From Donna Brazile, Gannett News Service
Behind the headlines, and the horror and outrage they generate, there’s another story. Nigeria, despite being the largest economy in Africa, is in trouble. The terrorist kidnapping of schoolgirls is a symptom of a deeper disease. The symptom needs immediate treatment; the girls must be brought home, safe and unharmed. But then the underlying disease must be diagnosed and treated.
There’s massive unemployment in Nigeria, especially among the youth. Economic inequality and gender inequality are creating an atmosphere of despair and desperation. Wambura Kimunyu, a blogger in Kenya, tweeted, “There’s an ominous thread that ties Boko Haram in Nigeria with Al Shabaab Terror in East Africa, the uprisings in Egypt (and) the growing problem of youth disenfranchisement and youth unemployment in Africa. Our populations are young, they exist largely at the margins of society, and there are few prospects for them.” …
We should not make the mistake of thinking that this is a religious war. The boarding school the girls attended is “an elite academy of both Muslim and Christian girls.” Egypt’s Al-Azhar mosque, one of Sunni Islam’s institutions of higher learning, and respected worldwide, issued a statement, saying, “This action does not relate to the noble teachings of Islam in any way. Al-Azhar demands the release of these girls immediately.”
After we treat the symptom — getting the girls back, immediately — we need to start treating the disease: gender and economic inequality across Africa, and around the world.
Washington must tread carefully in this situation
From Doug Bandow, in Forbes
The Islamic extremist group Boko Haram began more than a decade ago and turned to escalating violence after its leader was killed in government custody in 2009. … While BH has complained of corruption and human rights abuses, its principal cause today is radical Islam. Social problems have increased its appeal to disaffected young men, but BH’s penchant for slaughter transcends any political grievances.
The burst of publicity caused the Obama administration to dispatch a multi-agency delegation. The mission may meet an emotional need, but offers few benefits and many snares. Of all the world’s violent insurgencies, why intervene in Nigeria? Washington already is far too busy militarily around the globe.
Most important, America can do little to save the girls or stop Boko Haram. State Department spokesman Jen Psaki explained that the U.S. group contained “law enforcement officials with expertise in investigations and hostage negotiations.” Law enforcement? Investigations and hostage negotiations? … Boko Haram is not an African equivalent of Jesse James’ gang or a random crew of bank robbers. BH cheerfully, even gleefully, kills, wounds, kidnaps, and destroys en masse. That is its raison d’etre. Who expects the group, which previously has murdered government mediators, to negotiate seriously, let alone with Americans? Even if BH’s offer to trade the girls for prisoners is genuine, the U.S. has nothing to contribute. …
Active U.S. involvement against BH risks turning the conflict into one of international jihad. Then BH may both seek out other terrorist groups and broaden its attacks to Americans. Drone attacks on the Pakistan Taliban apparently encouraged those formerly parochial insurgents to develop terrorist plots against America, including the attempted bombing of Time Square in New York City. The U.S. should avoid making other nations’ enemies its own.
Finally, what is the end point for American involvement? Can U.S. forces go home if the girls are found (other female students have been kidnapped too)? What if the children aren’t located? It will be hard for Washington to abort the mission no matter how hopeless the objective.
Nigeria owes its girls an education, regardless
From Nigerian novelist Lola Shoneyin, in the Guardian and Observer
If you are looking for a country of extremes, look no further than Nigeria. Following recent data, it has emerged as the country with the highest GDP in Africa, beating South Africa. But equally, the World Bank lists Nigeria as one of the poorest countries in terms of its revenue per capita. According to a recent UNESCO report, Nigeria has the highest number of children out of school in the world. Many of these are from northern Nigeria, where the Muslim majority has learnt to accept poverty as their fate or, even more sinisterly, as Allah’s will. …
All this serves as background to the tragic abduction of over 200 girls. They were in the process of gaining an education, in a region that is under threat by Boko Haram, which I now know – as, sadly, does everyone else – loosely translates as “Western education is forbidden.”
Nigerians, and the rest of the world can only imagine what their fate will be. The signs are not in their favour. Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the terrorist group has declared that he will sell the girls “by Allah.” Many Muslim clerics have come out to decry these words, but northern Nigerian leaders have been criticised for not having the courage to condemn the activities of Boko Haram in strong terms. It is widely believed that they are themselves afraid for their lives, especially when well-known Muslim clerics who believe in education have been assassinated. …
No one can make sense of Boko Haram’s craving for the blood of the innocent. The wanton killings and their goal to show Islam as the best option for Nigeria just don’t add up. People are wondering if these indiscriminate massacres are the future.
Mainstream Islam’s reaction should be swift
From Omid Safi, at the Religious News Service
The news out of Nigeria is beyond words.
This is a bastardization of Islam, of decency, of liberation, of all that is good and beautiful.
Boko Haram stands for “Fraud/Indecency (and only then by extension, Western colonial Education) is haram (forbidden).”
You know what’s haram? Stealing people’s children…. Trying to sell human beings.
You, Boko Haram, you are haram. You are vile and repulsive, the very antithesis of all that is beautiful and merciful.
We try to not speak on behalf of an All-Merciful God, who love and mercy exceeds anything that I can imagine. But if there is a hell, I hope there is a lower bowel of it that’s prepared for people who do what you have done.
Shame on us all.
Shame on us for creating this world.
Shame on us for not protecting our babies.
Shame on us for looking for a plane for weeks when we know all of its passengers have perished, and ignoring 276 enslaved children.
I do wonder if we were talking about 276 enslaved white European children, if the world community would have stood by.
Shame on the Nigerian government for doing nothing, nothing, to locate and free these children.
Instead, the Nigerian government has arrested the leaders of the protest against these kidnapping.
Shame on us all.
This is not Islam.
This is not the rejection of Western Education.
This is a satanic impulse of misogyny, violence, and slavery masquerading as a movement.
It is terrorism, evil, and slavery wrapped into one.
Time for action is now. … If there is decency left in this world, we must act now.
I call on every Muslim, every father, every mother, every African, every decent human being left on this Earth to call for immediate action and intervention to free these precious children.
Compare world reaction to the loss of Flight 370
From Charles D. Ellison at The Root
When the bizarre disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 captured the global imagination like episodes of “Lost,” an international military search and rescue response was swift. Two months and a dying black box ping later, no expense has been spared in the effort to find 240 passengers now presumed dead.
A month after the horrific mass kidnapping of the Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram militants, the milquetoast worldwide response can’t get much past the news ticker. While the reactions range from Twitter feeds accompanied by #BringBackOurGirls to bubbling hate for the perpetrators, the perceived inability of Nigerian armed forces to match the passion comes at a time when conflict in the country’s north is turning a grisly corner.
The tragic kidnappings have put a renewed spotlight on Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan. Nigeria’s leadership finds itself in a tough spot. …
“The kidnapping of hundreds of children by Boko Haram is an unconscionable crime,” said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, under enormous pressure to make commitments during a May 3 news conference at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. “We will do everything possible to support the Nigerian government to return these young women to their homes and hold the perpetrators to justice.”
Yet beyond recent check-ins by phone with President Barack Obama, Jonathan shows no public appetite for a partnership with the Americans — despite the heavy footprint of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and the recent insertion of U.S. Special Forces troops in East Africa to capture warlord Joseph Kony.
In fact, the U.S. military presence in Africa is much larger than it seems, with observers pointing not only to AFRICOM as an office but also to the increased growth of forward operating bases, cooperative security sites and contingency locations peppered throughout the continent.
But in the case of Nigeria, it won’t be that simple. There’s much more complexity to a possible U.S.-Nigerian military collaboration. The Jonathan administration worries that the known presence of American military assets and personnel could trigger an emboldened response from Boko Haram, with the move potentially striking a bad chord with northern Nigeria’s largely Muslim population.
The risk is in validating the loosely al-Qaida-affiliated group should AFRICOM get involved. Obama administration officials, along with Jonathan, recognize the situation in Nigeria as being so fluid and fragile that greater U.S. involvement could spark a new regional war pitting Western interests against African-based Islamists.
If yes to Nigeria, why no to Syria?
From Jonathan S. Tobin at Commentary
When the Obama administration announced yesterday that it is prepared to assist the Nigerian government in efforts to recover the girls kidnapped by the Boko Haram terrorist group, the announcement was greeted with general satisfaction. Far from criticizing the president for sticking his nose into the business of other countries, voices on both the left and the right agreed with the decision to provide Nigeria with a team of experts, including military and law enforcement officers, along with hostage negotiators and psychologists. Indeed, there were not a few prepared to send in the U.S. Marines or fly over drones or do whatever it takes to save the girls or to bring their captors to justice.
I concur with those sentiments. … But while we all join in expressing outrage about Boko Haram’s crimes, it’s fair to ask why Americans or their leaders aren’t similarly exercised about the atrocities being committed against children in Syria. The casualties in the fighting in Syria between the Assad regime and its opponents have reportedly taken the lives of up to 150,000 people, of which at least 11,000 are believed to be children. And yet both the administration and isolationists on both the left and the right tell us it’s none of our business. Does anyone else see this as a demonstration of our lack of honesty or at least consistency in our approach to foreign policy? …
America must still stand for protecting human rights
From Dambisa Moyo, in the Christian Science Monitor
It took three weeks for President Obama to publicly address the crisis of more than 250 Nigerian school girls kidnapped on April 14, and to pledge to send modest support. That is 22 days of unfathomable cruelty to vulnerable girls, and 22 days of panicked parents wondering about the fate of their daughters – and whether an education could possibly be worth such a price, and why the international community has not vocally condemned the treacherous act.
It is naive to ignore the mounting evidence that, beyond considering its own strategic and national self-interest, the United States does not have an operating philosophy when it comes to defending human rights. Its decision to remain silent after Egypt’s democratically elected president was overthrown in a coup last year and its long-standing engagement with countries like Saudi Arabia, whose cultural ethos/philosophy in many respects runs counter to American beliefs, underscore the schism between what America claims to stand for and what it actually does in practice.
Indeed, these choices are a far cry from America the brand – the moral torchbearer and defender of human rights, of fairness and justice, and above all, of what is good and decent. That was the America I was taught to believe in when I, myself, was a young girl in boarding school in Africa. But it is not the one I recognize today.
To be sure, America faces a host of its own economic challenges; against such a backdrop, the fact that international crises will increasingly find it difficult to top an already crowded U.S. policy agenda is abundantly clear, but the message that America will not come to the rescue when injustices occur elsewhere in the world may only now be sinking in.
Nigeria does have a unique confluence of characteristics that make it particularly incendiary – a population skewed to the young, notable commodity dependence, religious fervor and extremism – matched only in other volatile places such as the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Yet, America’s stance in the world needs to be evaluated in what is likely to become a much more uncertain and dangerous world.
Even if morality had not been sufficient to mobilize the U.S. to action in Nigeria sooner, surely economic, political, and security considerations should have done so.
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