Bring Back Our Girls

In March 2011 western nations led by the UK, France under President Sarkozy and the US decided to invade Libya in order to steal their oil. Obviously following the 2003 invasion of Iraq these nations couldn't send in conventional military forces. So instead they decided to arm local Islamists and fly in Islamist fighters from nations such as Jordan and the Gulf states to make it appear as though they were acting in support of a popular uprising against a brutal dictator.

The problem was that this wasn't true so a large proportion of the Libyan people took up arms to fight against the insurgents. This led to a protracted eight month civil war which forced the west to provide ever more and heavier weapons along with training to the Islamists who were all the time gaining valuable combat experience. When the war in Libya finally ended a large proportion of these Islamist simply packed up their weapons and headed for near-by Mali where they started a war to turn the vast north of the country into an independent Islamist state. By March 2012 the government of Mali had collapsed and the nation was fast turning into a failed state complete with looting, murder, kidnapping, gang-rape, child soldiers and other serious human rights abuses.

By January 2013 France under President Hollande could stand by and watch no longer and dispatched troops to fight the Islamists. The initial combat phase of this operation was hugely successful with the French recording a clear victory. However the peacekeeping phase that followed was more complicated with the French requiring help from both the Malian army and local troops from neighbouring states such as Chad. Unfortunately nations led by the UK and the US saw this as an opportunity to exploit any African nations involving themselves in this peacekeeping mission. Basically the UK and the US intended to spy on the African militaries as they undertook the difficult mission. To increase the pressure on those African nations the US dispatched Rihanna on her Diamonds World Tour. The intention being that all the strange rumours about what Rihanna was getting up to would be mistaken for coded discussions between the western nations about the situation in Mali forcing the African nations to try and break that code.

Under the leadership of President Goodluck Jonathon near-by oil rich Nigeria opted not to take part in the Mali operation instead choosing to fight the small Islamist insurgency by Boko Haram that was going on in Nigeria. Since then Boko Haram have seen their support massively increase and the situation in Nigeria has become more unstable. It used to be that Boko Haram would only be able to carry out a mass casualty bombing or a good old fashioned massacre once every month or so. Now Boko Haram bombings, mass kidnappings and massacres seem to take place on a weekly if not daily basis.

On April 14th 2014 (14/4/14) - in the middle of Nigeria's Presidency of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) - there was a significant escalation in Boko Haram's terror campaign when they detonated two bombs at a bus station in Nigeria's capital Abuja killing at least 88 people and wounding more then 200 more. Although Boko Haram have previously displayed the capacity for bloodshed on this scale this was really the first time they have been able to strike within the comparatively stable southern Nigeria. Yesterday (1/5/14) Boko Haram struck Abuja again with a car bomb exploding close to the site of the April 14th bombing killing a confirmed 19 people and wounding at least 70 others although those numbers are still rising.

By far the most shocking Boko Haram attack of April 14th though was the kidnapping of 230 girls aged between 15 and 18 from a school in Chibok in the northern Borno state. These girls have not been heard from since and have most likely been split up in to smaller groups and hidden in the dense forest in northern Nigeria and the neighbouring states of Chad and Cameroon. Although there is a possibility that they are being held to extract some form of ransom from the Nigeria government the sheer number involved suggests they are either being sold off to act as slaves - both sexual and traditional - or being kept by Boko Haram to be used for the same purpose. In fact the only consolation I can see the families holding onto is the hope that they were killed quickly.

Obviously with every hour that these girls are missing and with every fresh rumour of what may have happened to them people in Nigeria are getting more and more angry. In this past week many of the groups who were behind Nigeria's January 2012 fuel price protests (Occupy Nigeria etc) have harnessed this anger and turned it into anti-government protests with the Twitter hashtag #BringBackOurGirls helping to bring global attention to the issue.

The human tragedy at the heart of these protests is the same as the one at the heart of the search for Malaysian airlines flight MH370 and the slow recovery of bodies from the South Korean ferry Sewo - simply people want to know what happened to their loved ones. Both the search for MH370 and the Sewo disaster are of course in part references to the US' Rihanna operation.

Therefore this kidnapping and particularly the protests make life extremely difficult for the Nigeria government because it means they have to be expert in the search for MH370, the Sewo disaster and Rihanna whilst at the same time trying to rescue the missing girls and punish Boko Haram.

As such I'm beginning to think that the increased support for Boko Haram progressed from being a low level harassment operation against the Nigerian government to a full-scale attempt to bring down the Nigerian government either through the elections in 2015 or by restarting the north versus south civil war. Already the pressure of the Boko Haram campaign has triggered defections from the Nigeria government and some political opponents in the north have been starting completely unsubstantiated rumours that President Jonathon - whose is from the south - is deliberately protecting Boko Haram in order to prevent the 2015 elections being held in the northern provinces.

So while I completely understand that Nigerians have every right to be absolutely furious at the atrocities being carried out by Boko Haram I think that anger would be better directed against the people who are carrying out the kidnappings and killings rather then the government that is trying to stop them.


(Originally Posted) 13:25 on 2/5/14 (UK date).