Engaging Boko Haram correctly

When the immediate past Goodluck Jonathan administration, after a long season of pussy-footing, gerrymandering and buck-passing finally embarked on a large-scale aerial assault on positions then being held by the Boko Haram insurgents in North Eastern Nigeria, many applauded the move seeing it as the beginning of the end of the sect. However, some of us who wanted the sect gone forever but also knew that everything that was needed to achieve that outcome had not been put in place were nonetheless circumspect: guerilla wars are not exactly won from the air. We have been proved right sadly.


Indeed, though the Boko Haram insurgency has gone on for about a six years now, one notable failing in the entire saga is that as a nation, we are yet to come to grips with what exactly it is. And the sect continues to feast on our somewhat deliberate insistence on not correctly perceiving it for what it is. ‘My people perish because they have rejected knowledge.’ This surely has to change.


When the sect first emerged in Kano, the reaction of the local community was to see it as one other proselytizing movement that was seeking converts for its variant of Islam. The history of the religion was such that time after time, sects and tendencies have continued to show up introducing one dialectic or emphasizing one point. This was one more like the others and in their view, the canvas was big enough to accommodate it.


But they should have looked deeper. This is because, though the sect was doing everything it could to expouse its own variant of the religion, there was also something else that it was also promoting. In declaring all the heritage of western education as a taboo to be discarded, the sect was in a very troubling way demonstrating a certain fanaticism that resonated with the extremist
Shiite attitude that had seen its highpoint in the Iranian revolution of 1979.


The last straw for Boko Haram was its alleged murder of a rival imam and the sacking of his mosque over theological differences. This was the time that the muslim ummah and indeed the Nigerian state should have instituted a very comprehensive enquiry into the teachings, reach and dangers of the sect, but they failed. It was also the best time to scorch the hydra. In this also, they failed.


Rather than embark on this most logical course of action, the sect was literally permitted to flee to the north eastern fringes of Borno and Yobe.


Tragically also, local political juggernauts were soon to do a deal with the sect to help them clinch power at the state level, a move that after its success, came to confer quasi-official legitimacy on the outlaws. This was accentuated by the fact that the resultant administration incorporated one of its leaders as a commissioner for religious affairs and ethical orientation.
Almost inevitable differences soon crept in however, resulting in a strained parting of ways. But this was not after the sect had grown astronomically in personnel, influence and resources. A state of mutual animosity was therefore the norm between both old-time associates and this was to continue until the Yar ‘Adua-led Federal Government was encouraged to unleash the military upon them, a move that led to the killing of the sect’s founding leader, Mohammed Yusuf.


To be sure, there is a sense in which the critical error of terminating Yusuf’s life without proper trial and investigation of the origins, motivations, nuances and depth or otherwise of the group resonates with the latter-day error of authorizing aerial bombardments of the group’s locations without a corollary plan on how to equally contain the inevitable outcome that the sect would in this situation very likely vote to slip back into regular society to save itself and plot fresh ways of continuing to advance its insurgent activities. Now the chickens have come home to roost.


With the benefit of hindsight, the road that should have been taken then may have been to have left the insurgents corralled in the towns and villages that they had already taken and then plotted a comprehensive plan to remove every trace of them. Speed is of essence in matters like this and we recall Chadian President, Idris Deby, asking then for permission to fully pursue after the insurgents and bring home their leadership. Foolish pride; we shut him down. When the blind lead the blind, the Bible surmises, both are guaranteed to fall into the ditch.


From our ditch position today, the options before us would clearly be more gradualist. We need to grow our intelligence infrastructure so it can fully infiltrate the group and bring us much needed information from within. We need to train and retrain our troops to realize that carrying the civil population along, no matter the risks involved, is non-negotiable. And then we need to get mosques across Nigeria and the other affected nations to vote decisively against the insurgents and to play their own part in ensuring that their adherents do not fall prey to the deceitful and beguiling rhetoric from the sects recruiters. We shall overcome, some day.


http://hallmarknews.com/boko-haram-getting-the-terms-of-engagement-right/