The viral popularity of an online documentary, Kony 2012, which has garnered a whopping 76 million views within a few days of its release on YouTube, has raised a host of uncomfortable questions about the misuse of social media by sensationalists and the politics of misrepresenting Africa. The 30-minute video, produced by an American advocacy group, Invisible Children Inc, graphically depicts child conscription and atrocities of the Ugandan rebel outfit, Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and calls for ending its extended run of impunity.

Kony 2012’s racy screenplay and stark contrasts between the lives of African child soldiers and happy kids in gentrified America have hit a chord with netizens in the West. The producers of the documentary say that their intention is “to inspire Western youth to do more than just watch”. Their specific reference to Western audiences and Invisible Children’s efforts to lobby the US government to keep the pressure on hunting down the LRA and its manic leader, Joseph Kony, has shades of humanitarian imperialism which has run amok since the end of the Cold War.
Revival of the “white man’s burden” to liberate less fortunate coloured people resonates with a nostalgic vision in some quarters of the Western world. Superimposed with an international liberalism and a muscular penchant for “saving lives” through Western military might, this line of thinking keeps the self-belief going that the US and Europe are the conscience keepers and custodians of the international order. According to this worldview, the West may be in relative decline to the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and other emerging powers, but it is on a higher moral pedestal and is far more legitimate to govern the planet.
Invisible Children’s founders came of age during the Darfur carnage in western Sudan, which triggered irresponsible calls for immediate Western military intervention in Sudan. I was a graduate student in the US at that time and recall how aggressive and misguided the “Save Darfur” campaign was in pushing for a US-led overthrow of the Sudanese government for the latter’s proven complicity in war crimes. Kony 2012 and the Save Darfur mobilisation are both guilty of ignoring fundamental truths about these armed conflicts in the heart of Africa.
In the case of Sudan, it is a fact that the US government under George W. Bush cooperated closely with the intelligence apparatus of the same murderous military regime of President Omar al Bashir which committed crimes against humanity in Darfur. Conveniently sidestepping this nefarious connection, American college campuses were humming with reports about how horrible China was for supplying weapons to the Bashir regime and how Beijing had blood on its hands. The accounting was partisan, incomplete and, as is to be expected from college-going undergraduates, corny.
Knowledgeable observers of the horrific war in northern Uganda, where the LRA used to be a terror for over two decades, have pointed out that Kony 2012 is a simplistic and exaggerated depiction of a complex regional armed conflict that involved tit-for-tat strategies of the governments of Sudan and Uganda. By presenting the LRA’s leader as a villain and supporting the Ugandan state’s US-assisted military machine, which is waging a harsh and abusive counter-insurgency against the remnants of the LRA, Invisible Children is bolstering forces rooting for a more robust American military presence in mineral-rich Africa under the pretext of providing stability and saving civilians.
Kony is indeed a despicable killer who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for grave crimes. But the Ugandan government is no saint. Despite inching closer to a full-blown authoritarianism under President Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is a close Western ally and has been a poster child of the neoliberal Bretton Woods institutions. Mr Museveni has been ruling the country with an iron grip for the past 26 years and is on his way to becoming another Robert Mugabe.
How can Invisible Children sweep these harsh truths under the carpet and take credit for bringing hope and rebuilding lives in the conflict zones of Uganda? While the rhetoric of this charitable organisation is to fight for ending wars, it is not taking on the vested interests, including Western-allied states, which have been prolonging wars in Africa. Can Invisible Children call a spade a spade and critique US alliances with strongmen in Africa? Herein lie the limits of humanitarian sympathies.
What is working in favour of online crusaders with axes to grind such as Invisible Children is the seeming irrelevance of the lack of authenticity of their content. As long as one tells a good heart-warming story in a dramatically emotional manner with hard-hitting punch lines, such documentaries can sway well-meaning netizens and further exacerbate armed conflicts occurring in real time on the ground. What is to stop the Ugandan government from using films like Kony 2012 to justify even harsher crackdowns on civilians in the name of annihilating the already marginalised LRA? Will the movie’s online stardom tempt the US government to expand its contingent of 100 military advisers, who are presently said to be assisting the Ugandan military in the quest for liquidating the LRA?
Snapping up donations in the name of bringing smiles back to starving or victimised children is a troublesome phenomenon that is part and parcel of the political economy of war. It is necessary to understand the economics of conflict and to uncover who is benefiting from arduously long wars that seem to have developed life and momentum of their own.
“Doing good” with half-baked knowledge, celebrity endorsements, vested interests, and sleek “disaster pornography” is a dangerous game of distortion. Kony 2012 is preaching to the gullible and is an object lesson in how to exploit the Facebook generation. The torrent of donations flooding into Invisible Children ever since this video became an Internet blockbuster conveys a cautionary message about the vulnerability of the worldwide web to propaganda, and highlights the need for deeper and more meaningful education about the structural iniquities which allow global hotspots like Acholiland in Uganda to fester.

The writer is vice-dean of the Jindal School of International Affairs