Sponsored visit to anti-Kony staging camp produces flurry of news
An unusual dateline - Obo, Central African Republic - appeared in newspapers and on radio broadcasts across the globe Monday morning.
From our top partner AllAfrica.com
A string of stories were published and aired by reporters who were taken to a base that is one of four used by U.S. Special Forces involved in the search for the Ugandan-born Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which has carried on a terror campaign victimizing civilians across the central African region for more than two decades.
Media attention
Arranged by the U.S. State Department, the trip was intended to focus media attention on the international effort to apprehend Kony and other LRA leaders, American officials said.
A contingent of 100 U.S. Special Forces is working with thousands of soldiers from four armies in the region - from Uganda, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic.
"In Obo, the terrain is so remote that it took the U.S. military four months to carve out its jungle camp," according to the Washington Post's Craig Whitlock.
"About half of the U.S. contingent is based at a joint operations center near the international airport in Entebbe, Uganda," Whitlock wrote. The other base camps -- no less remote, according to U.S. officials, are at Djema in the Central African Republic, Dungu in the DRC and Nzara in South Sudan.
"The military arranged for journalists to arrive on chartered Cessnas, scattering stray dogs while landing on a makeshift dirt runway," he said in his Washington Post article.
Protected tour
About 20 U.S. Army Green Berets are stationed at Obo, the capital of the Haut-Mbomou prefecture or province near the country's southeastern border with South Sudan.
"The military would not permit journalists to tour the American camp - which villagers described as being protected by razor wire and cameras - but granted interviews with the local U.S. commander and security forces from Uganda and the Central African Republic who also are based here."
Stopped using phones
"Kony has reportedly stopped using radios and satellite phones for communications, instead relying on an elaborate system involving runners and multiple rendezvous points," David Rising from the Associated Press said in his report. "Key to his capture is good information from local residents - which they will only give when they can be sure of their own safety, according to American commanders," Rising reported.
"The Americans joined the hunt about six months ago to track a man whose followers have cut a swath of violence through the heart of Africa---leaving rape victims, child soldiers, mutilated bodies and destabilized governments in their wake," Solomon Moore, the Wall Street Journal's Nairobi-based correspondent, said in his story.