The press release quoted Noah Zerbe, political scientist at Humboldt State University and co-chairperson of ACAS: “According to the International Rescue Committee, with more than 5 million killed in this disordered nation in the last 14 years, the conflicts there are the world’s deadliest documented conflict since WW II, yet it has not had the attention it needs.”

The scholars are calling on President Obama to take bilateral actions and actions through the United Nations to protect civilians in the conflict zone of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Specifically, the petition calls on the President to use U.S. influence at the UN to provide the MONUC forces with the mandate and resources to protect civilians, to sanction Rwanda and Uganda for any support to militias there, to use the SEC to enforce the Dodd-Frank Act on conflict minerals, and to fully implement the “Obama Act” of 2006 on the Congolese Army for their contributions to the disorder.

Scholars who would like to join ACAS in policy-oriented research and action on this issue and other issues concerning the U.S. military role in Africa may contact David Wiley (wiley@msu.edu), chair of the ACAS Demilitarization Task Force.

ACAS and the ASA Current Issues Committee are co-sponsoring a Roundtable on Friday, November 30 at 2:30: The 2012 American Elections and their Implications for U.S.-Africa Policy, chaired by Elizabeth Schmidt

ACAS is sponsoring three panels:
IX-E-6 (Sat 8:30 am) Research Frontiers: Analyzing African Land Grabs, with Carol Thompson as Chair and Jeanne Koopman as Discussant

XI-N-27 (Sat 2:30 pm) Militarizing Africa: Historical Perspectives (Part I), Chaired by David Wiley

XII-N-28 (Sat 4:30 pm) Militarizing Africa: African Studies, AFRICOM, & Current US Security-Focused Foreign Policy (Part II), Chaired by David Wiley

ACAS also is producing materials that scholars can use to engage with students on their campuses and with teachers and middle and high school students in their communities, who are a major audience of the Kony2012 video produced by  Invisible Children.

Contact David Wiley(wiley@msu.edu), chair of the ACAS Task Force on Demilitarizing Africa and African Studies for more information or to participate in this effort.

“#StopKony2012: For most Ugandans Kony’s crimes are from a bygone era” by Angelo Izama. a Ugandan journalist and writer who founded the human security Think Tank, Fanaka Kwawote based in Kampala, and “The Problem with Invisible Children’s ‘Kony 2012′”  by Michael Deibert, a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies at Coventry University and author of the forthcoming Democratic Republic of Congo: Between Hope and Despair (Zed Books)

Iama: “…these campaigns are disempowering of [Africans’] voices… The Kony2012 campaign will primarily succeed in making Invisible Children, not Joseph Kony, more famous… For many in the conflict prevention community, including those who worry about the further militarization of Central Africa, this campaign is just another bad solution to a more difficult problem.”

Deibert: “By blindly supporting Uganda’s current government and its military adventures beyond its borders, as Invisible Children suggests that people do, Invisible Children is in fact guaranteeing that there will be more violence, not less, in Central Africa. I have seen the well-meaning foreigners do plenty of damage before, so that is why people understanding the context and the history of the region is important before they blunder blindly forward to “help” a people they don’t understand.”

The explosion of interest in this video this week has reignited the controversy about the Obama administration decision in October 2011 to send 100 US Africa Command (AFRICOM) soldiers, armed and with permission to kill, as “advisors” to support the fight against the Lord’s Resistance Army.

Some view sending AFRICOM as saving child soldiers and young girls from the notorious Joseph Kony; others see it as intrusive US intervention which could escalate instability in the region (southern Sudan, northern Uganda, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo).

Simultaneously, AFRICOM activity is growing across the continent with full-scale combat in Somalia, three new drone bases in the Horn, and arming and training of African troops in dozens of countries. ACAS scholars will be discussing this militarization of Africa in two panels at the November African Studies annual meeting.