Obama invokes the name Joseph Kony as Sudan inches closer to war

The fervor surrounding the viral YouTube video, Kony 2012, died down several weeks ago but at the Holocaust Memorial Museum yesterday, Barack Obama brought up the name Joseph Kony again. The timing and the place of his doing this is interesting because it comes at a time when Sudan and South Sudan are on the brink of all out war and genocide at the hands of the man who has funded Kony for many years - Sudan's Omar al-Bashir.

Via USA Today:

President Obama made his strongest vow yet to track down African warlord Joseph Kony, pledging today to "bring this madman to justice."

Obama told listeners at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that U.S. advisers will continue helping Uganda and other governments pursue all members of the Lord's Resistance Army led by Kony.

"It's part of our regional strategy to end the scourge that is the LRA and help realize a future where no African child is stolen from their family and no girl is raped and no boy is turned into a child soldier," Obama said.

Kony is an evil guy; there's no disputing that. The problem is the disproportionate attention he's getting relative to the extremely volatile situation between Sudan and South Sudan. The man responsible for funding Kony's atrocities is not only a Muslim Brotherhood guy but he's the president of Sudan.

The Sudan Tribune is reporting that Bashir has instructed his forces to "purge" the borders of South Sudanese, which is predominantly Christian. The rhetoric from Sudan's leader comes across as being more than just saber rattling.

Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir has given his army a carte blanche to use “the language of the gun” against neighboring South Sudan in retaliation of the latter’s occupation of Heglig disputed region two weeks ago.

“I direct the army to restore [our] rights and repulse any aggression from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army [SPLA] of the south on any inch of the country and at any time” Bashir declared while addressing dozens of ululating Sudanese troopers at the station of Martyr Al-Fadil in Heglig on Monday.

Heglig was occupied almost two weeks ago by the SPLA before being liberated on Friday by the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), according to Khartoum, whereas Juba said it voluntarily withdrew troops in response to international pressure.

The fighting around Heglig, which contains oilfields accounting for almost half of Sudan’s daily output of 115,000 barrels, sparked fears of a full-scale war between the two neighbors as well as heightened war rhetoric, especially on the part of Khartoum.

Al-Bashir, who arrived in Heglig unannounced to inspect the damage Khartoum accused Juba of inflicting on the town’s oil facilities, reiterated that there will be no return to talking with South Sudan unless its ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) is gone.


"One of us has to go" he said before adding that our “dialogue with these people will be through the gun because they only understand the language of the gun.”

Regarding Heglig, South Sudan also maintains that the reason for taking control of the region in the first place was because Bashir's forces were launching attacks from there.

Giving the capture of Kony more attention than what's going on in neighboring Sudan comes across as a distraction, especially in light of the fact that Kony's genocidal war has been funded by Sudan's Omar al-Bashir, a Muslim Brotherhood guy. Moreover, Kony's effectiveness has been greatly reduced over the years. Addressing Kony's genocide at the Holocaust museum seems like a natural fit but a much better fit would be addressing the Brotherhood's Bashir, the guy who is both responsible for funding Kony and threatening to slaughter a countless number of South Sudanese right now.

For more on the Kony / Sudan connection, go here, here, here, and here.