Step into your time machine and go back a year. What do you notice? That sensation on your skin is called warmth, and it’s something we had a lot of this time in 2012. Another thing we had plenty of was uproar over Joseph Kony, the truly terrible warlord whose Lord’s Resistance Army U.S. and Ugandan troops were hunting through central Africa.
Here at home, Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 became the most viral video ever, one of its makers was found masturbating in public in San Diego, and South Park was busy writing an episode skewering the whole thing. But we all supported the military mission to find the real bad guy. One year later, that mission has been placed on hold, thanks to local political turmoil.
After rebels seized power last week in the Central African Republic, where Kony is thought to be hiding out, U.S. and Ugandan military leaders said they would temporarily halt their joint search for the warlord. The rebel troops weren’t cooperating with Ugandan troops stationed there, the Washington Post reports. The 40 U.S. troops stationed there as advisers to 3,000 African soldiers can’t do much without those soldiers’ participation, so “State Department officials in Washington said the U.S. military would likewise ‘pause’ its operations in the Central African Republic.”
At the moment, the U.S. troops have been told to stay in place “at two camps deep in the bush,” in hopes that things will stabilize enough to continue the search. Invisible Children, meanwhile, would like you to tweet to the African Union to ask that they don’t abandon the search. Welcome to Kony 2013.
