Property News: Sunny playground where the growth is only just beginning - domain. Your web browser is no longer supported. To improve your experience update it here. News World. What became of Kony five years on. By Nick Pearson. Joseph Kony. Tweet Facebook Mail. Thanks to a short film that pulled at viewers' heartstrings, a charity group called Invisible Children made an African warlord a household name. Suddenly millions of people became committed to his capture.
Kony used a mix of Christian and mystical theology to justify widespread murder, child-sex slavery and abduction of juveniles to fight as child soldiers. I had more luck with Lt. Islam Arif, a Bangladeshi officer tasked at the time to the U. Arif explained that the early-warning network is integral to his intelligence gathering. Invisible Children is the only NGO invited to his weekly intelligence meetings. As our interview wrapped up, Marie-Regnault entered the office, and Arif gave her a double-cheek kiss.
The military alliance is just as tight across the border in Obo, an even more remote settlement in the Central African Republic that is essentially a 3-mile dirt road connecting the Ugandan military base on one end and the AFRICOM and U. Between and , U. At night the front yard glows with the smartphone screens of soldiers trying to poach their wireless internet. Zerla was posted in Obo for two years, and during that time she was known to sprint across the airfield to alert Ugandan officers about actionable intelligence.
Invisible Children sees nothing remarkable about its military cooperation. But its approach contrasts sharply with other nonprofits in the region. CRS, however, does not share its data directly with the U. The American Red Cross has long set the industry standard for independence from armed actors.
While the Red Cross works with governments, militaries, and rebel groups to provide emergency medical services, a spokeswoman told me, it enforces a policy of neutrality in war zones. Later, he took a job at Bridgeway to help coordinate the effort. Left: Joseph, right, helps lead a training for volunteer operators who near Garamba National Park. Rangers want to use Invisible Children's radio network to track poachers.
Invisible Children is expanding its cooperation with armed actors who want access to its valuable intelligence network. The park recently created an intelligence unit, led by a French army veteran, to coordinate the movements of rangers armed with AKs and a Bell helicopter.
Unlike the LRA, which has become less violent in recent years as it seeks to keep a low profile, poachers armed with assault rifles have become more aggressive. Last April, just a few months before my visit, poachers murdered three rangers during a shootout in the park.
I dipped out of the training session to join the afternoon radio call. Floribert, the operator on duty, was receiving more news from Masombo, the border village attacked a few days before.
While looting a hut earlier in the week, LRA fighters had found a uniform belonging to a villager who worked as a park ranger. They were now stalking his home, hoping to assassinate him. The ranger had fled with his family. There was non-LRA news too. A radio operator in Bangadi reported that a pregnant woman had had an emergency cesarean section the night before. Her baby had died, and she had just passed away that morning. Could someone notify him?
Prosper, the year-old network engineer, has a brow perpetually knitted in concentration. He seemed an appropriate bearer of the bad news. When we arrived, the landlord told us we were too late. The man had left for Bangadi that morning, as scheduled.
He was on the back of a motorcycle, bouncing home. The road was bad. It would be five or six more hours before he learned that his daughter-in-law and grandchild were dead. Isolated communities in Congo and the Central African Republic are desperate for more radios, which are often the only lifelines to the outside world. Villages use them to exchange news about commodity prices, request medical help, and keep in touch with family. In the fall of , the mayor of a remote Central African village biked 70 miles over two days to reach the town of Sam Ouandja to request that Invisible Children install a radio in his community.
Some villages also earn money by charging roving traders a few Congolese francs to make calls. While he grumbled about the lack of pay from Invisible Children, Ambroise likes that the job broadens his horizons. Whatever their complaints, volunteer operators — and, indeed, many Congolese in this neglected region — are grateful to Invisible Children for providing connectivity in a corner of the country almost devoid of social services.
But I sensed that operators were only partially aware of the risk they were running by becoming veritable intelligence operatives. When the Acholi failed to embrace his rebellion Kony turned on them, attacking civilians, abducting women and children and massacring entire villages.
In the ICC unsealed arrest warrants against five top LRA leaders, including Kony and Ongwen, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The pressure of ICC attention contributed to Kony's turning up to peace talks the following year, the first time he had appeared in public in years.
However, the talks collapsed and Kony took his rebels back to the bush. In , Ongwen's trial became the first involving the LRA. A concerted campaign by activists in the US led former president Barack Obama to sign a law in that allowed the deployment of around special forces to work with regional armies to hunt down Kony.
One of the groups, Invisible Children, went on to produce a video two years later called "Kony " that went viral with million views in a matter of days, raising awareness of the rebel group's activities and its fugitive leader.
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