Matt Gurney | May 7, 2014
Right now, somewhere in hiding in northern Nigeria, are the soldiers of the Boko Haram Islamist militia. Little is known about the group. They are believed to fund their operations through bank robberies and ransoms, exist to establish an Islamic state out of parts of secular Nigeria, and have, in recent years, been turning increasingly violent. The Nigerian military has been unable to do much to stop bombings and kidnappings by Boko Haram, including last week’s assault on a school where hundreds of female students, in their mid to late teens, had gathered to write final exams. Boko Haram captured somewhere between 250-300 of these girls. They are being kept as sex slaves, to be sold either to high bidders or to members of the militia for personal use. It’s hard to even ponder what they’re going through right now.
But the people of Nigeria are pondering exactly that, and demanding to know why their government wasn’t able to protect the girls in the first place (military forces were nearby when the raid, which was detected ahead of time, was launched, but never showed up). They also want to know what the government is doing to get the captured girls back, before any more are sold or further traumatized through the sexual assaults of their captors. Clearly, the Nigerians are not able to deal with this problem, and on Wednesday, President Goodluck Jonathan accepted an offer by U.S. President Barack Obama of military, law enforcement and hostage-rescue experts.
Perhaps the girls can be rescued through a form of prisoner exchange or by paying a ransom. Normally, cutting a deal with thugs like Boko Haram would be unthinkable, but as civilized people, we need to keep getting these girls to safety as soon as possible foremost in our minds. But there is also the issue of not being able to trust Boko Haram to live up to its side of the bargain, and the possibility that cutting any deal, U.S.-brokered or not, may simply embolden Boko Haram to conduct further such mass kidnappings in exchange for money. It could easily become their new modus operandi: Abduct school girls, use them as sex slaves for a few weeks, then sell them back to a frantic and humiliated government.
That won’t do. While the Nigerian government must pursue all avenues of getting these girls home safe in the short term, there is a more pressing issue here. The U.S. has also offered military and intelligence aid. The parameters of that aid are as yet undefined, but shouldn’t be. Whether as part of rescuing the girls, or in a separate issue later, Boko Haram needs to be wiped out. If the Nigerians can’t do it themselves — and clearly, they can’t — then the West, possibly including Canada, should do it for them.
Though little is known about Boko Haram, they are not believed to be a large organization. Nor are they equipped with sophisticated weapons — much of their armaments are whatever they can steal from the Nigerian troops that would oppose them. But they are well motivated, are apparently (relatively) well paid, and, after a string of victories against unmotivated and poorly/sporadically paid Nigerian forces, have high morale.
But they wouldn’t fare well against any of the special forces operations fielded by modern Western militaries, including Canada’s own commando units and the various American special operations forces. We would annihilate them, and should.
There is understandably a lack of interest among Western nations for further commitments abroad. But this is a unique situation. There would be no need for an invasion — we’d be guests of the local government. There’d be no need for an occupation or rebuilding effort, as our goal would be limited to rescuing hostages and killing the terrorists — pirates are a better term — that are holding them. There’d be no need to establish temporary or permanent military infrastructure, as, again, we’d be guests of the local forces.
No military operation ever goes perfectly smoothly, but something like this is still well within even the West’s diminished means. Bluntly, if we can’t pull off an operation like this, what’s the point having all the troops and planes and helicopters in the first place?
We’d have to find Boko Haram, of course, and that wouldn’t be easy. But it wouldn’t be impossible, either — Boko Haram is not a typical insurgency, blending in with the local population. It is isolating itself from the broader public. Indeed, the girls are believed to currently be in a national park in Nigeria, deep in the forest. Once we find the large armed group hiding in the woods, it’s a pretty good bet that’s them.
We can’t fix every problem in the world by buying people off or bombing areas flat. There will always be outrages against civilization that, bluntly, we can’t do anything about. But not being able to solve every problem isn’t an excuse to solve none of them. The U.S. has offered to help Nigeria. Canada can help, too. This is something we can do, quickly and effectively, that will make a real difference in the lives of good people. Wiping out Boko Haram and freeing as many hostages as possible is something all of us should be able to support.
National Post
• Email: mgurney@nationalpost.com | Twitter: mattgurney
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