Celebrities fuel hunt for Joseph Kony

A video about the atrocities carried out by Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, called Kony 2012, has racked up nearly 50 million views since Monday.

The marketing campaign is an effort by the advocacy group Invisible Children to dramatically increase awareness about a jungle militia leader who is wanted for atrocities by the International Criminal Court and is being hunted by 100 US Special Forces advisers and local troops in four Central African countries.

Uganda, Invisible Children and #stopkony were among the top 10 trending terms on Twitter among both the worldwide and US audience on Wednesday night, ranking higher than New iPad or Peyton Manning. Twitter's top trends more commonly include celebrities than fugitive militants.

And some of America's most visible celebrities have thrown their weight behind the campaign. Oprah Winfrey, Tori Spelling, Sean 'Diddy' Combs, Rhianna and four Kardashians have tweeted about the warlord.
Even teenage pop star Justin Bieber, the second-most popular user on Twitter, promoted Invisible Children's message several times including: '#Kony2012 is number 1 trending topic on Twitter worldwide!! See why ... It might change ur life.'

Kony has recruited up to 66,000 child soldiers in the past two decades. His troops often come into villages and kill the adults then rape the girls and force the boys to fight in his army.

'Kony is a monster. He deserves to be prosecuted and hanged,' said Col Felix Kulayigye, the spokesman for Uganda's military.
He was one of the first people indicted by the International Criminal Court and has been evading capture by international authorities since 2005.

But the explosive popularity of the Stop Kony campaign has also cast a harsh glare on the cause and on Invisible Children, the organization behind it.

For starters, Kony already seems to be marginalized. His forces -- once thousands strong -- have been so degraded that the Ugandan military no longer considers him a threat to the region. Because of the intensified hunt for Kony, his forces split into smaller groups that can travel the jungle more easily

Experts estimate that the LRA now has only about 250 fighters. Still, the militia abducts children, forcing them to serve as soldiers or sex slaves, and even to kill their parents or each other to survive. The LRA now operates in Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan.

The Atlantic has argued that by focusing so much attention on a fading warlord, the Kony 2012 movement is diverting millions of dollars away from charities working to stamp out starvation in the Horn of Africa, slow the spread of AIDS or battle widespread corruption -- all issues that effect far more Africans than a single warlord.

Invisible Children has also been criticized for favoring direct military intervention in Uganda. It also strongly supports the Ugandan Army, which has been accused of widespread torture and other human rights violations.

Foreign Affairs magazine accused the group of exaggerating and manipulating facts surrounding Kony and the LRA to over-emphasize the scale of the abductions and murders committed.

Finally, as international aid groups go, Invisible Children spends a huge portion of its donations on overhead. Last year, the group raised about $8.7 million but only 37 percent -- about $3.3 million went to support programs in central Africa.

It has been criticized by the charitable arm of the Better Business Bureau for not responding to a request for information.

Charity Navigator, a nonprofit watchdog that rates charitable organizations, gave the group two out of four stars for financial transparency because its ledgers aren't audited by an independent committee.

Despite all this, the inspirational message of the Kony video has touched a national nerve among the social media generation.