Kony 2012: Campaign against African warlord goes viral, now who is he?

The Kony 2012 campaign succeeded in making African warlord Joseph Kony infamous, but left out much of the background. Here's Monitor coverage on Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army.

Who is Joseph Kony? An online campaign aimed at raising awareness about the brutal warlord in Central Africa went viral yesterday, masterfully taking Twitter and Facebook by storm with a heartfelt video but not informing people deeply about the man and his context.

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Today the Kony 2012 campaign website is fleshed out with more background material on the history of Kony and his small band of pillagers called the Lord?s Resistance Army (LRA).

The campaign, run by the nonprofit Invisible Children in San Diego, is also raising money for projects aimed at protecting villages and rehabilitating child soldiers in the affected countries of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, and Uganda.

While the group?s initial goal ? to make Joseph Kony infamous ? succeeded, it also left many people wanting to know more about this newfound public enemy No. 1. With few links to further information on the Kony 2012 website yesterday, the curious turned to Google for answers. A story the Monitor published back in October on Kony suddenly became one of our most read stories yesterday.

So for those who retweeted the campaign video or bought the Kony 2012 T-shirt but want to know more about the decades-old problem of the LRA, here is a guide to past Monitor coverage.

Fighters with the Lord?s Resistance Army rose up against the Ugandan government in 1987, in a battle that is both one of the longest running and most brutal in the world, according to a Monitor background briefing on the LRA from the Enough Project. The briefing explains the role of religion in the conflict:

Though they are often portrayed as a Christian fundamentalist group bent on establishing a government in Uganda based on the Ten Commandments, religion no longer practically serves as a raison d??tre for the LRA; rather it is used selectively to ensure adherence to military discipline and create an environment where commanders are respected and feared?. The rebel group is notorious for murder, torture, mutilation, rape, widespread abductions of children and adults, and pillaging.

Kony is depicted in media reports as a messianic figure. He told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2006 that?"very many" spirits spoke to him, telling him things like "You, Mr. Joseph, go and take this thing and that thing." His organization originally rallied to defend the rights of an ethnic group, but lost much support through its thuggery. Starved of recruits, the group turned to abducting children.

Many estimates put the number of children abducted by the LRA at 30,000 or more, many used as porters or sex slaves.?The ongoing human rights violations has spurred activism in the West for intervention in the conflict, drawing on some of the activists who tried to stop the Darfur genocide. Activists succeeded in getting President Obama last October to dispatch 100 ?combat-equipped US forces? to assist region militaries fighting the LRA.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/G6hlw4HXAU8/Kony-2012-Campaign-against-African-warlord-goes-viral-now-who-is-he

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