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“KONY2012 Spread the word!!!” tweeted singer Rihanna.

Started in 1998, the LRA is believed to have killed, kidnapped and mutilated tens of thousands of people in a reign of terror across some of Africa’s most remote and hostile terrain. Young boys are often sent to war and young girls are forced to become sex slaves.

Kony’s actions spread to Sudan, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Although indicted in 2005 by the International Criminal Court, Mr. Kony, a former altar boy whose movement draws on messianic beliefs and a smattering of Christian motifs, has so far evaded capture.

The film’s narrator Jason Russell explains how U.S. advisers to Uganda could train government forces in the technology needed to hunt down Mr. Kony in the jungle. Last October, U.S. President Barack Obama agreed to send 100 troops.

“We’ve come so far but Kony is still out there,” says Mr. Russell in the film. “He’s recently changed his tactics, making it even more difficult to capture him.”

But the campaign has been met with suspicion and condemnation with some critics denouncing the push to hunt down Mr. Kony as irresponsible and “immoral.”

“The immediate question is whether [Kony] is captured or killed,” wrote

PhD student Jack McDonald from King’s College London wrote that while he supports the desire to raise the profile of the “heinous nature” of Mr. Kony’s crimes, he considers the Kony 2012 campaign dangerous.

“The idea that popular opinion can be leveraged with viral marketing to induce foreign military intervention is really, really dangerous,” he writes. “It is immoral to try and sell a sanitized vision of foreign intervention that neglects the fact that people will die as a result. That goes for politicians as much as for Jason Russell.”