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(HERALD) Kony 2012: US army’s way in

Kony 2012: US army’s way in
Friday, 16 March 2012 00:00
Farirai Chubvu

It is said when a thief kisses you, count your teeth! I take with a sack of salt the campaign launched around Kony 2012, a 30-minute video targeting the leader of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony. The campaign, no doubt, is aimed at not only furthering US military intervention in Africa under the guise of humanitarianism but also giving the much-reviled Africom a foothold.

The video has been viewed on YouTube tens of millions of times, and its depiction of the suffering of the people, and particularly the children, of Uganda as a result of the protracted military conflict between the LRA and the government of president Yoweri Museveni has struck a chord with many, particularly younger people with little knowledge of the complex history of the region and the many interests involved.

The campaign’s message has been greatly amplified by a series of celebrities, ranging from Oprah Winfrey to George Clooney, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Rihanna and four of the Kardashians, all of whom have tweeted their support.

It has likewise received virtually uncritical promotion from the mass media, with television anchors in the US comparing it to the use of social media during the mass revolts that shook Tunisia and Egypt last year.

In reality, there is absolutely nothing radical or oppositional about Kony 2012, whose explicitly stated aim is to drum up popular support for the continuation and escalation of one of the first direct military interventions by the Pentagon’s Africa Military Command on the continent. In October last year, the Obama administration announced its decision to send 100 combat-equipped US military “advisers,” most of them special forces troops, into Central Africa with the stated aim of hunting down and either capturing or killing Kony and other leaders of the LRA.

While Invisible Children claims its campaign is for Kony to be delivered to the International Criminal Court for trial, the US government has refused to be a party to the ICC and has made no mention of the court in relation to its military operations in Central Africa.

A March 7 open letter to Barack Obama, issued in conjunction with the release of the video, praises the Democratic president for his “leadership on this issue.”

“Your decision to deploy US military advisors to the region in October of 2011 was a welcome measure of further assistance for regional governments in their efforts to protect people from LRA attacks,” the letter states. It continues, “However, we fear that unless existing US efforts are further expanded, your strategy may not succeed.” It touts the US military as the sole force capable of providing “tactical airlift” together with “cross-border co-ordination.” It cautions against any “premature” withdrawal of US special operations troops and urges the administration to utilise recently approved Pentagon funding “to provide enhanced mobility, intelligence, and other support for ongoing operations.”

The heads of three organisations signed the letter: Invisible Children, the maker of the Kony 2012 video, the Enough Project, a subsidiary of the Democratic-oriented think tank, the Centre for American Progress and Resolve, a human rights group connected to Catholic missionary organisations. Behind this campaign is an unholy alliance between the Christian right in the US, which has chosen Uganda as something of a laboratory for its reactionary social and political outlook, and sections of well-heeled liberals who have become a new constituency for imperialist intervention waged on the pretext of upholding human rights and protecting civilians.

The White House last week came out publicly in support of the Kony 2012 campaign, with spokesman Jay Carney stating that Obama “congratulates” all those who responded to this “unique crisis of conscience” and vows to continue the US intervention.
Underlying the sudden and peculiar turn by Washington towards a “human rights” crusade against the Lord’s Resistance Army are very definite economic and geo-strategic interests. These are bound up with the recent discovery of substantial oil reserves precisely in the area where the hunt for the LRA is being staged and increasingly fractious competition between Washington and Beijing for geo-political influence in resource-rich Africa. Africom and military intervention have become crucial instruments for the US in combating the wave of Chinese investments in infrastructure projects aimed at facilitating the extraction of African oil and mineral wealth. What is peculiar about the intervention against the LRA is that it has been launched under conditions in which the militia group has already been reduced to a few hundred fighters and driven out of Uganda.
While it conducted brutal attacks that claimed many civilian lives and was responsible for abducting large numbers of children for use as child soldiers a decade ago, its operations have been sharply curtailed in recent years and its atrocities overshadowed by the mass killing carried out in the resource wars being waged in the DRC, where Museveni’s Ugandan troops and affiliated militia groups are among those responsible for the loss of nearly 6 million lives since the mid-1990s. The Kony 2012 video portrays Uganda as it was a decade ago, thereby generating false propaganda for the US military intervention. At the same time, it casts the struggle between the Ugandan government and the LRA as a morality play, pitting “good” against “evil.”
The Kony 2012 campaign represents a cynical attempt to manipulate public opinion in the interests of US intervention.

Labels: AFRICOM, NEOCOLONIALISM, UGANDA

posted by MrK @ 6:01 AM