Should we trust the anti-Joseph Kony campaign recently launched by a US based charity organizations?
“What that video says is totally wrong, and it can cause us more problems than help us … There has not been a single soul from the LRA here since 2006. Now we have peace, people are back in their homes, they are planting their fields, they are starting their businesses. That is what people should help us with.” Dr Beatrice Mpora, director of Kairos, a community health organisation in Gulu, a town that was once the centre of the rebels’ activities. Source: Mike Pflanz, the Telegraph, Nairobi, 08 Mar 2012.
Picture: Joseph Kony. Source: Artist Against Corruption
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KONY2012: Powerful propaganda for US Military intervention
By Adisa A. Alkebulan, Ph.D. Executive director of the Diopian Institute for Scholarly Advancement Associate professor of Africana Studies San Diego State UniversityKony 2012, produced by the “charitable organization” Invisible Children (IC), has touched off an unprecedented international outcry. The San Diego based organization, who has been tied to several Christian fundamentalist organizations in the United States, maintains that the aim of the short film is to make Joseph Kony, Ugandan rebel leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), the most famous man in the world and assist the Ugandan government in bringing about his capture by the end of 2012.
Several Christian fundamentalist organizations that backed vile anti-gay legislation in Uganda are also sponsors of this film. Unfortunately, the film’s simplistic storyline of the very complex nature of the conflict does far more in the way of providing the United States cover for its military objectives in Africa than it does in helping the children of Uganda.
Furthermore, it is extremely problematic for a supposed charitable organization to advocate military intervention in Africa. IC has formed a kind of a war axis with the United States government and inexplicably the despotic government of Uganda. The discovery of what might be Africa’s largest oil reserve in Uganda and the deployment of US Special Forces is no coincidence.
In October of last year, the Obama administration sent 100 well-armed Special Forces “advisors” to the region to “assist” the Ugandan government in the apprehension of Kony. In addition, the United States has provided tens of millions of dollars in military aid to Uganda. It should be noted that Uganda has troops fighting the United States’ proxy war in Somalia under the auspices of the African Union.
Ironically, Uganda represents one of the best examples of the inconsistencies between US rhetoric on African affairs and its actual policies. The United States has aligned itself with one of the most abusive regimes in Africa. There is no dispute about the nature of the LRA and that it must be dealt with. It has been terrorizing Africa for more than two decades. They are charged with abducting tens of thousands of children over decades forcing boys to become child soldiers and girls sex slaves.
According to Human Rights Watch there are a few hundred LRA fighters spread out in South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic. The LRA is from the Akoli region of Northern Uganda and had been fighting the government since 1987 before fleeing the country in 2006. How IC could possibly assist the Ugandan government in apprehending Kony, who is no longer in Uganda, is unclear.
The atrocities resulting from this conflict is largely ethnic and has its origins in the colonial era when the British claimed Uganda as its colonial possession. But what must also be understood is that thousands of child soldiers fought for the current president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, when he was a rebel leader in the 1980s.
The complete article is available at the following website: http://www.diopianinstitute.org/2012/04/07/kony2012-powerful-propaganda-for-u-s-military-intervention/
NB: We are very thankful to the Diopian Institute for Scholarly Advancement for its intellectual contribution to the understanding of African history.
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