The Warlord vs. the Hipsters

How a group of American filmmakers and 100 special-operations troops are pursuing Africa's most-wanted war criminal

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Gregg Segal for TIME

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Established humanitarians find that argument outrageous. LRA specialist Ledio Cakaj, with the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey--who quit Prendergast's Enough group over his support for military intervention--says, "The idea that you have organizations that worry about things like children and rights advocating for a military solution, it's a real paradox. They lose the moral high ground." Russell retorts, "That's really old school. What's more humanitarian than stopping a war? I understand the conviction that violence begets violence. But either you just go on pulling people out of the river or you go upstream, find out who is pushing them in and stop them."

Whatever worries some harbored over Invisible Children's methods, there was no denying its influence. By 2008, the campaign had made the LRA and Kony the No. 1 foreign issue for American students, on a par with the antiapartheid campaign for an earlier generation. Invisible Children, Resolve and Prendergast then channeled that vociferous energy toward Washington, arguing in meetings with Senate and House leaders and White House staffers that U.S. intervention was imperative. In 2009 the campaigners helped draft a bill demanding executive action. By early 2010, a time of corrosive partisanship in Washington, they had secured cross-party, dual-chamber backing for their proposed law. When Senator Tom Coburn, known as Dr. No for his habit of blocking legislation on budgetary grounds, tried to kill it, activists slept outside his Oklahoma office for 11 nights in midwinter until he relented. After the passage of the law, a dozen members of the House of Representatives publicly praised Invisible Children for its effective campaigning in support of the bill. One of them, Representative Susan Davis, a Democrat from California, told the House, "These young members of the Invisible Children organization ... have helped make the children of Uganda visible to us. And now, with this legislation, we have a chance to truly join in this cause." Once the bill was law, at least four anti-LRA campaigners found U.S. government jobs--in the White House and the Departments of State and Defense. Resolve's executive director, Michael Poffenberger, says, "They worked on the bill, then went over to the Administration to help it." The level of engagement, says Prendergast, was unprecedented. "It's a social movement of mostly young people attempting to address a moral issue halfway around the world which had little or no ramifications for them," he says. "It's amazing."

Setting a Precedent?

The organization's marshaling of forces was impressive, but Invisible Children was, to an extent, pushing at an open door. In 2008, President Bush had sent 20 special-operations advisers to assist an assault by the Ugandan and Congolese armies on Kony's base in Congo's Garamba National Park. Prendergast says the anti-LRA campaigners never asked Obama to send in troops. "He went further than anything we were advocating for," he says. A senior Administration official says the President's action reflected "a common wisdom" shared with the campaigners "that this needs to be addressed." Addressing an Invisible Children rally in Washington at the time, Representative Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said, "The fact is, nothing good happens and nothing bad ends unless like-minded people come together and demand change."

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