My take on the Joseph Kony campaign

Generally speaking, any bandwagon that P. Diddy is on, I want to be as far away as I can. My actual total take on it is best summed up by the Action Figure Therapy video down at the bottom of this post, but I did want to add some reasoning in here.

I’m fine with movements in general. Although not always the case, most of them do educate (or at least get people talking.) This Kony one is no different. Now, it is not an issue with which I am unfamiliar. Little known TSO fact #453, I have my degree in SubSaharan African Politics. I also specialized in law school in both international law, and specifically on the use of “mercenaries.” (When I was a kid I wanted to fight for Jonas Savimbi in Angola.) So again, I do rather know the subject. It should be noted as well that one of my cobloggers wifes is a published expert on child soldiering. Which is just a wretched thing for the 2 of you that didn’t know that already. It is also astonishingly prevalent, and strides must be made to fix it, or the recurring vicious cycle will never end.

That said, this whole Kony movement thing is firing off at like 120 degrees off azimuth.

This Foreign Policy article by Joshua Keating should be mandatory readying before you send your $30 off to Invisible Children.

It would be great to get rid of Kony. He and his forces have left a path of abductions and mass murder in their wake for over 20 years. But let’s get two things straight: 1) Joseph Kony is not in Uganda and hasn’t been for 6 years; 2) the LRA now numbers at most in the hundreds, and while it is still causing immense suffering, it is unclear how millions of well-meaning but misinformed people are going to help deal with the more complicated reality.

First, the facts. Following a successful campaign by the Ugandan military and failed peace talks in 2006, the LRA was pushed out of Uganda and has been operating in extremely remote areas of the DRC, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic — where Kony himself is believed to be now. The Ugandan military has been pursuing the LRA since then but had little success (and several big screw-ups). In October last year, President Obama authorized the deployment of 100 U.S. Army advisors to help the Ugandan military track down Kony, with no results disclosed to date.

Additionally, the LRA (thankfully!) does not have 30,000 mindless child soldiers. This grim figure, cited by Invisible Children in the film (and by others) refers to the total number of kids abducted by the LRA over nearly 30 years. Eerily, it is also the same number estimated for the total killed in the more than 20 years of conflict in Northern Uganda.

NOW, I am not saying that no one should jump on this bandwagon either, just that folks should educate themselves. The list of celebrities pushing this on twitter doesn’t exactly scream “foreign policy experts”. (As an aside, why hasn’t Mark Wahlberg just hunted this dude down yet? What the hell is he waiting on?) So look at this piece defending the Invisible Children effort from WaPo:

It is probably true (thank goodness) that Kony’s greatest crimes are in the past. He is no longer active in Uganda, where even his northern tribal allies turned against him. Attacks in eastern Congo and southern CAR are mainly raids for supplies instead of mass atrocities. But this is precisely because the LRA is under constant pressure. When Kony attempts to gather his forces – as he did in September in CAR – his Ugandan army pursuers are quickly on top of him. Obama has deployed more than 80 special operations forces in the region to help coordinate these operations.

Even a diminished Kony is dangerous. And the evil of the man himself can scarcely be exaggerated. In Uganda, I’ve met former LRA child soldiers who were forced to kill their own parents and neighbors in order to sever their ties to community and sympathy. I met a young man who looked at Kony without permission and had his eye removed in punishment. In January, I met two girls in the DRC who had recently escaped from LRA captivity. They had been used as sex slaves and pack animals – punished, when they tried to escape, by having melted plastic poured on their shoulders. All Kony’s victims – past and present – deserve to see justice done.

I wouldn’t say I am ambivalent on getting Kony, he should be ventillated, but this whole movement to get him would make me more comfortable if the Invisible Children people hadn’t been so loose with the facts, and laid off pictures of his kid, which not only didn’t tug my heartstrings (I have none) but also made me wonder why we are exploiting little kids to stop the exploitation of little kids.

Anyway, this is how I really feel: (LANGUAGE WARNING)

Category: Politics