Primitivising Conflict_Reading Memo

Western attempts to narrate and find a solution to African civil conflicts, such as the Congolese, the Ugandan and the Sierra Leonese ones, are controversial and, at times, even counter-productive. They are framed with simplistic narratives trying to explain the intricated factors behind insurgencies and wars by oversimplifying the stories to make them easily accessible to the entire world. Despite the fact that journalists and activists embracing this methodology are succeeding in spreading the word across the West and informing anyone with access to the internet about the atrocities carried out by warlords and their armies, they are shaping the African realities in a way that only reinforces Western stereotypes. By choosing to break down the complicated dynamics of the conflicts to a handful of actors, motives and solutions, journalists, activists and analysts are conveying a misleading message.

In the big campaign KONY 2012 aimed at encouraging United States’ officials to participate in the hunt for Joseph Kony, the Ugandan warlord indicted of several crimes against humanity and war crimes, Jason Russell squeezed the narration of the whole civil war in a 30-minute-long video, in which his 5-year old blonde son is pictured more than the only three Ugandan citizens interviewed for the project. The campaign’s message has been accused of being fictional and exploiter of the conflict itself. Russell frames the intricated web of human rights violations and abductions conducted by both the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan People’s Defence Force (UPDF) through a one-dimension narration, in which Kony is the evil while the abducted children and the UPDF are the good ones. He portrays the situation in Northern Uganda as if the only solution to the problem was that the United States stationed its troops on the ground, acting as impromptu saviours arrived to rescue the victims of the violence.

Despite the benefits of the campaign reflected in the overwhelming awareness that it contributed to raise worldwide, it came at a price. Civil society organizations as well as Ugandan intellectuals strongly advised against any military intervention from the United States. They argued that it could have caused reprisals from the LRA and ignited further violence. They also discussed the wrong impression that the wider international audience was getting from KONY 2012 as the video was full of misleading and non-updated information. For instance, Russell did not mention that the images appearing in the video were shot before 2006, but at the time when the campaign started in 2011, the LRA had already spread over neighbouring countries, hence the conflict was no longer affecting exclusively Northern Uganda.

The video is moving and clamorous. Russell knows how to grab the attention of thousands of people easily moved by heart-breaking stories circulating on social media. The “white” and paternalistic perspective that KONY 2012 embraces might be problematic and symbolic of the Western sense of superiority, yet it is a first attempt to engage a wider audience and help hundreds of abducted children return to their homes. Surely, Obama’s decision of military intervention in the country resulted from the campaign is controversial, given the numerous failed tries in Uganda and outside Africa led by the United States, and indeed the campaign itself was superficial, but it must be acknowledged as an attempt to give innocent victims, like the Ugandan boy Jacob in the video, hope for a better future. 

Although it must be recognised that the intentions of Russel and those of his colleagues at Invisible Children and Enough must have been purely to help put an end to the devastation that they witnessed during their first trip to Northern Uganda, I agree with the idea that the Western colonial mentality of narrating African realities must be stopped. The shallow perspective used in the campaign stems from colonialist views, according to which African barbarians, in this case Kony and its ruthless followers, need to be defeated by the white power, the United States, and the remaining good but still backward people need to be saved. The consequences are enormous: they validate white privilege, ignite fear of foreigners and emphasize stereotypes. Journalists have admitted streamlining the narration of multi-layered stories so as to make it easier for the international audience to understand and better relate to something completely different from their daily reality. Same for policy makers whose need for reports’ conciseness has led them to break down the complexity of African realities to just one reason to blame, one implication to handle and one solution to work for.  Therefore, the causes of the civil conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, such as illegal exploitation of natural resources, antagonisms between political leaders, issues over land among others, were reduced to conflict minerals only, which only led to sexual abuses against women and girls, without speaking of men or victims of non-sexual torture, and finally, the only solution to the conflict seems to be the expansion of state authority, neglecting other crucial measures that need to be taken. Robert Kaplan himself agrees that his portray of the Sierra Leonese and Liberian civil wars in the 1990s can no longer be applied to African chronicles. At the time, they seemed so inexplicable to Western mentalities that Kaplan believed that the motives behind the wars could be find in the forest, as it insulated the populations and prevented them from developing like the rest of the world. This narrative reduced complex tales and the populations’ entire existence and turned them in easy clichés promoting paternalism.

One question must be raised: if Western journalists and activists are not able to portray the African continent and its stories as it deserves, how are African media telling their own stories? We are lucky to live in an interconnected world where we can get all types of information we want at any times. If African journalists and media channels are narrating their domestic realities doing justice to their complex nature, why don’t Western media look at them to change their simplistic dominant narratives? After reading about the implications of KONY 2012 and other attempts of cheap chronicles, I wonder whether it is possible to weight the benefits and disadvantages of the westernized lens through which we see Africa. How would the world react to African issues if the narratives were not simplified? Would they still work to take straightforward and focused actions or would the peacebuilding process be slower as policy makers try to understand the complicated essence of the continent, which so far, we have been trying to ease?

Another point that I found very interesting is how the Closure and Darkness practices in Sierra Leone were considered signals of Africa’s primitivism in Kaplan’s travelogue, while in reality, the magical rituals started to circulate when the British empire integrated the country into its Atlantic slave trade. In her article on Robert Kaplan and Juju journalism, Shaw states that this type of journalism has resulted in “official inaction” encouraging American nativism and a fear for the obscure and inexplicable African traditions, rather than the attempt to understand foreign cultures. I tend to agree with the idea that many world’s realities should be considered in light of the country and its population’s cultural heritage, as it unconsciously shapes their judgments and perceptions of themselves and others. Although cultures relate to both a material and spiritual dimension of our lives, they do not make the rest of the world barbarian or alien only because we cannot see explicitly the reasons behind certain behaviours or because they do not meet our expectations. The Westernized ideals of modernity and civilization praised in contrast to African animist beliefs and irrationality are creating a huge gap made of cultural generalizations and taxonomies, which are hindering cross-cultural relationships and promoting the over-simplification of intractable realities. This kind of approach is also the cause of Western aid agencies and institutions thinking that recruiting staff with technical expertise yet with next to zero knowledge of the specific situation of the country is the answer to find quick solutions to existing problems. Conflicts cannot be resolved only with generic medical and logistical skills, but it is crucial to avoid minimization of cultural influences and to get to know the country’s identity through its traditions without prejudice in order not to fall into the trap of the white saviours coming to the rescue of the needy locals. Surely, military intervention is not the one-size-fits-all approach to resolve conflicts in Africa. Building cultural fluency is essential if anyone wants to raise awareness of certain issues and promote active engagement from the international community, like Jason Russell. However, I believe that conveying a message to the world in the same way as you would explained it to a 5-year-old boy is not the answer. Paying attention and understanding how the country, whether it is Uganda, Congo or Sierra Leone, frames its reality and the multi-layered contest of its conflict must be taken into consideration so as to avoid working for counter-productive solutions.