In a letter to Congress on Friday, Obama said he authorized the mission to help local armies hunt LRA leader Joseph Kony, whose rebel sect is blamed for years of abductions, killings and acts of brutality in remote central Africa.While the United States has assisted unsuccessful local efforts to snare Kony since 2008, the announcement was seen as potentially significant if it heralds a renewed commitment to end a two-decade-long scourge to regional security.”If there were suitable special forces with the right equipment, it would be possible to take him out,” said Tim Allen, professor at the London School of Economics.”I would hope that this statement indicates there is enough intelligence (on Kony) to do that,” said Allen, co-author of “The Lord’s Resistance Army: Myth and Reality.”Kony has long eluded efforts to snare him and obstacles could still hold the U.S. initiative back from a stated goal of removing him from the battlefield — whether that means dead, or alive and bound for the International Criminal Court.Kony emerged in the late 1980s as a leader of a rebel group in northern Uganda’s Acholiland opposed to President Yoweri Museveni, attracting supporters with a creed based on a mix of mysticism and apocalyptic Christianity.CHILDREN UPFRONTOver the years the LRA become known for chilling violence including what human rights groups say were the abductions of thousands for use as child soldiers or sex slaves, brutal club and machete attacks on victims.Ejected from Uganda in 2005, the LRA has since roamed the remote jungle regions straddling Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic, terrorizing local communities and mostly out of reach of over-stretched armies.”The end-result of attempts to capture him was that he would escape and the casualties were the children — his tactic was to put them up front,” said Heloise Ruaudel of Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Center, formerly Special Assistant to the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Uganda from 2003-2005.While the number of LRA fighters has ebbed and flowed over the years, sometimes numbering hundreds and other times thousands, its impact can be disproportionately severe.Past attempts to defeat them militarily have tended to result in retaliation taken out against local villages, Ruaudel noted.Much will also depend on how the new U.S. forces choose to interpret the mandate for the new deployment.While the United States has for the past three years offered what Obama called “limited U.S. assistance” to regional military efforts, the new force puts 100 mostly special force troops out in the field in a close-up support and advisory role.Barred from taking on the LRA directly in anything but strict self-defense, the question remains as to what this will add on top of logistical support already being provided.While the deployment has invited comparisons with the surgical strike Obama successfully used to kill Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, even providing indirect support for a similar assault in Africa would be harder to explain if it backfired.”It will be very difficult for the U.S. to significantly change the way they engage,” said Mareike Schomerus, Research Consortium Director of the Justice and Security Research Programme at the London School of Economics.”A U.S. soldier getting killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo would not be conducive to Obama’s re-election,” said Schomerus of a scenario that would bring flooding back painful memories of U.S. personnel killed in the 1993 battle of Mogadishu in Somalia.Yet aside from the security gain to the region of catching Kony, the political pay-off to Obama would be significant.While violent rebellions abound in Africa, the LRA has caught special U.S. attention to the extent that a Hollywood movie, “Machine Gun Preacher,” is currently treating audiences to the tale of ex-biker-gang member’s efforts to take them on.Allen at the London School of Economics said lobbying by groups such as Christian advocacy group World Vision had kept the issue so much at the forefront of U.S. attention that he had packed out lecture halls when speaking on the LRA there.”It has become a cause of young people,” he said.
* Merchant Commodity down 36 pct on year, Blenheim 25 pct* Clive Capital bucks trend with 11.5 pct gain in SeptBy Laurence Fletcher and Tommy WilkesLONDON, Oct 13 (Reuters) - A sharp sell-off in commodity
markets in the past few weeks is wreaking havoc with the track
records of some of the biggest-name funds in the sector, many
of which now languish near the bottom of the $2 trillion
industry’s performance tables.Funds like Mike Coleman’s Merchant Commodity fund and
Willem Kooyker’s Blenheim Capital sit on hefty double-digit
losses for the year after investors worried about global
economic growth recently dumped gold, copper and cocoa for
less-risky assets.And Astenbeck, the $2 billion hedge fund founded by famed
oil bull Andy Hall, lost around 18 percent of its value in
September — far more than last month’s 11 percent drop in
Brent crude , the London benchmark used now by most oil
investors and traders.The Reuters-Jefferies CRB index of 19 commodities
shed 13 percent during September, a drop which has echoes of
May when many star managers betting on rising prices were
caught on the hop by a quick sell-off.The size of the September hit, on top of losses suffered
earlier this year, means many managers who enjoyed bumper
profits from the long commodity bull run now face the
likelihood of a down year.The average hedge fund investing in the Energy and Basic
Materials sectors has slid 15.5 percent this year to
end-September, making it the worst-performing strategy as
measured by Hedge Fund Research’s HFRI index.”Some commodity hedge funds have struggled due to their
markets trading more in line with risk appetite than
supply-demand characteristics — with concerns over the
sovereign debt crisis overshadowing fundamentals — and lacking
clear direction,” said Credo Capital’s head of research Gemma
Godfrey.”Oil, for example, has seen more than 10 percent swings in
a week, whilst trending sideward. This also spooked some
managers to cut positions ahead of strong rallies.”Brent crude lost around 7 percent last quarter, while
London copper lost more than a fifth to end last month near
14-month lows.Even gold, which had gained about a third this year and
provided one of the most profitable trades for many managers,
subsequently slumped more than 10 percent in September.TRACK RECORDS TARNISHEDThe losses from commodities also come in a year that is
tarnishing some star managers’ records across the industry.John Paulson, seen by some as making the greatest ever
trade when he bet against subprime debt in 2007, is down 47
percent in his Advantage Plus fund.The $1.1 billion Merchant Commodity Fund, a
fundamentally-driven commodity long-short fund run out of
Singapore, lost 5.4 percent last month, said a source who saw
the performance data.This leaves the fund — which was profitable in each of the
past seven years and which racked up annual gains of more than
30 percent in 2005, 2006 and 2007 — down 36 percent this year,
manager Mike Coleman told Reuters, although he declined to
comment on reasons for the losses.BlueGold Global Fund, run by the firm’s chief investment
officer Pierre Andurand, is down 0.4 percent last month to
Sept. 16, according to figures seen by Reuters, leaving it 25
percent in the red for the year.And Willem Kooyker’s Blenheim Capital Management, a New
Jersey based fund estimated in May to manage $5 billion, and a
big commodities investor, lost 15.5 percent in September and is
down 25 percent in 2011, a person familiar with the fund said.Andy Hall’s Connecticut-based fund Astenbeck is down more
than 5 percent year-to-date, after September’s double-digit
loss, sources familiar with the fund’s performance said.Commodities giant Armajaro, co-founded by coffee and cocoa
trader Anthony Ward, saw its flagship Commodities fund fall
more than 5 percent last month to September 23, taking
year-to-date losses to more than 7 percent, according to
figures seen by Reuters.The firm’s Emerging Markets fund, a macro fund betting on
equities, derivatives and fixed income, has also suffered in
2011’s sell-off, losing 14.4 percent this year.A spokesman for the firm, which manages $2.2 billion in
assets, declined to give reasons for the performanceStar commodities trader Paul Touradji’s $840 million Global
Resources Offshore fund was down 17.5 percent this year to
end-August, according to figures seen by Reuters. Last month
Touradji said he would return to full-time trading to try and
save his fund from its first-ever annual loss.A spokesman for Touradji declined to comment.Not all funds were stung by September’s sell-off — some
were able to profit from falling prices.Clive Capital, the $4 billion London-based hedge fund firm
set up by Chris Levett, jumped 11.5 percent in September after
taking a bearish position on commodities, two people who have
seen the numbers said. This leaves the fund down 1.4 percent in
2011. Clive Capital declined to comment.
* Mainland strength reverses Hong Kong loss, HSI up 1
percent* HK developers rally into close, shrug off govt stepsBy Clement Tan and Vikram SubhedarSHANGHAI/HONG KONG, Oct 12 (Reuters) - China shares jumped
more than 3 percent on Wednesday — their biggest daily gain in
a year — as financials and property rallied on hopes that the
government is taking steps to boost those two pivotal sectors.Shares in finance and property have been beaten down in
2011, and investors appeared happy to latch onto encouraging
signs and market talk.Speculation that the country’s sovereign wealth fund was
again supporting bank shares gave a lift to Shanghai shares and
helped Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index reverse an earlier
decline.Hopes that Chinese authorities would take steps to bolster
confidence in financial shares rose on Monday when Central
Huijin, the domestic investment arm of the country’s sovereign
wealth fund, was reported to be raising its stakes in the “Big
Four” Chinese banks.Wednesday’s developments continued to underpin the rally in
Chinese banking shares, still trading at record low valuations.Five days of gains for the Hang Seng has seen it bounce 12.8
percent from a 2-1/2 year low last week. It closed up 1.0
percent at 18,239.5 on Wednesday.The Shanghai Composite closed at 2,420 with volumes
for A-shares hitting the highest since August 25.”It’s quite possible that Huijin has gone back to the market
to buy more bank shares this morning,” said a trader at a major
Chinese brokerage in Shanghai.”Investors could now be betting that Beijing will not give
up so easily and will resort to other measures to support the
market if this doesn’t work.”Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd
rose 1.7 percent in Shanghai and 1.2 percent in Hong
Kong. China Construction Bank Corp rose
1.6 percent in Shanghai and 2.5 percent in Hong Kong where it
provided the biggest boost to the benchmark index.The China Securities Journal cited an unnamed source as
saying that Wenzhou, a coastal city in Zhejiang province, is
considering seeking approval for the “general financial
experimental zone”, backed by the provincial government.With the report on Wenzhou and the buying activity by
Huijin, “we are seeing selective easing in various parts of the
economy,” said Paul Schulte, global head of financial strategy
at CCB International Securities.HK DEVELOPERS JOIN RALLYEarly weakness in the real estate sector in Hong Kong also
reversed in the afternoon session after the territory’s
authorities announced milder-than-expected steps to ease public
discontent about sky-high property prices.Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang said the government
would resume the construction and sale of subsidised housing.Prices for Hong Kong’s apartments, the most expensive in the
world, have risen more than 12 percent this year, surpassing
records in 1997 amid a low interest-rate environment, strong
economic growth and buying by mainland Chinese investors.The property sub-index in Hong Kong which ended the
morning little changed, was up 3 percent at the end of the day
with Sun Hung Kai Property rising 2.3 percent and
China Overseas Land jumping 5.8 percent.Bucking the broader upward trend but ending up well off
their lows for the day were shares of European fashion retailer
Esprit Holdings Ltd , which dropped 7.5 percent on
heavy volume after a media report said that the company had
exaggerated its number of retail outlets in China.
