Can the US help Nigeria confront Boko Haram?

For years, Nigeria was Washington DC's most important strategic partner on issues of security and stability in Africa. But, Boko Haram, and Abuja’s response, has put that partnership in jeopardy.

|
Sunday Alamba/AP/File
Martha Mark, the mother of kidnapped school girl Monica Mark cries as she displays her photo, in the family house, in Chibok, Nigeria May 19. In a new video released Oct. 31, the leader of Nigeria's Islamic extremist group Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau dashed hopes for a prisoner exchange to get the girls released.

A version of this post originally appeared on Africa in Transition. The views expressed are the author's own. 

For a long time Nigeria was Washington’s most important strategic partner on issues of security and stability in Africa. But, the Boko Haram insurgency and Abuja’s response to it has put that partnership in jeopardy. The movement and the Nigerian government’s failed response to it pose a dilemma for the Obama administration.

On the one hand, Boko Haram is repellent, regularly resorting to terror against the highly vulnerable, including the murder and kidnapping of young people in school. On the other hand, the official security forces carry out atrocities against the local population, and the government has thus far failed to address the drivers of the insurgency, including political marginalization, accelerating impoverishment, and rampant corruption. This state of affairs has allowed Boko Haram to ramp up its military campaign in 2014, having killed over 3,600 civilians and seizing control of more than 10 towns in northeast Nigeria. Boko Haram has also carried out cross-border operations, notably in northern Cameroon. 

My new Council Special Report (CSR), US Policy to Counter Nigeria’s Boko Haram, analyzes the domestic political context of Boko Haram and its threat to the Nigerian state, especially looking towards the upcoming February 2015 national elections. It provides an “anatomy” of Boko Haram, including its goals, structure, and activities, while acknowledging how little about it is known. It criticizes the Nigerian government’s response to Boko Haram, especially its unwillingness to address rampant human rights abuses by the security services that help drive popular support or acquiescence for Boko Haram.

The report divides its recommendations to the Obama administration into short and long term goals. With respect to the former, it urges the Obama administration to press Abuja privately and publicly on human rights and the necessity for genuinely free and fair elections, and to facilitate and support humanitarian assistance in northern Nigeria.

Perhaps more controversially in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the US facility in Benghazi and the death of the US ambassador, it urges that the Obama administration proceed with establishing a consulate in Kano, the largest and most important city in northern Nigeria. Such a facility would among other things constitute US outreach to Africa’s largest Muslim population which is increasingly alienated from the Abuja government and, likely, the United States.

Over the long term, the report urges the Obama administration to support Nigerians working for human rights and democracy, to aggressively use its power to revoke US visas in response to financial crimes in an environment of flagrant corruption, and to encourage the reformation of the “culture” of the military and the police, whose interaction with the general population is too often brutal.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Can the US help Nigeria confront Boko Haram?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/Africa-Monitor/2014/1125/Can-the-US-help-Nigeria-confront-Boko-Haram
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe