[Debate] Western Officials Seek Softer Approach to Militants in Nigeria

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/31/world/africa/31nigeria.html>
August 30, 2011
Western Officials Seek Softer Approach to Militants in Nigeria
By ADAM NOSSITER

ABUJA, Nigeria — Amid increasing evidence that the Nigerian
government’s heavy-handed strategy for containing a radical Islamist
sect has failed, some Western officials are urging a new and less
militarized approach.

The suicide bombing of the United Nations headquarters here on Friday,
which killed 23 people, has added urgency to their appeal,
demonstrating that the sect, Boko Haram, has expanded its scope well
beyond domestic targets. Far from being crushed by Nigerian firepower,
Boko Haram, which claimed responsibility for the attack, appears to be
confirming the worst fears of Western analysts and diplomats — that
repression is hastening its transformation into a menacing
transnational force, with possible links to Al Qaeda’s North African
affiliates.

Repeated Nigerian military incursions against the group have yielded
many civilian casualties but still not stopped Boko Haram. It merely
went underground after a bloody operation against it in 2009, and now
carries out regular attacks against the Nigerian government.

“I think we’d like to see Nigeria take a more holistic approach,” said
the American ambassador here, Terence P. McCulley, in an interview at
the well-guarded and fortresslike United States Embassy here in the
Nigerian capital.

“Clearly, the 2009 tactics may have contributed to the current
direction,” he said, adding that the Nigerian security forces should
not jeopardize civilians in their operations. He suggested that the
government “address the grievances” of the northern population on
economic and social matters.

Boko Haram continues to call for a strict application of Shariah law
and the freeing of imprisoned members in northern Nigeria, where mass
unemployment and poverty have fueled social discontent. Overall, some
50 million youths are underemployed, the World Bank says, in a country
of 154 million. Despite abundant oil revenues, incomes have barely
budged in 30 years, life expectancy is only 48 and the country remains
one of the most economically unequal in the world, the United Nations
says.

In the wake of Friday’s bombing, analysts and officials warn that
those factors make repression a poor tactic for confronting Boko
Haram.

“The chickens have come home to roost,” said another Western diplomat,
who was not authorized to speak publicly. “Nigeria’s political elite
has been ruling irresponsibly for decades, shamelessly plundering the
nation’s wealth with little or no regard for the country’s masses,”
the diplomat said in an e-mail. “The rise of Boko Haram and its
millions of tacit, quiet supporters is a challenge to this corrupt
political class.”

A Nigerian government spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

Mr. McCulley, the American ambassador, called the United Nations
bombing a “paradigm shift,” adding that “it suggests Boko Haram has
upped its game, if you will. It seems to show it wishes to expand its
scope beyond the domestic.”

The ambassador said that the attack on the United Nations was a “game
changer,” and that American interests could also be in the group’s
sights. “It would be foolish to consider that we are not a possible
target as well,” he said.

Indeed, in a conference call after the attack, a man describing
himself as a spokesman for Boko Haram said that the United States was
culpable because it “has been collaborating with the Nigerian
government to clamp down on our members nationwide.” Both he and
another self-described spokesman warned of more attacks to come.

Mr. McCulley, while saying there was no “direct evidence” of links
between Boko Haram and Al Qaeda, said the group’s attacks have “become
more sophisticated, more Al Qaeda-like. They’ve adopted some of their
tactics.”

Other Western and Nigerian officials and analysts say members of Boko
Haram have met and trained with Qaeda affiliates outside the country.
They also cite propaganda by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in which
the group boasts of assisting Boko Haram and pledges to help it avenge
attacks on Muslims in Nigeria, including the killing of Boko Haram’s
leader during the 2009 military assault.

Mr. McCulley said that current American training programs with
Nigerian security services could be expanded. “I believe that going
forward we’re going to have a more robust engagement with the army,”
he said. F.B.I. agents arrived here to assist with the investigation
soon after the bombing.

Even after the deadly United Nations bombing, which killed 11 United
Nations staff members, including 10 Nigerians and one Norwegian woman,
political violence attributed to Boko Haram continued in northern
Nigeria over the weekend. A bomb was thrown into the home of the
former police minister — no one was injured — and a local official was
shot in his home by gunmen in Borno State, the center of the
insurgency.

These attacks have become so routine in northern Nigeria that they now
rate only a few paragraphs in the country’s newspapers. On Tuesday,
Nigerian media reported that the national police chief, Hafiz Ringim,
announced arrests in the United Nations bombing, but previous such
arrests have not led to any decline in Boko Haram’s activities. Mr.
Ringim had vowed earlier that Boko Haram’s days were “numbered,” and
after his headquarters in Abuja was bombed in June, the police chief
announced a crackdown.

“I don’t think the federal government knows who they are; that’s
problem No. 1,” a Western official said in an interview here last
month. The official, not authorized to speak publicly, said of the
2009 crackdown, “They didn’t really know what to do, so, ‘Let’s just
send in a bunch of military and police, and wipe ’em all out.’”
-- 
Yoshie Furuhashi
<http://mrzine.org/>