By Steven Candia

The Uganda National Focal Point on Small Arms yesterday refuted reports that put the number of small arms in the hands of the LRA at 150,000.

The UN agency IRIN on Friday quoted its coordinator, Richard Nabudere, as saying that there were 400,000 small arms in Uganda, 150,000 of which were in the hands of the LRA.

“No count has been made to ascertain the number of small arms in the hands of the LRA or any other rebel group,” Nabudere clarified. “What I stated was that arms held illegally in Uganda include those in the hands of insurgents such as the LRA, Karimojong warriors and criminals.”

A research by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey estimated the stock-pile holdings in Uganda to be in the range of 200,000 to 400,000 small arms.

“These are only estimates,” Nabudere stressed. “Moreover, these estimates are not only for illegally held arms but also include Government arms as well as firearms licensed to civilians.”

He pointed out that there was no way anybody could know the exact number of illegal arms in circulation since there had never been any count. “Such an exercise would be impractical anyway for an active and hostile rebel force as the LRA would not submit to the exercise, just as any illegal holdings would always be shrouded in secrecy for fear of arrest,” he added.

The 2006 Small Arms Survey, which has a chapter on the LRA, notes that small arms are the most suitable weapons for the LRA’s operations but does not give any figures.

“For the most part, the LRA uses assault rifles and light machine guns, reserving the use of larger weapons, such as RPGs, for attacks on light armoured vehicles,” the report states. “Even when the Sudanese government supplied heavier weapons, the LRA used mainly small arms because it needed to be highly mobile.”

As to its stocks, the survey notes that the LRA has two broad and connected systems in place for storing arms and ammunition: “Large cashes of potentially hundreds of weapons buried in the far north of Uganda and southern Sudan, and small, local caches scattered throughout Uganda.”

In order to establish the number of small arms in circulation in the region, member states in a meeting in Kampala last week adopted a regional research strategy. “Representatives from the states of the Great Lakes region and the Horn of Africa in their Kampala meeting of March 15 adopted a Regional Research Strategy that will enable us to assess more clearly the number of weapons in circulation,” Nabudere said.