Posted on 08/01/2012 1:40:47 PM PDT by Kaslin
Many Internet videos instantly attract several million viewers, but "Kony 2012" was an unusual web sensation: It tackled an underreported African conflict and had real international foreign policy impact.
Released in March by the human rights group Invisible Children, the video addressed Joseph Kony's three decades as senior commander of the Ugandan rebel Lords Resistance Army (LRA) and his legacy of murder and rape throughout Central Africa.
The video, which had some 70 million views in its first weeks on the Web, attracted criticism and praise. Critics said it used sensationalist film techniques and framed Central Africa's conflicts simplistically. Indeed it does. It also portrayed Kony as a mass murderer, sociopath and mutilator. He is all of these evils, and hideously more.
Kony is also elusive. In October 2011, President Barack Obama deployed 100 U.S. special operations troops to Africa with orders to help African and U.N. forces capture Kony. "Kony 2012" lauds the U.S. deployment.
As August 2012 begins, around 2,000 Ugandan Army troops and 500 South Sudanese soldiers are still chasing Kony. U.S. troops continue to provide them with intelligence data and logistics assistance. "Kony" the video has logged over 110 million views on YouTube and Vimeo. Kony the criminal, however, remains free, and the LRA regularly attacks unarmed civilians.
The failure to capture Kony may be an embarrassment, but it isn't much of a surprise. Over 25 years of life on the lam in the central African jungle and savannah country has honed Kony's escape, evasion and survival skills. When opponents up the pressure, the LRA disperses into the bush. Fighters split into groups, some as small as four or five rebel fighters. LRA leaders also disperse, protected by elite bodyguards.
The LRA dispersed when Ugandan troops attacked LRA base camps in southern Sudan in March 2002. It did so again four years ago when Uganda and the Congo attacked its Congolese camps. Today, LRA bands still operate as little more than criminal gangs, attacking defenseless villages, stealing food and abducting civilians. For the LRA, theft and looting are logistics operations.
The immense LRA dispersal area is roughly comparable to the state of Texas in size. It slices through five desperately poor nations -- the Congo, South Sudan (Juba government), Sudan (Khartoum government), the Central African Republic (CAR) and Uganda. Among these five nations, only Uganda's security forces can reasonably assert that they control their national territory.
Kony maintains hideouts in the territory's most remote regions and uses its size and political divisions to his advantage. He crosses international borders to cover his tracks and create diplomatic complications for pursuing enemies. Remote certainly applies to the southeastern CAR's Chinko River area and Sudan's western Darfur region, the two areas where Ugandan security officials say they believe he is likely hiding.
Kony also has a knack for moving at the right time. The Ugandan government contends that Kony gets intelligence tips and supplies from Sudan (Khartoum). The Sudanese deny both allegations.
With Kony persistently frustrating his pursuers, the U.N. Security Council in June requested additional assistance. The African Union (AU) agreed to field a force of 5,000 soldiers to combat the LRA, with units from Uganda, South Sudan, the Congo and the CAR. The force needs equipment, trainers and training funds.
The AU will likely get it. Though the furor Kony 2012 initially sparked has waned, Kony's crimes and chronic depredations are stubborn facts. Last week, Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade, sponsored a bill expanding the U.S. program that rewards tipsters who bring terrorists and drug lords to justice. Royce's legislation adds criminals wanted for human rights abuse to the rewards list. According to Royce, "Target one" for his legislation "is Joseph Kony, the sadistic head of the LRA."
Kony is a Christian fighting against Islam in Africa. This film is propaganda.
The first casualty will always be the truth.
naturally
“Kony is a Christian fighting against Islam in Africa.”
You really need to do a bit more research before making a statement like that. Kony is about as much a Christian as was Adolf Hitler.
Townhall.com got trolled.
Just make sure you don’t end up naked and jacking it in San Diego.
“The first casualty will always be the truth.”
Yea, I thought we dispensed with this scam nearly a year ago. Why is it back?
I make no judgements against Kony, because God often works through those we believe to be seriously flawed.
Good luck to anyone, who after decades of fighting the evil of Islam, remains morally pristine.
Over a thousand years of European history demonstrates what is meant by the above statements. I do not expect Africans to be better human beings that those who have lived in Europe’s past.
“Good luck to anyone, who after decades of fighting the evil of Islam, remains morally pristine.”
Do you know ANYTHING about Kony and what he & his men have done?
Evil, evil men.
Kony doesn’t fight Islam. He fights mainly the Ugandan government, whose leader Yoweri Museveni is a Christian (Anglican, I believe). And Kony is hardly a Christian. He claims to be visited by a multinational host of 13 spirits, including a Chinese phantom. The LRA kills Christians, often right during church services, before kidnapping the kids. They turn the boys into child-soldiers, and the girls into sex-slaves. They have been documented by the Red Cross to have slaughtered hundreds at a time on several occassions for the last 30 years.
They have been committing atrocities in the area, funded and armed by Sudan (the Muslims in Khartoum) to fight Uganda & Dem-Rep Congo.
“In May, 2002 the LRA attacked Eastern Equatoria in Sudan (now South Sudan). An estimated 450 people were killed, and witnesses state some villagers were forced to walk off a cliff. In November 2002, in a border village in Southern Sudan, LRA members encountered a procession of some sixty mourners carrying a deceased member of their village. At gunpoint, the LRA forced the mourners to boil and eat the deceased. The mourners complied. After the corpse had been cooked and eaten all of the mourners were shot dead.
By 2004, according to UPDF spokesman Lt. Col. Shaban Bantariza, mediation efforts by the Carter Center and the Pope had been spurned by Kony.
On 25 December 2008, the LRA massacred 189 people and abducted 120 children during a concert celebration sponsored by the Catholic church in Faradje, DRC, continuing the attack on 26 December. Shortly afterwards, the LRA struck three additional communities: 75 people killed in a church north of Dungu, and the church burned; 48 people killed in Bangadi, and 213 people in Gurba.[34] The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated the death toll as 189 in Faradje, Doruma and Gurba.However, Caritas International estimated the number of victims to be about 500. On 28 December 2008, the Ugandan army published details of the Doruma attack, accusing LRA rebels of hacking to death 45 people in a church there. An aid official speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity confirmed the 26 December massacre, saying the killings took place in a Catholic church in the Doruma area, around 40 kilometres (25 mi) from the Sudanese border. “There are body parts everywhere. Inside the church, the entrance and in the church compound,” the aid official said. “We got information the rebels cut 45 people into pieces,” added army spokesman Captain Chris Magezi.”
Kony probably is a bad guy and all, but there are a lot of Muslim “Konys” in Africa, yet nobody dare report on them.
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