The news: It's been three weeks since hundreds of
schoolgirls in Nigeria were kidnapped by the terrorist group Boko
Haram. Public and international fury at the Nigerian government's
apparent inability to address the situation has grown, and amid mounting
criticism and protests over his government's inability to locate and rescue a single girl, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan announced on Tuesday that he has accepted America's offer to send special U.S. military personnel to help with rescue efforts.
"In the short term our goal is obviously is to help the international
community, and the Nigerian government, as a team to do everything we
can to recover these young ladies," President Barack Obama told NBC
News. In the longer term, he said, "We're also going to have to deal
with the broader problem of organizations like this that can causes such
havoc in people's day-to-day lives."
The Department of State is now putting together a "coordination cell"
to assist the Nigerian government, but it might be easy to overlook the
fact that this is far from their first rodeo; in fact, there's already a
U.S. special forces unit in Africa right now, hunting down a notorious
warlord who has kidnapped not hundreds, but thousands of children. His
name: Joseph Kony.
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| Image Credit: The Washington Post |
What is going on? In March,
Obama informed Congress that he would begin deploying more Special
Operations forces and military aircraft to Central Africa. There, they
will assist the African Union military task force to track down Kony,
the leader of the infamous Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
And it certainly seems like the right time to press forward. Kony's
forces have been dwindling down for some time, and it's been estimated
that he only has 250 fighters left now. The organization has lost its
top commanders, and LRA victims have dropped more than 75% since 2010.
Kony himself has not been sighted in a while, which many take as a sign
that he is either sick or in flight, making it all the more pressing to
capture him before he disappears.
Though Kony — who reportedly kidnapped around 30,000 children
to serve as soldiers in his militia — does not pose a direct threat to
the U.S., Obama is viewing this as "a useful way to build military and
political partnerships with African governments in a region where
al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations are rapidly expanding, as
well as to demonstrate adherence to human rights principles," according
to the Washington Post.
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| Image Credit: Al-Jazeera |
What does this have to do with Nigeria? Much like with Kony, Boko Haram is a regional threat with limited operations. Still, the al-Qaida affiliate
— whose name means "Western education is sinful" — is a violent,
destabilizing force in the country and is attempting to institute sharia
law. As important as it is to rescue the kidnapped girls, this
operation provides an opportunity for the U.S. to counter an
anti-Western agenda — and as Obama himself said, those long-term goals
have to be kept in sight.
And while Obama has used his executive power to act unilaterally in
the hunt for Kony, he seems to have a lot of political support for his
intervention in Nigeria. The move to send special troops came after all
20 female U.S. senators sent a bipartisan letter
to Obama to ask him to do more. "Every single woman immediately signed
that letter, because she wanted to lend her voice to the international
outrage," said Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.). "The women of the Senate
won't be quiet."
Whatever political advantage Obama may gain from these interventions,
the upside is that at least something is being done. The Nigerian
government has been battling criticism
since the Boko Haram operation began, and the exhaustive search for
Kony has been going on since the International Criminal Court issued a warrant
for his arrest back in 2005 — while the U.S. stands to gain from
bringing these operations to an end, its assistance might be the key
factor in bringing these criminals to justice.
-policymic
