Haram 2014: the next Kony 2012?

Regarding Boko Haram’s kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls a month ago, many people have voiced concerns that this incident will just be a rehash of Kony 2012.
Though it is horrible and the girls should clearly be rescued, it will fade from the public mind just like the dictator and his child army.
While I do think this is a particularly pessimistic view of the public’s attention span, I admit it isn’t too far from the truth.
We like stories that have a proportional beginning, middle and end. So when the middle stretches into years and the end takes place maybe a decade into the future, we lose interest.
However, I do not believe this incident will become Haram 2014 and fade away, primarily because it affects America.
Though Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army were placed on the Terrorist Exclusion List far back in 2001, very few, if any, of Kony’s atrocities were committed beyond the Ugandan borders.
In this sense, it is a terrorist group or a group that might provide assistance to terrorists, but it has largely left American interests alone.
Further, Kony 2012 began as a grassroots movement dedicated to drawing attention to Kony, and it was not the result of a sudden action such as the kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls.
That’s much more interesting to the American public than a general awareness of a vague child army an ocean away.
So, at the very least, the American public will remain interested until the schoolgirls are found.
But Boko Haram, whose name literally translates as “Western education is a sin,” harbors distinctly anti-Western and anti-American views, and it’s more than willing to act upon them.
Even once the schoolgirls are found, American interests will still be in danger of terrorist attacks by Boko Haram, so the American government will have to respond to their movements for national security.
American intervention with the LRA would be primarily a global peacekeeping action.
And let’s be honest — with a possible new al-Qaida springing into existence, I doubt much of the American public would care to focus on global peacekeeping efforts with another terrorist organization on its doorstep, especially one with such a pointed and obvious purpose.
So no, I do not believe Boko Haram will become the next Joseph Kony. Their actions are too bombastic and too extravagant to fade away, and, unlike Kony, their influence is not limited by borders.
Further, I believe America is far too cautious to become involved militarily in an unstable country like Uganda, with tenuous connections to America’s well-being at the moment.
Unlike Kony, should Boko Haram continue spouting anti-Western views and acting violently upon them, I suspect it will become another almost permanent front in America’s war against
terrorism.

­allenjo@indiana.edu
@IAmJoshAllen