One hundred U.S. troops are being deployed to help combat the Lord’s Resistance Army. Obama will deploy troops to Africa

President Barack Obama informed Congress Friday that he’s deploying a force of 100 U.S. combat troops to Africa to help local forces take out the leader of a militant group accused of atrocities and terrorizing civilians, the White House announced Friday.

The U.S. contingent will aid local forces fighting Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, Obama said in a letter to House and Senate leaders.


“Although the U.S. forces are combat equipped, they will only be providing information, advice and assistance to partner nation forces and they will not themselves engage LRA forces unless necessary for self-defense,” Obama wrote. He said the goal of the mission is “removing from the battlefield Joseph Kony and other senior leadership of the LRA.”

A senior defense official said Friday that the U.S. group would consist primarily of special operations forces trained in promoting “foreign internal defense.”

“They bring the experience and technical capability to train, advise and assist partner security forces in support of programs designed to support internal security,” said the official.

Kony and his top advisers are under indictment by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. He and his army have been responsible for murdering, raping, and kidnapping “tens of thousands of men, women, and children in central Africa,” Obama said in his letter.They have also drawn international condemnation for their use of child soldiers, often kidnapped from their homes.

Kony claims to be Christian and insists that his group is fighting on behalf of the Ten Commandments.

“If you ever had any question if there was evil in this world, it’s resident in the person of Joseph Kony and in that organization,” the commander of U.S. forces in Africa, Gen. Carter Ham, said in a speech earlier this month. Ham said a small number of U.S. personnel have been facilitating intelligence and local forces had achieved some successes but made few inroads against Kony and his top aides.

“My best estimate at present is that Kony and the senior leaders are probably in the Central African Republic,” Ham said in his Oct. 4 remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “We’re hopeful here and the very near future to be able to increase the number of U.S. military advisers and trainers in that regard.”

Obama said in his letter that the first American troops taking part in the expanded effort landed in neighboring Uganda on Wednesday. Over time, the U.S. troops are expected to deploy to the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan.

Fighting in those countries - and atrocities - have been going on for years, and Obama gave no precise explanation for the timing of the U.S. deployment. The president said simply that “regional military efforts have thus far been unsuccessful in removing” Kony and that deploying the U.S. force would advance “U.S. national security interests and foreign policy.”

Obama said he submitted the letter to lawmakers “consistent with the War Powers Resolution,” the 1973 law through which Congress seeks to regulate the deployment of U.S. troops in “hostilities” abroad.