As
millions suffer from hunger, disease, illiteracy and grinding poverty
in the Lake Chad region of West Africa, a sinister game of resource
extraction and exploitation is playing out, with geopolitics at the
heart of it all.
by
Eric Draitser
Part
2 - The shadowy networks behind Boko Haram
Some of the
statistics on the humanitarian situation around Lake Chad are truly
appalling.
According to
the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there are
at least 2.1 million internally displaced people in the region, as
well as 7.1 million suffering from hunger. One in every two families
need life-saving assistance, according to aid workers. Countless
thousands have been killed, injured or otherwise terrorized by Boko
Haram and other terror groups. The situation is dire.
So when the
UN announced that the conference had raised 672 million dollars to
help the people of the region, the news was obviously welcome. With
such funds come very serious questions about how the funds will be
distributed and who should be responsible for overseeing the
distribution process. But determining the real causes of the crisis
is perhaps the real million-dollar question.
First and
foremost is the question of Boko Haram, its murky origins in Nigerian
political conflicts and the ramifications of its actions in the
region. While definitive knowledge of the group’s sponsorship
remains elusive, there is ample circumstantial evidence to suggest
that elements within Nigeria’s government (and potentially other
regional governments) have been sponsoring the group from its
infancy.
Renowned
hostage negotiator and Boko Haram intermediary Dr. Stephen Davis has
gone on record as saying that high-ranking elements within the
administration of former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan were
involved, including Ali Modu Sheriff, the former governor of
Nigeria’s Borno State (the heart of the Boko Haram insurgency) and
one of the country’s top military commanders.
The Jonathan
Administration and Nigeria’s military in turn have accused Chad’s
government, led by President Idriss Déby, of fueling the unrest for
geopolitical and strategic reasons. According to these sources, Déby
facilitated the rise of Boko Haram in order to destabilize Nigeria
and take advantage of growing energy extraction from the Lake Chad
Basin.
While the
claim was certainly convenient for a Nigerian government that then
was fending off accusations of its own collusion with Boko Haram, it
does substantiate a 2011 intelligence memo from field officers in
Chad, which noted that “members of Boko Haram sect are sometimes
kept in the Abeche region in Chad and trained before being dispersed.
This happens usually when Mr. Sheriff visits Abeche.”
Though the
details remain murky and may never be fully publicized, even a
conservative assessment would note that the domestic politics of
Nigeria, as well as regional political infighting, facilitated the
emergence of Boko Haram. Indeed, as former President Jonathan’s own
presidential panel investigating Boko Haram noted:
“The
report traced the origin of private militias in Borno State in
particular, of which Boko Haram is an offshoot, to politicians who
set them up in the run-up to the 2003 general elections. The militias
were allegedly armed and used extensively as political thugs. After
the elections and having achieved their primary purpose, the
politicians left the militias to their fate since they could not
continue funding and keeping them employed. With no visible means of
sustenance, some of the militias gravitated towards religious
extremism, the type offered by Mohammed Yusuf [leader of Boko
Haram].”
From its
origins as a collection of gangs used to intimidate people and
influence elections to its later development as a cohesive terror
organization, Boko Haram has been one of the driving forces of the
humanitarian crisis in the region.
Of course,
Boko Haram’s rise would have been impossible without the criminal
U.S.-NATO war on Libya, which not only toppled the Libyan government,
but also led to a tsunami of weapons flowing out of Libya and into
the hands of regional terror groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic
Maghreb (AQIM) and the nascent Boko Haram.
In a very
direct way, the U.S.-NATO war birthed the violent conflict we see
today in the region.
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