Kony 2012: the end of Joseph Kony?

The internet has exploded with the new campaign from Invisible Children: Kony 2012.

The video has gone viral, with celebrities from Stephen Fry to Rihanna tweeting about it.

The new campaign wants to see Joseph Kony, the LRA leader, made ‘famous’ – or rather, infamous.

Invisible Children want to make Kony a household name to raise awareness of his crimes.

The main aim is to put pressure on the US government to keep up its pursuit of the LRA leader.

Few could argue that they have succeeded in making Kony famous – the video has been viewed millions of times since its release around 48 hours ago.

Amid the publicity however, has been some stark criticism of Invisible Children.

How Matters criticise the group for portraying the conflict as ‘good guys’ versus ‘bad guys’ in the filmmaker’s explanation of the situation to his 3-year-old son.

Eric Ritskes complains that the film promotes a narrative of the White Man coming to save Africa.

Most of the people who have a problem with the Kony 2012 film say that it over-simplifies the situation.

But some have focused on the running of the organisation itself – pointing out that only 31% of the money raised has gone to projects on the ground in Africa.

Good Guys versus Bad Guys

If Joseph Kony isn’t a bad guy, then who is?

And if young people in the developed world genuinely want to help make a change for the better then who are they but good guys?

Invisible Children have sparked real change – with the anti-LRA bill they helped promote and by supporting a network of radio towers in the region.

Some have criticised the organisation’s name itself – saying that these children are very visible to their families and communities.

This is true of course, but it overlooks the point that those with the resources to stop Kony didn’t know about it beforehand.

Kony 2012: Too Simple?

In a word, yes.

The geopolitical reality of the situation on the ground is far too complicated to realistically boil down to a 30 minute film of good vs evil.

But when you are trying to rally millions to a cause, that’s what you need to do.

While I studied the LRA’s conflict in great detail, it took me months, and you can’t expect everyone to do the same.

Kony 2012 has brought new enthusiasm for the efforts to stop Kony, and that can only be good.

White Men Saving Africa

I can see why people criticise the filmmaker for saying he’s going to stop the war personally.

But the reality is that the conflict has been going on for well over two decades.

African-only situations have failed up to this point.

What the campaign promotes is cooperation between the ‘white men’ – the US military – and Africans – the regional forces.

It is not a white man dropping in just to take out Kony and then disappearing, in the ridiculous way of the Machine Gun Preacher.

Invisible Children

Yes, they need to spend more of their money on the ground in the affected region.

But their campaign is also about advocacy in the US.

Yes, it was foolish of the founders to pose with weapons.

But they are/were young men who get easily excited by these things (I know, I’m a young man too.)

And yes, they should be open to more scrutiny.

BUT.

Ask yourself where this conflict would be without the attention of Invisible Children.

On the front pages, or in the shadows?

Now people know about Kony – the will is there to make sure he is stopped.

At the end of the day, that’s all that really matters – that he and the LRA are stopped from killing, mutilating, abducting and raping.

The end will justify the means.

*Update*: Invisible Children have now posted a thorough official response to the claims being made by critics.

US Special Forces Arrive in Uganda: The Right Way to Stop the LRA?

US President Obama has sent 100 special forces soldiers to east Africa to help stop the LRA.

The President says this deployment is the fulfillment of an obligation in the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, and that the goal is to remove the LRA leader, Joseph Kony, and other senior commanders from the battlefield.

It is claimed that the soldiers will merely be helping local forces with intelligence, and will not engage the LRA unless they themselves are fired upon.

This makes me wonder whether or not these troops will “coincidentally” end up in the path of Kony, sparking a showdown that will see him captured or killed.

But is this the right thing to do?

Non-profit organisation Invisible Children, who raise awareness of the conflict,  seem to think so.

But others have argued, with some reason, that because the LRA is largely made up of abducted children, it isn’t right to send soldiers after them.

On another note, some think that President Obama has ulterior motives that are not humanitarian when it comes to this deployment.

It has been speculated that taking out the LRA is America’s reward to Uganda for its participation in the fight against the Islamic extremist group al-Shabab in Somalia.

Elizabeth Allen thinks that America would like to remove the LRA as a possible tool of the Sudanese government in destabilising the newly formed South Sudan.

Even when considering these other issues, I would still support the President’s move.

Every other method to try to stop the LRA has so far failed, and people on the ground with the technology and expertise to actually find Kony can only be a good thing.

And if this means that America get some by-products that they might welcome?

Well, who dares wins.

There is one major caveat to this of course.

Previous military action against the LRA failed to protect the civilian population, leaving Kony’s gang the freedom to kill hundreds of innocent people in retaliation.

This cannot be allowed to happen again.

Capturing Kony: Lessons from the Bin Laden Raid

It was celebrated as a decisive victory in the war on terror – the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the man behind the 9/11 attacks on America.

 

Osama bin Laden: no longer a threat

The circumstances were extraordinary.

He had been found in a compound far inside Pakistan, a supposed ally of the U.S, not more than minutes away from a major Pakistani Army facility.

A team of American Navy SEALs crossed the border from Afghanistan in stealth helicopters, undetected until well after they had taken out their target and made good their escape.

If they can do this in Pakistan, how hard could it be to do the same to take out an African warlord in a country that would welcome such an intervention?

It could even be argued that America has committed itself to capturing or killing Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, to a further extent than they had with bin Laden.

It should not be forgotten that President Obama signed that goal into law.

Ask a Black Bloke

So what lessons can be learned from the bin Laden raid to help with capturing Kony?

The most important must be the impact of having people on the ground, actively searching.

Bin Laden’s compound, it is understood, was watched by CIA agents for months before the raid.

Yet little or no effort seems to have been made by American forces to locate Kony.

British comedian and activist Jane Bussman, after a trip to the LRA affected region, has expressed her surprise at how little has been done.

When she asked the UK Foreign Office if they knew where Kony was, they had no idea.

Yet local people did, and no-one had asked them.

Bussman knows this is critical.

In an interview with CNN, she calls it the “ask a black bloke” strategy.

Pretty simple really.

A new campaign involving the non-profit Invisible Children could help with this.

They are raising funds to build radio towers in the affected area, so that communities can warn others of an LRA attack and share intelligence on where the group actually is.

 

Drones

Another piece of technology that was probably used in the hunt for bin Laden was the unmanned aerial vehicle known as the Reaper.

The CIA have used these to kill militants inside Pakistan, and they’re now being deployed by the U.S to bases in Africa.

They’ve mainly be used to strike targets in Somalia and Yemen, but could be a good option in the skies over the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the LRA are hiding.

For example, if an LRA attack was reported (perhaps through the radio towers) a Reaper drone could be used to follow the rebels back to their base, potentially where Kony could be hiding.

Special forces could then be used for a similar operation as the one that killed bin Laden.

Simple, Right?

While this seems like an easy solution, it, as ever, comes down to question of will.

Perhaps now that the U.S. have taken down public enemy number one, they’ll have the focus to remove a man who still terrorizes a huge swathe of the African continent.