When Joseph Kony stepped out of the jungle and into a clearing in eastern Congo, he looked almost debonair in his smartly-pressed white suit. A small army of pint-sized soldiers trailed behind him, hair tousled into dreadlocks, feet flopping in Wellington boots. One or two even cracked a grin, but Kony’s face was stone. An overlord in his forest kingdom, the rebel leader seemed unnerved by the sight of strangers.

That was in 2006. I became one of the few journalists to meet the founder of the Lord’s Resistance Army during one of his sallies from the bush to engage in an ultimately futile dance of peace talks with elders from his native northern Uganda.

Having spent six months tracking him for a book I was writing, I felt a curious pang of nostalgia when I once again saw his face leering out of StopKony2012, the viral video.

It is easy to disparage the film, and many have already done a pretty venomous job. Of course it oversimplifies the conflict – that is what good propaganda does. And in many ways it paints an out-of-date picture of a war in Uganda that is now over.

Yet to dwell on the film’s weaknesses risks obscuring a far more damning truth: African governments and the western powers who bank-roll them have proved deplorably incompetent in tackling what should be an eminently fixable problem.

Kony did not start out as a villain. In 1986, his homeland in northern Uganda was a hunting ground for wild soldiers thirsting for carnage.

Yoweri Museveni, who had just driven northerners from power in Kampala, sent his victorious followers forth to exact revenge, prompting a series of uprisings among Kony’s Acholi people.

In a land haunted by a faith that spirits animate tree, river and stone, it was perhaps natural the rebellion would take on a mystical hue. Kony claimed to take his orders from spirits; his followers believed him. Other rebels gave up, he battled on.

Kony’s transformation was a tragedy, the age-old tale of a hero embracing the very evil he had set out to fight. Abducted siblings were forced to bludgeon each other to death; girls has their lips hacked off, leaving them with a permanent scream.

For years it suited the west to look the other way. Donors needed Museveni to be a success story; diplomats and aid workers in Kampala turned a blind eye. Nobody wanted to ask questions about the marginalisation of the Acholi people under the Museveni regime. Of course Kony had supporters – how else could he have survived for so long?

Western attempts to tackle him have so far been a catalogue of incompetence and hubris. The International Criminal Court, keen to bag its first suspect, did a miserable job of explaining its mission to the Acholi, and was widely viewed in the north as partisan towards Museveni. The United Nations Mission in Congo commendably sent Guatemalan special forces to try to arrest a Kony commander in 2006.

Regrettably, eight were killed in a shoot out with Kony’s highly-disciplined men.

Whatever you think of StopKony12 it is hard to dispute that governments in the region and beyond could have done a far better job of confronting Kony and his followers. Lets hope the interest stirred by the film results in a more credible attempt to deal with a man who suffers from a surfeit of the fear he inspires.