By: Patrick Foley
Nigeria’s new president, Muhammadu Buhari, was inaugurated this past May. A central point of his campaign and of his inauguration speech was his dedication to battling Boko Haram. Boko Haram is internationally recognized as a terrorist group which brings suffering to the people of Nigeria in the forms of terrorist attacks, armed violence, and the displacement of Nigerian people within Nigeria’s borders and across them into Nigeria’s immediate neighbors. President Buhari determined that the best answer to these problems was to reinvigorate The Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF). The MNJTF is a combined military force comprised of units of the Chadian, Nigerien, and Nigerian armed forces. President Buhari and the Nigerian Military have been placed at the helm of this task force.
On June 3rd 2015, Amnesty International released a scathing report on the alleged human rights abuses committed by the Nigerian Military. The report titled: Stars on their shoulders. Blood on their hands: War crimes committed by the Nigerian military, reveals that, since March of 2011, more than 7,000 young men and boys died in military detention and more than 1,200 people have been unlawfully killed since February of 2012. Not even two weeks later, on June 16th, the United States pledged $5 billion to support the fight against the Nigerian terrorist organization, Boko Haram. This money went directly to the Multinational Joint Task Force headed by the Nigerian Military. Based on the Amnesty International report, the United States has chosen to give federal funding to an organization with a record of killing Nigerian civilians to help them stop a group with a record of killing Nigerian civilians.
The conflict between Boko Haram and the Nigerian government is also causing the mass internal displacement of Nigerian civilians. Violent clashes between government forces and armed groups in the north of Nigeria have triggered large waves of displacement with more than half a million civilians internally displaced. When these people flee to avoid the violence, the lack of infrastructure in the country leaves them homeless and without the refugee status they would receive by crossing Nigeria’s borders, they have no access to the international funds and protection provided to refugees by transnational organizations like the United Nations. The Nigerian government as of this year has made virtually no progress towards solving this humanitarian crisis. This means that for every civilian killed or injured by one side or the other, there is a much larger population of people whose lives have been disrupted or destroyed and that population grows larger each day that the fighting continues.
This week, Boko Haram was responsible for twin suicide bombs which killed at least ten people along a highway in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno State. Suspected Boko Haram gunmen have killed at least 145 villagers in separate attacks this week alone. Boko Haram’s willingness to fight does not seem to be abating, and this forces us to ask ourselves whether the empowerment of one side of an armed conflict either with troops from surrounding nations or vast resources from a country like the United States is an effective way to de-escalate the violence and save Nigerian lives. The events of this past week seem to indicate the answer is ‘no’. At least 13,000 people have been killed and more than 1.5 million have been displaced in Nigeria in the six years since Boko Haram launched its campaign to create an Islamic state, and all indicators point towards a steady increase in the rate of killings. As of right now, July 5th, the only way any country has sought to decrease Boko Haram’s violence is to drastically increase their own.