http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304448204579184160259702216



The first Congressional hearing on Boko Haram was held in November 2011, three months after the group perpetrated a suicide attack at a U.N. compound in Abuja, Nigeria. At that hearing, Rep. Jackie Speier (D., Calif.) promised the U.S. would "build an effective strategy for dealing with Boko Haram." In March of this year, Gen. Carter Ham, then the commander of U.S. Africa Command, warned a Congressional committee that Boko Haram elements "aspire to a broader regional level of attacks," including against European and U.S. interests.

Yet today the U.S. still lacks a strategy to support Nigeria in suppressing the Boko Haram-led insurgency.

The group, whose moniker means "Western education is sinful," is known for massacring students who study at English-language schools. Its leader Abubakar Shekau, who has a $7 million bounty on his head from the U.S., has promised that jihad will soon come to America. His fighters film themselves shooting at practice targets with President Obama's name written at the bull's-eye. The Nigerian army has declared Shekau dead four times since 2009, but he has emerged to disprove and mock these claims each time. The group's self-described "war on Christians" has led to the deaths of more than 4,000 people in Nigeria in the last three years.

Recently the insurgents began targeting foreigners, escalating what was once considered an exclusively Nigerian problem. Nigerian jihadists, like those from Somalia who attacked Kenya's Westgate mall in September, do not limit themselves to a domestic agenda for long. In February an al Qaeda-trained faction kidnapped seven members of a French family on a safari in Cameroon. The captors brought them to Boko Haram havens in Nigeria and later released them for a reported $3.15 million ransom, further enriching the insurgents.

French engineer Francis Collomp, who appeared in a desperate proof-of-life video in September after being taken hostage last year by a Boko Haram splinter group, is the only foreign hostage still alive in northern Nigeria. All others—including British, Italian, German and Lebanese citizens—have been brutally executed. Boko Haram has also kidnapped dozens of government officials and their female family members. Shekau has declared that his female captives would become his "servants." The group resembles a combination of the worst of al Qaeda and the worst of Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army.

This week's hearings on Boko Haram offer a chance to raise attention in Washington to the threat. Without U.S. support, Nigeria will not be able to overcome Boko Haram's estimated 6,000 fighters, who are equipped with anti-aircraft missiles pilfered from Libyan and Malian caches and other weapons seized from Nigerian barracks. My latest analyses on Boko Haram, supported by West Point's Combating Terrorism Center and the Jamestown Foundation, have delineated Boko Haram's strategies and alliances with regional al Qaeda-linked groups. This work can help to craft specific policies to combat Boko Haram, while maintaining the soft footprint in Africa that America desires.

For starters, labeling Boko Haram as a "foreign terrorist organization" (FTO) could bring the power of international financial and anti-money laundering institutions to bear on Boko Haram's financial sponsors. If the U.S. does not see fit to label Boko Haram an FTO, the label is meaningless and should be abandoned. If Boko Haram is not an FTO, who is?

Second, U.S. forces should mentor Nigerian troops in counter-insurgency, based on best practices the U.S. has learned from years of dealing with homemade bombs, urban warfare and guerilla ambushes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Currently the Leahy Law, which prohibits U.S. military help to foreign militaries that have violated human rights, effectively bans U.S. support to Nigerian forces fighting Boko Haram. Even Nigerian units with positive human-rights records are blacklisted because of the law's wide-reaching provisions.

The Leahy Law should now be reconsidered. Otherwise Nigeria will continue to look to countries such as Pakistan for mentorship, which is no recipe for success.

Third, the U.S. and France need to formalize their subregional partnership with Nigeria and its French-speaking neighbors—Cameroon, Chad and Niger—where Boko Haram tends to retreat after launching attacks in Nigeria. American-funded counterterrorism initiatives in the area are not tailored to deal with the unique drivers of the insurgency in Nigeria's borderlands, where Boko Haram and other criminal gangs have been left unchecked for too long.

U.S. lawyers with experience in conflict resolution should also help Nigeria draft emergency laws providing for fast-track courts and specialist judges, prosecutors, defenders and investigators, who can swiftly try cases of captured Boko Haram members. Wavering members of the terrorist group who were forcibly conscripted may prefer prison to death at the hands of Nigerian forces, civilian militias or their own commanders, who kill and torture militants who disobey orders to slay civilians.

Finally, progress begins at home. U.S. universities need funding to teach Hausa, Fulani and other indigenous African languages to future counterterror experts. Only through sharper local-source analysis can the U.S. enhance its intelligence-gathering on Boko Haram and other African militant groups, and engage effectively with the civil-society organizations to implement grass-roots programs to counter Boko Haram propaganda and recruitment.

Americans have watched Boko Haram torment courageous Nigerian Christians, Muslims, women and children for too long. Wednesday's hearing is Washington's second and possibly final chance to harness political momentum to work with Nigerian allies to end this crisis before it hits closer to home.

Mr. Zenn, a member of the advisory board of the Nigerian-American Leadership Council, will testify on Boko Haram at the U.S. congressional hearing on Nov. 13. He recently conducted field research in Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon with the Jamestown Foundation.

World Police, Every Terrorist Group Is automatically Their Probs.

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