Baga: the carnage,
inaccurate
reportage and
Government
‘indifference’ Part 1
Last week, the world was
inundated
with news of the attack
on Baga
town by the extremist
group,
Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna
Lidda’Awati
Wal-Jihad (“People
Committed to
the Prophet’s Teachings
for
Propagation and Jihad” ,
otherwise known as Boko
Haram.
Baga is in the north-
eastern
Nigerian Borno State,
close to Lake
Chad. It lies north-east of
the town
of Kukawa which is the
headquarters of the
Kukawa Local
Government Area. The
town is
approximately 196km
from
Maiduguri, the capital of
Borno
State.
Indeed, Baga is more or
less a
border community and
this played a
significant role in its
being chosen
as headquarters of the
Multinational Joint Task
Force MJTF,
comprising troops from
Nigeria,
Chad, Niger and
Cameroon—put
together as a multilateral
response
to neutralising the
menace posed
by Boko Haram. To the
residents of
Baga town, and given the
various
brushes they have had
with the
extremist group, it is
doubtful if
this joint force is actually
worth the
piece of paper containing
the
instruments that decreed
its
existence.
The attack last week came
on the
heels of the withdrawal
of Chadian
forces from the base at
Baga, two
days before Boko Haram
came
calling. According to
Nigerian
security sources quoted
by domestic
media, the Chadians
claimed they
were rotating their
troops. The
Cameroonians have never
contributed to the force,
while the
Nigeriens, in the
aftermath of the
attack in question, have
announced
that they will not be
sending troops
anytime soon. According
to foreign
media sources, Niger’s
foreign
minister, Mohamed
Bazoum, has
clearly affirmed that his
country
would not step in to help
recapture
the area.
At this very moment,
Nigerian
forces are involved in
coordinated
ground and air
operations to
dislodge the terror group
from Baga,
discountenancing any
regional
support for such effort. If
past
history is anything to go
by, they
will prevail soonest but
what often
happens after that
(revenge attacks
by the group in the face
of poor
garrisoning efforts by
security
forces) is raising
apprehension
already. Perhaps, relying
on a
regional strategy was
useful for
mobilising against Boko
Haram in
the first place, but
domestic
observers of Nigerian
diplomacy
have always felt that such
regional
effort should only be
political, while
Nigeria single-handedly
provide a
military response,
something they
believe she is capable of
doing as
long as the local
population in areas
sympathetic to Boko
Haram sided
with the authorities.
So how did Nigeria get to
this sorry
pass? Indeed, several
successes
have been made by
Nigerian forces
against Boko Haram, but
these are
hardly reported, even by
the
domestic press in
Nigeria. Should
Boko Haram take a town
somewhere however, it is
often
reported with glee by
both local and
foreign media. The
pattern of the
insurgency over the past
year has
been such that Boko
Haram, with
the exception of a few
towns,
actually is not controlling
the
expanse of territory
ascribed to it
by the press. It is usually
flushed
out of any town or village
it has
taken, often a few days
after such
‘capture,’ by Nigerian
forces. The
group is however quite
adept at
propaganda and seems
ahead of
the Nigerians in utilising
this to
maximum advantage.
nigerian authorities quite
rightly recognised that Boko
Haram could become a regional
scourge and sought the
cooperation of its neighbours
early enough. Those neighbours
however did not seem to have
shared that view. Cameroon,
which dithered in coming on
board early enough to hinder
the group from operating on its
own soil (from which, ironically,
most Boko Haram operations
against Nigeria often originated
in the early days of the
insurgency), had to be ‘forced’
on board by President Francois
Hollonde of France before she
started ‘cooperating.’ Analysts
ascribed that to the fear of
President Paul Biya, staying in
power for too long, being wary
of exposing his army to war
which could embolden them to
challenge his long stay in office
when the insurgency ends, or
even in the course of it. Today,
she is paying the price of that
delay with sustained Boko
Haram attacks and new
warnings of worse ones to
come.
The recent Baga attack was
symbolic and signposted the
desire of Boko Haram to get
into the news again, having lost
media visibility when it could
not hold all the ‘territories’ it
captured in Adamawa State just
some months before. It
suffered very heavy losses in
the hands of Nigerian forces in
the counter-attack launched by
the State. Boko Haram
apparently coordinated its Baga
offensive with a reprisal attack
in Damaturu, capital of another
Nigerian north-eastern State of
Yobe, which was successfully
repelled by Nigerian forces
(again hardly reported),
although it raised questions
regarding the origin of those
attackers. From eyewitness
accounts, they may have been
embedded in the city itself for
long before staging that brazen
but foolhardy attempt,
following pre-emptive raids on
their hideouts by Nigerian
Special Forces just days before
the reprisals were launched.
The western media, posing as
‘experts’ on the Boko Haram
campaign, often publish reports
which expose their lack of
understanding of the problem,
the unfolding developments
and perhaps, a deliberate
attempt by them to undermine
efforts by the Nigerian
authorities to defeat the
insurgency. True, the
administration of President
Goodluck Jonathan has made
several mistakes and exhibited,
atimes, outright indifference in
its response to the threat.
However, security forces have
made significant gains in their
effort to contain and eventually
defeat the extremists despite
lack of equipment, platforms
and devices required for
engaging such threats. In their
response, they have been
hampered by a late review of
doctrine (an army that had
become comfortable with
undertaking peacekeeping on a
large scale in order to
discourage its officers from
eyeing political intervention
thereby becoming ‘soft’), lack
of clarity on the mission by the
political leadership and outright
sabotage from within its own
ranks and from local politicians.