By Sarah Margon

Over the last few days, the Twittersphere has gone off the rails criticizing Invisible Children’s Kony2012 campaign — a 29 minute video about how Washington needs to continue prioritizing its work to end the brutal rebel group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army, or the LRA. This rebel group, originally based in northern Uganda but more recently in eastern Congo and the Central African Republic, has a long, sordid history as one of the most brutal guerilla groups on the planet. It has abducted thousands of civilians to serve as child soldiers, porters, and concubines and displaced hundreds of thousands of people hoping to avoid their brutal tactics. The Invisible Children video, which — as of this writing — has been viewed some 15 million times, focuses specifically on Joseph Kony — the group’s vicious leader who was indicted by the International Criminal Court in 2005.

While #Kony2012 is trending on Twitter, the exploitative campaign video has also generated a steady stream of scathing comments from the wonkier among us. A broad range of experts — professors of African history, humanitarian policy advisors, and foreign policy bloggers — have expressed some very legitimate concerns about some factual errors and misrepresentations in the video that Invisible Children would be wise to address.

Additionally, a cringe inducing photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with automatic weapons in South Sudan indicates a worrisome propensity for juvenile antics instead of serious policy. Indeed, it might make for a cool scrapbook photo, but it is sophomoric for an organization that deals with life and death issues.

To be clear, factual ambiguity, exaggeration or oversimplification is an unacceptable practice. It doesn’t help the cause and in some cases can actually cause harm to those we’re trying to help as advocates are ill-informed and/or confused.

Nonetheless, over the last few years we’ve seen a number of self-declared policy experts eager to attack advocacy efforts of any stripe whether it relates to Sudan, the LRA, or any other pressing international issue. The idea that Americans can only speak out if they have 20 years of experience on the ground is as silly as it is undemocratic. Citizens have every right to express concerns about a tragedy far from our shores while expecting that appropriate expertise will be brought to bear by their elected officials.
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Our guest blogger, Lauren Jenkins, works on post-conflict peacebuilding issues at the Education for Peace in Iraq Center and writes about national security at her blog, International Development Without Pity.

On Friday, President Obama announced that approximately 100 U.S. troops would travel to Central Africa and begin assisting regional militaries pursuing the apprehension of Joseph Kony and other senior leaders of the Lord’s Resistance Army. Defending his decision in an interview with ABC’s Jake Tapper, Obama spared no adjective in describing the atrocities committed by the LRA:

“But those who are familiar with the Lord’s Resistance Army and their leader, Mr. Kony, know that these are some of the most vicious killers, they terrorize villages, they take children into custody and turn them into child soldiers, they engage in rape and slaughter in villages they go through. They have been a scourge on Uganda and that entire region, Eastern Africa.”

Words barely capture the horrors the LRA has visited upon the people of northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan. Over the years, thousands of children have been abducted in LRA raids, indoctrinated, and exploited, some militarily, some sexually. Human Rights Watch reported in August 2010 that “many children as young as 10 or 11, abducted in Congo, CAR, and Southern Sudan in 2008 and 2009, are now armed with guns and participate in LRA attacks.”

It’s thus no surprise there has been bipartisan support for a more robust U.S. response to the LRA and its atrocities. In May 2010, Congress unanimously passed the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009. That bill laid the foundations for President Obama’s recent decision to send U.S. troops to reinforce the efforts of the Ugandan, Congolese, and South Sudanese armies, to finally put an end to the LRA and its use of child soldiers.

However, only a few weeks ago Obama issued a series of waivers that will allow the U.S. to continue providing funding and assistance to countries whose militaries recruit, conscript and use child soldiers. Under U.S. law, military aid to Yemen, Chad, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo should have been suspended due to the child soldiers among their armies’ ranks. Perhaps conveniently, two of those militaries are ones the U.S. will be working with in central Africa.

Worse, this is the second year in a row the U.S. has waived penalties for countries arming and exploiting children as combatants. Last year, the administration granted the same waivers with the intent that continued U.S. assistance and engagement would lead to a reduction in the use of child soldiers among the four militaries. It did not. Yet the same tactic is once again being used to circumvent the law.

President Obama was forceful in his reasoning for potentially putting U.S. troops in harm’s way to end the LRA’s reign of terror, highlighting its abominable use of child soldiers. But elsewhere, the exploitation of child soldiers’ goes unchecked. It won’t take 100 U.S. troops to end the practice in Yemen, Chad, the DRC, or South Sudan. It would simply take following the law and following the President’s own convictions.

Our guest bloggers are Sarah Margon, associate director for Sustainable Security at the Center for American Progress, and John Bradshaw, Executive Director for the Enough Project.

Although the initial media reaction to President Obama’s announcement that he was deploying “a small number of combat-equipped U.S. forces…to central Africa to provide assistance to regional forces working toward the removal of Joseph Kony from the battlefield” was one of shock, in fact there’s a strategic method to all this madness.

Joseph Kony is the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, a vicious rebel group originally based in northern Uganda that now operates in the often lawless and ungoverned expanses of eastern Congo, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan. The LRA has a long, sordid history as one of the most brutal guerrilla groups on the planet, and it has abducted thousands of civilians to serve as child soldiers, porters, and concubines. Although Kony, and other senior LRA leaders, have been indicted by the International Criminal Court, they remain at large and continue their ruthless reign of terror.

The deployment of U.S. military advisers is certainly not going to solve the LRA problem but it will make an important contribution. Military solutions can’t suffice when it comes to ending wars, conflicts or other kinds of kinetic operations, but there are instances when certain kinds of military engagement can play a constructive role — especially when combined with other critical elements like enhanced diplomatic engagement, scaled up development, and better intelligence sharing. Indeed, this most recent move by the Obama administration is part of a wider and more comprehensive strategy focusing on the range of action that can be taken — by the U.S. and by our partners to bring the LRA to an end. It is also an indication of a growing global commitment to the goal of civilian protection.

The deployment of these advisers will help fill some remarkable gaps that enable the LRA to continuing committing horrific atrocities in remote areas throughout already difficult terrain. Armed with high-tech communications equipment, U.S. military advisers will be able to keep in regular touch with headquarters and ensure the right intelligence gets into the hands of those who need it most. This will help generate a quicker response to LRA attacks on civilian populations, encourage greater and more effective collaboration between regional militaries, and hold these militaries to a higher civilian protection standard.

The regional militaries involved in LRA operations — primarily Uganda, with some assistance from Congo and South Sudan — suffer from a lack of technical capacity and insufficient resources. If we’re honest, they have also suffered from discipline problems — which makes partnering with them tricky business, a dilemma of which the administration is well aware.

Importantly, the military component is part of a larger and more comprehensive plan — the initial push for which is rooted in the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009, which was signed into law in 2011. Underpinning this strategy, laid out in this 2010 report by White House, is increasing opportunities for civilian protection throughout the region — the very essence of what local communities need and have repeatedly asked for. But other prongs include encouraging and facilitating defections from rank and file LRA, building cell phone towers to enhance communication and information sharing, and providing ongoing humanitarian and development relief to affected areas.

Another missing element needed for a fully successful strategy includes helping to develop more capable and disciplined regional forces that are bolstered by greater intelligence and logistical capacity. Additionally, the U.S. should ramp up its diplomatic efforts to get regional governments and institutions, including the African Union, to cooperate more effectively.

After the LRA abandoned peace talks in 2007, it became obvious that negotiations alone would not end the scourge the rebel group. If we’re going to see the LRA disbanded, the child soldiers go home, and the affected areas return to at least some level of normalcy, the military component is an important part — one part — of a larger strategy. The affected populations of central Africa have suffered far too long; they deserve an opportunity to return to their homes and rebuild their lives. Shouldn’t we employ a full range of options to help them do so?