Joseph Kony in the ASC Library
On Monday, March 5th, American advocacy NGO Invisible Children released Kony 2012, a short film about the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) commander Joseph Kony, and the war crimes that his organization has committed in East/Central Africa since the 1980s. The library staff of the ASC has set up a showcase on Kony 2012 to coincide with the media hype surrounding this subject.
Among the publications on Joseph Kony two highlights:
1. The Lord's Resistance Army: Myth and Reality
The Lord's Resistance Army is Africa's most extraordinarily persistent and notorious 'terrorist' group. Since their rebellion in northern Uganda began in 1987, the group is estimated to have abducted an estimated 30,000 children as well as committing a series of massacres and other horrific human rights abuses against the local population. Led by the mysterious Joseph Kony, who in 2005 was indicted by the International Criminal Court, they remain a group that inspires both fascination and fear. Authoritative but provocative, "The Lord's Resistance Army" provides the most comprehensive analysis of the group available, dismantling numerous myths and providing a wealth of information that is not widely known. From the issue of child soldiers to the response of the Ugandan government, the book looks at every aspect of this most brutal of conflicts, and even includes a remarkable first-hand interview with Joseph Kony himself.
You can borrow the book in the ASC library: AFRIKA 43007
2. The Wizard of the Nile: The Hunt for Africa's Most Wanted
The civil war in Uganda has bled on for over two decades, spilling over into Sudan and the Congo and drawing only occasional interest from the West. The rebel insurgency in the north is led by "the wizard of the Nile," Joseph Kony, whose Lord's Resistance Army is infamous both for its wish to rule Uganda according to the Ten Commandments and its unrelenting brutality.
Matthew Green journeys up the White Nile in order to answer what seemed at first a simple question: "How could one maniac leading an army of abducted children hold half a country hostage for twenty years?" His quest is complicated not only by his plunge into a war zone to find the notoriously elusive Kony, but because the conflict itself continues to resist his, and our, attempts to understand it. He meets the victims maimed or raped by Kony's soldiers; the soldiers themselves, who were first children, victims of abduction; the refugees living in poverty and fear in overcrowded camps; the foreigners working to bring peace; and the political leaders who have their own reasons for preferring war to peace.
Green is an invaluable guide to this forgotten conflict, providing honest, intelligent insight into suffering too little understood and too long ignored.
You can borrow the book: AFRIKA 38724
See also: React and respond : the phenomenon of 'Kony 2012' / written on the behalf of the Outreach Council of the African Studies Association by Barbara B. Brown (Free access).
For books on child soldiers see:
ASAO online our abstracts journal is to be found here.
Posted on 27 June 2012, last modified on 16 July 2013