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7/8/2014The Rise of Boko Haram: US Responsibility, HypocrisyBy Brett McCully From opednews.com/populum/uploaded/BringBackOurGirls_truck-94494-2014_07_06_10_52_58-1.jpg: Medina Dauda - Voice of America
A truck promotes the #BringBackOurGirls hash tag in Nigeria.
(image by Medina Dauda - Voice of America)On April 15, militant Nigerian group Boko Haram kidnapped nearly 300 schoolgirls, leading to shock and revulsion around the world as well as an international social media campaign under the motto "Bring Back Our Girls".
Mostly unspoken in discussions of Boko Haram and its monstrous crime is a story of unintended consequences tied to the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya to topple Moamar Gaddafi as well as economic globalization and the legacy of IMF interventions in the Nigerian economy.
The Security SituationRichard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, notes that in Libya "a modest military intervention by the US and others helped to create a vacuum, now mostly filled by terrorists." President François Hollande, referring to Boko Haram, said their weapons, including "heavy weapons of an unimaginable sophistication " came from Libya and that [their] training took place in Mali before the ouster of its Islamist leaders". The conclusion, then, must be that the Western intervention in Libya created the conditions which allowed Boko Haram and Mali's Islamist militants to seize weapons from the country, provoking the unrest in Mali and giving space for training Boko Haram's fighters.
Furthermore, "much of the responsibility for the rise of the Boko Haram extremist group may lie with the Nigerian government itself", according to Sarah Chayes of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. A combination of economic liberalization, globalization, poor governance, and brutal repression have led to the current standoff.
Regarding the recent violence, Amnesty International points to March 14th "as a tipping point when the security forces unleashed a brutal crackdown on former detainees." On this date, Boko Haram attacked a Nigerian military barracks in the city of Maiduguri, freeing "several hundred detainees." However, "as the military regained control, more than 600 people, mostly unarmed recaptured detainees, were extra-judicially executed in various locations across Maiduguri", some of them shouting that they were unaffiliated with the militant group before being shot.
This recent "tipping point" mirrors the larger picture of Boko Haram's increasingly violent acts. Writing in the journal Current History, Kate Meagher describes the group as originally a peaceful "religious community offering education, basic services, and informal livelihoods to the disaffected". The group was soon "construed as a threat to the state and its rural base was destroyed by an army assault in 2003", leading to violent reprisals by the group, targeting mostly police stations and "culminating in a clash in 2009 in which security forces killed more than 800 Boko Haram members." In addition, the group's leader, Mohammed Yusuf, was extrajudicially killed, with the video posted online. This incident "tipped what started as a religious protest movement among the marginalized into a full-blown insurgency."
Economic MalaiseThe broader context of the insurgency is a deeply corrupt government , massive inequalities between the Islamic north and Christian south of the country, and rising poverty. In her article, Meagher goes on to note that "the depredations of years of savage market reforms, and integration into a global economic system that has left much of the population as surplus labor" have also contributed to the crisis. Hence the north has an unemployment rate 50 percent higher and per capita income 50 percent lower than the south.
Many of the economic forces now depriving the north were set in motion by the institution of the 1986 structural adjustment program (SAP) demanded by the International Monetary Fund. For example, while Meagher notes that the "North's urban economy has been gutted [in part] by reductions in public employment", Thandika Mkandawire remarks in Current History's latest Africa issue that the continent "now has the lowest number of civil servants per 100 citizens" following years of disastrous SAPs. Similarly, the northern economy's mainstay, textile manufacturing, has been driven out of business by low-cost Asian alternatives as well as an " electricity supply is so erratic that businesses unable to afford generators are forced to avoid technical improvements", according to Meagher. Mkandawire offers that the IMF and World Bank pushed African countries to "refrain from investment in basic public goods" believing that "the private sector would step in to provide [them] in a more efficient way", leading to, among other consequences, "electricity blackouts".
Military TiesWhile the US "has advocated a wider economic and social-justice agenda" for Nigeria to win hearts and minds, advice ignored by Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, the US has simultaneously been bolstering support for the Nigerian military.
Based out of the US Africa Command, "which is deeply unpopular across the continent", according to former UN official Adekeye Debajo, this includes several military exercises each year, as well as training and advisory missions, assistance with logistics and public affairs, and construction of military buildings, including training centers. In addition, the US spent more than $550 million during Obama's first term training and equipping West African militaries. Such assistance, however, is complicated by the so-called Leahy Amendment, which bars US aid to military units responsible for human rights abuses. John Campbell, former US ambassador to Nigeria and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, remarks that "very, very few units" are eligible for assistance today under those guidelines.
US HypocrisyIncidentally, the concern given to the kidnapped schoolgirls does not appear to be shared when the perpetrator of violence against children is the US. While US Secretary of State John Kerry termed the Boko Haram raid "grotesque" and the New York Times called the act "horrifying", such adjectives are reserved for official enemies.
For example, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, US drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan have killed at least 175 to 209 children. Yet Time Magazine's Joe Klein asked "whose 4-year-old get killed? What we're doing [with the US drone program] is limiting the possibility that 4-year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror." The "indiscriminate act of terror" of deliberately bombing a funeral, which the US did in 2009, killing ten children and four tribal leaders, bears no mention.
Another case is that of US actions leading to the current "international public health emergency", as declared by the World Health Organization in early May, for polio, a disease which mostly affects children. The deans of 12 public health schools wrote to the Obama administration demanding an end to "sham vaccination campaign[s]", noting that the expulsion of international health organizations trying to eradicate polio in Pakistan was precipitated by the "fictional vaccination campaign" carried out by the CIA in trying to find Osama bin Laden. According to media watchdog Fair and Accuracy in Reporting, mainstream outlets mostly ignored the US role in the recent outbreak. Northern Nigeria has also been labelled a trouble spot for polio, with Boko Haram disrupting inoculation efforts.
To take one more instance, in 2013, the US provided three countries with exemptions from sanctions which would have been brought on by employing children as soldiers--Yemen, Chad, and South Sudan, with Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia receiving partial waivers. Once again, such an action passes with little comment in establishment quarters, as the act was justified as being "in the national interest of the United States".
The principle that can be drawn from such behavior, then, is that harming children is reasonable and "in the national interest" for the US and its allies, but deplorable when enemies do it.
Whether or not the kidnapped schoolgirls will be harmed (beyond what they have already suffered) is as yet unclear. As the International Crisis Group's Africa program director notes, "A military intervention, if one is attempted, also risks stoking the violence." Indeed, as noted above, violence has only increased whenever the Nigerian military has taken the offensive. Unfortunately, the Nigerian government seems unwilling to seriously negotiate. According to the Associated Press " A human rights activist close to mediators said a swap of detained extremists for the girls was negotiated a week ago but fell through because President Goodluck Jonathan refused to consider an exchange." Thus the usual victims of violence -- the innocent and defenceless -- will continue to pay the price.