacres on Congolese villages. The Washington Post writes the operation has been so unsuccessful it amounts to little more than "throwing a rock at a hive of bees".

LRA fighters have killed nearly 900 people in reprisal attacks in northeast Congo since Ugandan troops, together with Sudanese and Congolese soldiers, launched a military operation against fugitive rebel leader Joseph Kony in December.

For the Christian Science Monitor, bad planning and poor coordination undermined the mission from the start. The botched plan gave the Ugandan rebels time to flee and issue orders to start killing everyone in sight.

"After the attacks they declared a total war against the population," Justin-Yves Rabbi, who was abducted by the LRA from Central African Republic, told the Monitor.

"Whatever the success or otherwise of the joint military operation, the protection of civilians in the region appears to have been only a distant afterthought," the Boston-based magazine writes.

For two decades, northern Uganda was the centre of an LRA insurgency, in which tens of thousands were killed, kidnapped or mutilated and 2 million people uprooted from their homes.

Talks between Kony and Kampala broke down in April after the LRA chief failed to sign a final peace deal. Kony's rebels have since been operating from camps in the Garamba National Park, in northeast Congo.

The New York Times reveals that the offensive against the LRA was backed by the U.S. government.

"It is the first time the United States has helped plan such a specific military offensive with Uganda," the paper writes, saying the Pentagon's new Africa Command (Africom) contributed intelligence, advice and $1 million in fuel.

No American forces have been involved in ground fighting, but human rights advocates and villagers complain Ugandan and Congolese troops have done almost nothing to protect civilians, despite the LRA's history of bloody attacks on local populations, according to the New York Times.

Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has also accused U.N. peacekeepers in Congo of failing to protect civilians by not reacting to the Ugandan rebels' rampage.

Foreign Policy magazine, meanwhile, warns that even with U.S. help, the LRA won't be easy to stamp out, putting the Pentagon's reputation at risk.

"Given the number of civilian massacres that have occurred since the start of the operation - massacres that happened because no one adequately secured the villages in the area - this could potentially be embarrassing for U.S. Africa Command (Africom) and the Pentagon," the magazine warns.

AFRICOM DEBACLE?

There are doubtful voices in the blogosphere too.

"One of the first publicly-acknowledged Africom operations has turned into a general debacle, resulting in the death of nearly a thousand civilians and sending untold numbers of children into sex slavery and military servitude," Dave Donelson says in his Heart of Diamonds blog.

"The Congolese and Ugandan command had made no plans to cut off fleeing elements of the LRA, so the rebels scattered throughout the countryside in a rampage of fresh violence," he adds.

For others, all the talk of the LRA's culpability for the massacres lets the Ugandan government and its American backers off the hook.

"We hear a litany of reports now about how 'bloodthirsty' the LRA is. No one points out that everywhere that Uganda's army, the UPDF/NRA goes, there is a bloodbath; the same bloodcurdling atrocities, and massive displacement of innocent people all of which is always blamed on the other side," says Carolyn Edson in New York's Black Star News.

"The war in the northern part of Uganda was carefully planned by the Museveni government and the U.S. government has played a key role in the background as it has just done in sponsoring this new war in DRC," she writes.

While underlining his horror at the catastrophic humanitarian fallout of the attempt to rout the LRA, U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes has said the joint force still needs to see the operation through.

"I don't know how long that will take...but I think there is no point in putting a premature end to it," Holmes told Reuters. "We, meanwhile, will try to pick up the pieces as best we can."

For some, the price has already been too high.

"Like Nkunda, Joseph Kony and his LRA must be stopped ... But not at such an expensive cost ... not at the cost of so many lives, suffering so much and in such a horrendous way," argues blogger Omar Basawad.

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