Boko

Posted: May 6th, 2014 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 5 Comments »

Had coffee yesterday with a Nigerian journalist friend, “A.”

A’s emotions on the Boko Haram kidnapping of 273 schoolgirls in her country: intense anger, frustration, despair…with her government’s response, which she sees as a mix of inaction, misinformation, and indifference.

This from the Christian Science Monitor:

Boko Haram is an indigenous insurgency that has almost no local support. Its name means “opposition to Western education” or “Western education is sinful.”

But the mostly Muslim population in the northeast, and especially Borno State base, where Boko Haram is from, actively seeks as much Western (modern) educational opportunity as possible.

Since Borno and Northern Nigeria are less well-educated than Southern Nigeria, Boko Haram opposes the popular and very widespread desire throughout the nation´s north for more and more schooling.

Boko Haram claims to be affiliated with Al Qaeda, and Boko Haram is on several global terror lists. But not only is the Boko Haram leadership and its goals fundamentally murky, so is the real nature of its ties to Al Qaeda. So far Boko Haram may have recruited youthful followers and youthful killers more on the promise of riches and loot than on account of its nihilist ideology.

The movement now seeks to create a new caliphate in Nigeria, governed by sharia law, but it started out as much more of an effort to extirpate outside education than it did to impose an ideology or fundamentalist Islam.

Abukakar Shekau, the group’s nominal leader, has largely been silent since an inflammatory video in 2010. He has not recently offered a vision for the reborn Nigeria, preferring to denounce, denigrate, and destroy more than to outline a resplendent future for Nigerians.

That is why Boko Haram would be considered a cult more than an insurgency if its militias had not massacred so many innocent and mostly young, unsuspecting, civilians, and caused so much school – and church-targeted mayhem.

Boko Haram’s founder, Mohammed Yusuf, in 2001 proclaimed his antipathy to Westernized education and specifically rejected Western scientific thinking, especially the theories of Charles Darwin.

But by the time Yusuf was killed by security forces in 2009, he had gathered only a small and not very militant following.

It was only after Shekau, his successor, sprung 150 alleged Boko Haram adherents from a northern prison that the movement began to gather momentum, with a few raids in 2011, more in 2012, and major outrages (29 students burned in one incident and 40 more in another) in 2013.

What does the writer, Robert Rotberg, recommend:

What Jonathan needs first to do is to accept US offers of technical help, certainly satellite, and drone-provided information showing the whereabouts of Boko Haram. US technology could also offer timely warnings of Boko Haram likely attacks.

Ultimately, Jonathan should ask for British or American special forces, as in Uganda’s welcoming of 100 American advisers in its search for Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army. Without such aid, the pursuit of Boko Haram may continue to accomplish too little, and always be late.

This is a map of Nigeria, with the British’s government’s travel safety advisories.

Chibok is top right.