- As written by Christopher Landau
Foreword
Since Monday the 27th of February 2012, Dreadbook/Egobook/Wastebook and other social media sites have been awash with a pervasive and infuriating viral video campaign that quickly took the world by the testicles and squeezed extraordinarily hard. After a rather hasty crash course in the politics of Northern Uganda, it seems to even my untrained eye that the “Kony 2012” campaign has a number of serious and glaring flaws.
Primarily it reduces a complex problem down to a collection of emotionally charged and misleading sound bites that entirely fails to capture the voice or thoughts of the subjects it portrays as helpless victims. ‘Kony 2012’ smacks of patronizing, gimmicky, post-colonial orientalism in its purest and most destructive form, and is entirely counterproductive to the cause it claims to advocate. By framing the issue as they do, the filmmakers have made it impossible to imagine anything like an appropriate vision or methodology to resolving a long standing and nuanced issue. Rather we are left with the injunction to ‘spread the word’ in order to raise awareness and presumably speed up the execution of Kony’s death warrant.
Before I open myself up to a legitimate claim of hypocrisy however, I should say that I am not an expert on the region, its people or its complexities. Yet, as nobody involved in the online firestorm that I have encountered has any better access to information than I do, it seemed appropriate and important to do my very best to martial the arguments against the film and its ostensible objectives. This I must confess was largely motivated by the accusation that I was engaged in fomenting a ‘conspiracy’. A charge I felt needed to be addressed head on.
Introduction
The last few days has seen one of the most profligate and insidious ‘human rights based’ viral campaigns of recent times take off into and out of the stratosphere. Whilst there is undoubtedly legitimate praise to be leveled at the film’s makers ‘Invisible Children’, the aim of this blog is primarily to focus people’s minds away from the filmmakers (Seen posing with Ugandan soldiers above) and onto the content and subtext of the film itself. Much of which presents a distorted image of the everyday lives of northern Ugandans, their trials and tribulations.
The multitude of people that have loudly and arrogantly rushed to defend the film against anyone daring to make critical remarks includes the usual bunch of Armchair Interventionists, Clicktivists and idiots who claim to represent the interests and views of the Ugandan people without knowing anything at all about them beyond what they saw in ‘Kony 2012’. Whilst many if not most of them are surely well intentioned, the road to hell is paved with their naïve desires to save the poor African children that incidentally, hardly feature in the ‘Kony 2012’ film at all.
To paraphrase an excellent blog, ‘Justice in conflict’, I will set out to examine both the explicit and implicit claims made by the ‘Kony 2012′ campaign and test them against the historical and empirical record. However I will also attempt to make the further point that this film and its acolytes only perpetuate US efforts at the geopolitical steering of Africa and thus are actually working against the interests of the very people they purport to defend.
Omitting history and context is always dangerous.
“We are not makers of history. We are made by history"
Citing the marginalization of the Acholi people as justification for The LRA's indiscriminate use of violence and cruelty in northern Uganda, Kony and his army of child soldiers has for the last two decades waged a campaign of terror not only in northern Uganda, but also the south of Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. In what some would surely call a farcical response, Kony et al have been indicted by the International Criminal Court and placed on America's terrorist black list. A list that as recently as 2008 included the former head of the African National Congress – Nelson Mandela.
What “KONY 2012” omits from its simplistic and binary narrative, is that the conflict in northern Uganda was (the civil war is now over) multifaceted and highly complex. Deeply rooted in the immense trouble of reconciling the interests of the warring southern kingdoms and the smaller, clan-based regions in the north. Kony’s notoriety in the region in which he operates is legendary and well deserved, stemming primarily from the period when tensions between the central governments of Uganda and the Sudan erupted into a vicious war by proxy. Both countries instigating violent insurgencies within each other’s borders.
This of course does not justify Kony's past or present actions, however before we take the “Kony 2012” assumption that Ugandan forces are: “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries” to deal with Kony, at face value, we might note that the Ugandan government's own ‘counter-insurgency’ operations were arguably more brutal than that of the LRA itself. Much like with the Tamils in Sri Lanka , the Chechens and Ingush peoples in the North Caucasus and of course Al-Qaida in Yemen and Somalia (not to mention Afghanistan, Pakistan and post invasion Iraq) a simplistic “we must catch the terrorist evil-doers” interventionist narrative and accompanying justifications belay not only immense naivety, hypocrisy and hints at ‘the white man’s burden’ but embody the deluded and pervasive assumption that state sponsored counter-insurgency interventions are primarily benign.
During the primary period of hostilities, the Ugandan government (the same government that the makers of ‘Kony 2012’ implore us to trust) have (according to U.N estimates) been largely responsible for the internment of between 1.5 and 2 million civilians in "internally displaced persons" camps where mortality rates were shockingly high. Former UN under secretary general Olara Otunnu and Democratic party leader Norbert Mao (Both of Ugandan origin) insist that many atrocities were committed within the camps, and those that profited were primarily the Ugandan army officers and senior figures in the military industrial complex. Many of whom succeeded in stealing vast swathes of land from the interned refugees fleeing the violence and savagery committed by both the LRA and the Ugandan army. It has also been claimed by some (although I was unable to verify this) that this land grab led individuals within the leadership of the Ugandan army to deliberately prolong hostilities in order to further benefit from illegal land appropriation.
‘Kony 2012’ omits any mention of this important historical context whilst also failing to mention that the U.S has already sanctioned operations in Uganda to remove Kony and the LRA in the past, all of which succeeded only in splintering the LRA into smaller groups and pushing them out of Uganda into the surrounding countries. (Primarily Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo; this in turn lead to a disastrous and counterproductive increase in tensions between Uganda and the DRC.) The U.S sanctioned these military operations with the express intent of killing Kony and his militia (Operations Iron Fist and Lightning Thunder), but in both cases failed to ‘get their man’ and this failure lead to retaliatory killings and kidnappings which effectively removed any diplomatic solutions from the table.
One regional commentator outlined some of the problematic implications the failure of these military ventures entailed: “Future missions involving four states with prickly relations will be even more diplomatically and logistically daunting. The indictments against the LRA appear to rule out non-military options. With the door closed on negotiation, efforts to corner Kony on a "battlefield" that spans four countries are likely to press him into further acts of murderous bravado”. All of this the unintended consequence of a hasty rush to violent intervention in the first place. As I have mentioned, many northern Ugandans themselves actually favor a negotiated settlement with ‘traditional reconciliation mechanisms’, (i.e. not mechanisms that involves special forces, drones or any other form of American imperialist power) but their beliefs and ideals don’t seem to matter to the makers of ‘Kony 2012’. The north Ugandan voice is thus entirely removed from this debate, and thanks to the actions of the U.S government and its cheerleaders, any attempts to listen to it are now far more difficult.
Of course this also assumes that killing Kony would solve any of the problems so emotively illustrated in the film. Even if Kony were to be eliminated tomorrow by U.S or Ugandan forces, the entirely western led campaigns for retributive and violent ‘justice’ could very well end up fueling the very violence that the assembled battalions of armchair interventionists claim to deplore. Whilst such complexities are simply ignored by US pressure groups. (of which ‘invisible children’ is quickly becoming a leading light) it has to be said that this lack of nuance didn’t stop them from being extremely effective in mobilizing bipartisan support in the U.S congress with the “LRA Disarmament Act” approved last May. These advocacy groups have undoubtedly made the destruction of the LRA a fashionable and zeitgeisty cause amongst predominantly white, middle-class, activists, bloggers and journalists. But to quote the excellent ‘securing rights’ blog: “stories can inspire [but] at the same time, inspiration runs the risk of perpetuating problematic, unintended cognitive biases. A “single story,” […] can obscure a complex, multi-layered web of perceptive analysis, underscoring cultural stereotypes and simplifications.”
The United States – ‘World police’?
“The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilize savage and senile and paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells.”
The role of the U.S as portrayed in the film is as a benevolent but overly cautious ‘regional’ power that is more than capable of completing the proposed ‘solution’ offered by the filmmakers - namely ‘stopping’ Kony. The fact that this might not actually solve any of the systemic problems in the region is, naturally, not mentioned. It seems to me that these assumptions require careful examination and reflection before we even think of proselytizing them. Have we already forgotten Bosnia? Have we already forgotten Somalia? Have we already forgotten Nicaragua? (Since 1945 the U.S has attempted to intervene and overthrow 50 sovereign governments, so I will refrain from listing every instance of a disastrous U.S led intervention)
These kinds of interventions are always couched in the language of defeating the evil doers and of moral necessity. Sadly, judging by a recent Guardian opinion poll that showed roughly 80% of its readership support U.S senator John McCain’s injunction to bomb Syria, the answer to the question ‘do we remember?’ is either ‘no’, or more worryingly ‘yes, so what?’. It seems clear to me that most people do remember something, but only what we were told to believe happened by our leaders regarding these ostensibly ‘successful’ interventions, not what actually happened.
The U.S interventionist strategy for Uganda so far (Instigated by AFRICOM) is necessarily sparse on details, as is any operation primarily consisting of deniable Special Operations assets or to use the common euphemism ‘American advisors”. The mandate provided by congress to “remove Joeseph Kony and senior LRA commanders from the battlefield” explicitly consists of a “multi-year commitment [to provide] enhanced logistical operational and intelligence assistance”. So whilst it is indeed speculative to claim that this might be used as justification for increased U.S military presence in Africa, it is far from a ‘conspiracy’.
The Obama administration’s decision to send around 100 additional troops was not motivated in any way shape or form by altruisic tendencies. To claim so is naiveté of the highest magnitude, as Matt Brown of the 'Enough project' argues: “The U.S. doesn’t have to fight al-Qaida-linked Shabab in Somalia, so we help Uganda take care of their domestic security problems, freeing them up to fight a more dangerous – or a more pressing, perhaps – issue in Somalia." However the sending or reinforcment of any contingent of ground troops in Africa sets a dangerous precedent. Especially if we look at the external factors driving U.S troop deployment in the region more generally. To quote one blogger: ”It is clear that the ‘Kony 2012′ campaign sees the 100 US troop allotment as inadequate. Here they are right – 100 US troops is not the solution. But their own answer is highly problematic."
We know what the makers of “Kony 2012″ believe should happen but they won’t say it explicitly, except to say that Kony must be “stopped”." By 'stopped' we can infer that the filmmakers really mean 'killed' which plays into the narrative created by the ‘Kony 2012′ campaign that what actually happens to Kony and the LRA soldiers is unimportant - death or otherwise. Having said that, we are forced to draw our own conclusions as to the actual meaning of the filmmakers, the unspecific aim of “stopping” him is meant to be sufficient despite its obvious ambiguity. Who after all, doesn’t want Kony to be 'stopped'? But this is begging the question somwhat, does the removal of one man end the LRA? How do you reconcile what happens to the deeply traumatised children of Kony's militia with our desire to see an evil man dead? ‘Kony 2012′ offers us nothing here.
With its long and sordid history of unilateral and protectionist intervention in foreign states, the increasing power of China in Africa and the perpetual interest amongst U.S hawks in maintaining U.S global dominance, is it far from paranoid to be concerned about the supposedly benign motivations of U.S strategic planners. Writing this as I am from the occupied territories of Palestine, I would argue it is clearly not so. To quote Guardian journalist Nick Young, part of what actually motivates U.S intervention is that: “American support in mopping up the LRA is a payback for Uganda's contribution of (US-trained) peacekeepers in Somalia.” He goes on to say that the: “US, whose defense budget is now higher than at any point during or since the cold war, is gearing up for "strategic" competition with China in Africa, seizing opportunities to strengthen military alliances.” In this sense there is a odd coalition forming between U.S hawks/ neo-cons and young American and European idealists who: ‘find Kony the perfect hate figure’.
“Kony 2012 must be good because it raises awareness”
“Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim.”
The idea that popular opinion can be leveraged with viral marketing to induce foreign military intervention is incredibly dangerous. It is immoral to try and manufacture the consent of the peoples of the Empire and its satellites with a sanitized vision of foreign intervention that entirely neglects the fact that many innocent people will die as a result. Of course that doesn’t really matter to us westerners, because we will never have to see their bodies or learn their names, and as other non-people of the world, they will inevitably fall down the ‘memory hole’.
This is not even to question the moral efficacy of targeting somebody such as Kony who runs an army consisting of many children. Many of these supposedly ‘legitimate’ targets are also victims themselves. Can the killing of a nine-year-old child forced into slave labor (of whatever kind) be justified on the grounds that his captor is a psychopathic monster?
Following on from what Mark Kersten has said about this on his blog, one of the most questionable assumptions behind ‘Kony 2012’ is that the more people that ‘get to know’ Kony, the greater the chance that the world will act to remove him. Firstly this arrogantly assumes that because people in the U.S and Britain don’t know who he is, it must be that rest of the world is similarly ignorant. Secondly it presupposes that awareness alone solves problems. To take one obvious counterexample, I would hope that we all know of the cruelty, suffering and death imposed upon the Palestinian people by the racist state of Israel (and it’s U.S and European backers) over the past sixty years, but what changes do we see as a result of this awareness?
In an even more abject display of questionable moral reasoning, ‘Kony 2012’ argues that the use of celebrities is a crucial part of this awareness campaign. To quote the Huffington Post newspaper, part of this awareness drive involves: “encouraging 20 cultural tastemakers and 20 policy makers, including the likes of Angelina Jolie and Oprah Winfrey, to take a stand.” George Clooney is also quoted in the film as saying “I'd like indicted war criminals to share the same celebrity as me[…]that seems fair." That is what these bombastic and unsupported claims about the utility of informing (or miss-informing) people boils down do, merely another excuse for the PR industry to commodify suffering and indoctrinate us further into the cult of celebrity.
Again to quote Kersten: “I am actually stupefied that any analysis of the ‘LRA question’ results in the identification of the problem being that “Kony isn’t popular enough”. The reality is that few don’t know who Joseph Kony is in East Africa and the Great Lakes Region, making it all-too-apparent that this isn’t about them, their views or their experiences.” Again we find ourselves with an entirely western-centric view of the problem that excludes those most affected by our actions and rhetoric. Shockingly ‘Kony 2012’ features almost no participation by the very people it describes. Where exactly are the northern Ugandans in this film? Kersten later argues, compellingly in my view, that: “It is hard to respect any documentary on northern Uganda where a five year-old white boy features more prominently than any northern Ugandan victim or survivor.” Of course it is easy to see why this might be the case, as I have argued elsewhere in this essay, the vision presented by ‘Kony 2012’ is simplistic, reductionist, and if it weren’t an internet phenomena, irrelevant.
The views of the northern Ugandans cannot be considered by the film makers for a simple reason, because they don’t fit the chosen narrative framing. An interview with a survivor of an LRA attack that wanted Kony brought before a local tribal judge, rather than executed by an American special forces soldier or Ugandan artillery shell confuses the binary narrative that is so effective at rousing people’s emotions but so dangerous in matters of peace and war. One final quote from Kersten: “‘Kony 2012′, quite dubiously, avoids stepping into the 'peace-justice question' in northern Uganda precisely because it is a world of contesting and plural views, reports suggest that the majority of Acholi people continue to support the amnesty process whereby LRA combatants – including senior officials – return to the country in exchange for amnesty and entering a process of traditional justice. Many continue to support the Ugandan Amnesty law because of the reality that it is their own children who constitute the LRA. Once again, this issue is barely touched upon in the film.”.
The conflict in northern Uganda is not seen by most Ugandans as primarily an issue centred on the LRA in any case. It only takes a brief internet search to discover that many citiziens of Uganda lay the blame for nearly 25 years of violence not only on the LRA and the government of Uganda, but other regional players such as militias of the South Sudanese (as well as the government in Khartoum) who have their own long and appalling record of human rights abuses. There is also no mention in the film that northern Ugandans are currently enjoying the longest period of peace since the conflict began in the mid eighties. The inevitable triumphalism brought about by the supposed success of ‘Kony 2012’ in mobilizing the Obama administration to action obscures these key realities. In conclusion, we mustn't let a well edited video, light on facts and heavy on emotion set a new precedent in the world of online activism. If we do I fear the first facebook sponsered war could be just around the corner. "Iran 2012" anyone?.
