Reuters reports that Nigeria’s military finally managed to pull its socks up and stop Boko Haram from devouring yet another spot on the map, which is a good thing since this spot on the map has two million people in it. It’s a Chicago.
Other places weren’t so fortunate.
Nigeria’s military repelled multiple attacks by suspected Boko Haram militants on Borno state capital Maiduguri in the northeast, security sources said on Sunday, but the insurgents captured another Borno town.
The assault on Maiduguri, with a population of around two million, began just after midnight. Sources at two hospitals said at least eight people had died and 27, mostly civilians, had been injured. A second attempt to take the city’s airport in the afternoon was also repelled.
A raid on Monguno, 140 km (80 miles) north, began later in the morning and the town fell under militant control by the late afternoon.
…
The militants also simultaneously attacked another town, Konduga, which is 40 km (24 miles) from Maiduguri, but the military said it had thwarted the raid.
But don’t worry, the Super Bowl will still take place.
So Boko Haram is not a small bunch of nutters with guns and pickup trucks, they are actually a revolutionary military that is capable of beating the Nigerian army in regional areas of interest. In that sense, it sounds similar to ISIL – the leading edge of the force is doing things that are horrible and unpopular but you simply cannot get a force that large and effective that doesn’t have some deep popular and logistical support. The more I read about what’s going on, the further I downgrade my estimate of the Nigerian government’s effectiveness – they clearly don’t have much of a popular mandate (like the Iraqi and Syrian governments in the case of ISIL) and they’re having trouble getting anyone to believe in their legitimacy enough to be willing to face armed revolutionaries. Could be heading for a repeat of Somalia. where the country falls apart into warlord-run factions. 🙁
The US’ response to ISIL “let’s bomb them into behaving” doesn’t work, because bombing doesn’t produce political stability. Gah, this has humanitarian disaster in the works written all over it.
It already is a humanitarian disaster and has been so for several years.
Yeah, you’re right. I stand corrected.
FWIW – everything I’ve read about Boko Haram confuses me more. From my comments here you can tell that I contextualize Boko Haram as a politically-inspired insurgency and reject the narrative that they’re just a bunch of religious crazies. It’s really hard to find a believable and comprehensible summary of what’s going on (it’s one of those situations where everyone is lying to others and themselves about their agenda) but there’s a summary here on Counterpunch that will make your head spin and your teeth grind:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/27/unraveling-the-mystery-of-boko-haram/
What he says is more or less what I’ve concluded so I may be suffering from confirmation bias. The TL;DR form is “Oil and political power, jockeying for advantage after the fall of Quaddafi” Not exactly 100% the US/NATO’s fault but reasonably expected, part of a plan to “middle easternize” Africa into warring chaos that drives the price of oil down. Having lit the train on the powder-keg the US and France are sitting back to see what comes out of the explosion.