The Empire US CORPORATIONS President Barack Obama said Tuesday that the U.S. will do everything it can to help Nigeria find nearly 300 teenage girls missing since they were kidnapped from school three weeks ago by an Islamist extremist group that has threatened to sell them.
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| Worldwide protests demand the rescue of kidnapped Nigerian girls: Rallies in Nigerian and American cities protest the government’s weak response to the crime. |
"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," Obama said in an interview with NBC's "Today," in some of his first public comments on what he said was a "terrible situation" in the West African nation.
"But we're also going to have to deal with the broader problem of organizations like this that ... can cause such havoc in people's day-to-day lives," Obama said of Boko Haram.
The brazen April 15 abduction has sparked international outrage and mounting demands, including by some in Washington, for Nigeria to spare no effort to find and free the girls before they can be sold into slavery or otherwise harmed.
Nigeria's police have said more than 300 girls were abducted from their secondary school in the country's remote northeast. Of that number, 276 remain in captivity and 53 managed to escape.
Obama said he was glad the Nigerian government was accepting help from U.S. military and law enforcement advisers.
"Obviously, what's happening is awful, and, as a father of two girls, I can't imagine what their parents are going through," he told CBS News in an interview. Obama said the U.S. has long sought to work with Nigeria to contain Boko Haram.
"You've got one of the worst regional or local terrorist organizations in Boko Haram in Nigeria. They've been killing people ruthlessly for many years now and we've already been seeking greater cooperation with the Nigerians," Obama said in an interview with ABC News.
He said the kidnapping and subsequent outrage over Nigeria's inability to rescue the girls "may be the event that helps to mobilize the entire international community to finally do something against this horrendous organization that's perpetrated such a terrible crime."
The technical experts heading to Nigeria will include U.S. military and law enforcement personnel skilled in intelligence, investigations, hostage negotiating, information sharing and victim assistance, as well as officials with expertise in other areas, White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
U.S. armed forces were not being sent, Carney noted.
Obama commented during a series of previously arranged television interviews conducted in the White House Rose Garden, shortly after the Senate passed a bipartisan resolution urging the girls' safe and immediate return. Some lawmakers also observed a moment of silence on the Capitol steps calling for their release, and dozens of people also protested outside the Nigerian Embassy in Washington.
All 20 female senators urged Obama in a letter to pursue severe international sanctions on Boko Haram. A smaller group of mostly male senators urged Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan to address the root causes of unrest in his country.
Secretary of State John Kerry said the U.S. had been in touch with Nigeria "from day one" of the crisis. But repeated offers of U.S. assistance were ignored until Kerry got on the phone Tuesday with Jonathan amid growing international concern and outrage over the fate of the girls in the weeks since their abduction.
Kerry said Nigeria apparently wanted to pursue its own strategy, but now realizes more needs to be done.
"I think now the complications that have arisen have convinced everybody that there needs to be a greater effort," Kerry said at a State Department news conference. "And it will begin immediately. I mean, literally, immediately."
A statement from Jonathan's office said the U.S. offer "includes the deployment of U.S. security personnel and assets to work with their Nigerian counterparts in the search and rescue operation." The statement added that Nigeria's security agencies are working at "full capacity" to find the girls and welcomes the addition of American "counter-insurgency know-how and expertise."
Nigeria's Islamic extremist leader, Abubakar Shekau, has claimed responsibility for the abduction and has threatened to sell the girls. Shekau also warned that Boko Haram will attack more schools and abduct more girls. Boko Haram means "Western education is sinful."
The State Department on Tuesday warned U.S. citizens against traveling to Nigeria.
In mid-April, more than 300 schoolgirls were kidnapped from Chibok boarding school in northern Nigeria by gunmen from the Islamist sect Boko Haram. Three weeks later, most of those girls are still missing. More than a week ago, a group of Nigerians launched the Twitter campaign #BringBackOurGirls, sparking global outrage over the attack. And on Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry offered to send a team to help rescue the children. Meanwhile, Nigeria's nightmare gets worse by the day: On Monday, the leader of the group, which has terrorized the country for years, threatened to sell the girls off as slaves, and on Tuesday, Boko Haram kidnapped another eight girls. But let's back up a minute. What is Boko Haram, exactly? And why do its members kidnap schoolgirls?
What is Boko Haram? Boko Haram is a group of Islamic fundamentalists based in northern Nigeria that has been terrorizing the country since 2009. The group believes Western culture is sinful and wants to return the country to the pre-colonial era of Muslim rule. To that end, Boko Haram has attacked government targets, including military checkpoints, police stations, highways, and schools, as well as churches, mosques, the UN building, and, recently, a bus station in the capital city of Abuja. Over the past five years, Boko Haram has slaughtered roughly 5,000 Nigerians whom the group viewed as pro-government. Here is a map of Boko Haram attacks over the years, via Business Insider:
What gave rise to the group? Boko Haram has roots in the 1970s-era Islamic revival in the region, but was founded in 2002 by a Muslim cleric named Mohammed Yusuf, shortly after Nigeria's transition from dictatorship to democracy in 1999. The Boko Haram ideology—disseminated through a mosque and Islamic school Yusuf set up—gained traction in post-dictatorship Nigeria because many northern Muslims saw Western-style democracy as a scheme to disenfranchise them; voter turnout is higher in the Christian south than in the Muslim north. Persistent extreme poverty in the region has reinforced the notionthat the government, which the group believes has been corrupted by Western values, cares more about enriching itself than helping Nigerians, and it has helped drive Boko Haram recruitment over the years. It's hard to say how many Nigerians the group counts as members, but the Nigerian security forces claim to have killed thousands of them.
Nigerians have labeled the group Boko Haram, which loosely translated means "Western education is a sin." But that's not what Boko Haram calls itself. Its official name is Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad, which in Arabic means "People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad."
Boko Haram is an Islamist terror group. Any links with Al Qaeda? Yep. In many of his sermons, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau pledges allegiance to Al Qaeda. And Boko Haram has reportedly adopted many of Al Qaeda's terrorist tactics, including suicide bombings. Last year, the Obama administration officially designated Boko Haram a terrorist organization.
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Has the group ever attacked Americans? No. But Boko Haram has threatened to attack the United States, which it calls "a prostitute nation of infidels and liars." And the group has kidnapped Westerners before.
Why did the militants kidnap the schoolgirls? In an effort to scare Nigerians away from Western education, Boko Haram and other militants have attacked 50 schools over the past year, killing more than 100 schoolchildren and 70 teachers. Thousands of students and teachers across the northern part of the country have been forced to flee their schools because of the violence.
This is not the first time Boko Haram has kidnapped girls, either. Just two weeks before the Chibok abduction, 25 young girls were kidnapped by the Islamist militants from the northern town of Konduga. Those girls are likely still being held captive. And Boko Haram abducted handfuls of children last year, as well as Christian women, whom the group converts to Islam and forces into marriage. But the Chibok kidnapping "is the largest number of children abducted in one swoop in the country," Nnamdi Obasi, a senior Nigeria analyst for the International Crisis Group, told Mother Jones this week.
Some of the girls have reportedly been married off to the militants. On Monday, the leader of Boko Haram threatened in a homemade video to sell some into slavery:
| How did the Chibok attack play out? Here is Michelle Faul, of the Associated Press, who interviewed one of the girls who was able to escape:She says that when the gunmen came to her dormitory, they were sleeping. This is before dawn. These men came in, they had uniforms. They said, "Don't worry. We're soldiers here to help you." And she said it wasn't until that they were outside and…started setting fire to the school and shouting…"God is great," that it suddenly dawned on them these were not soldiers. These were Boko Haram. | ||
[…] You can imagine the conditions that they're in [now]. They were taken initially to the Sambisa forest, dense forests, humid heat, blocks of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. They're probably drinking water from rivers and streams that [are] not clean. We're told they're kept on the move. Every couple of days, they're moving.
Have any of the girls escaped? Nigerian police report that 53 of the girls have escaped, but 276 remain missing. Here is the AP's Faul again, explaining how some of the girls managed to flee the terrorists:
The girl I spoke with was able to escape on the first night. She said that they were loaded onto trucks. It was dark. In the dark, some of the girls clung to low-hanging branches overhead. This was an open-back truck. She said she hesitated. And then one of the girls said, "Me, I'm going. If they shoot me, they shoot me, but I don't know what else they might do to me if I don't go." So this girl jumped down, and the girl I spoke to jumped down. She said she ran into the bush, and she said, "I ran and I ran." And she said, "That's how I was able to save myself."
What is the Nigerian government doing to rescue the girls? The Nigerian government claims that it has deployed aerial surveillance over the forest and that it has soldiers on foot searching for the girls. But from the start, Nigerian security forces made a pretty weak effort to find the girls, Mausi Segun, a researcher for Human Rights Watch based in northern Nigeria, told Mother Jones last week. She says the military did not make use of information provided by parents and locals in its rescue efforts. Desperate parents took to the forest themselves to search for their daughters.
Meanwhile, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan waited three weeks before publicly acknowledging the abductions and admitting he had no idea where the girls might be. The tepid response by the government has sparked a string of protests in Abuja. (First lady Patience Jonathan recently alleged that women protesting in Abuja against the government's weak response to the Chibok abductions had fabricated the kidnappings.)
What is the rest of the world doing to help rescue the kidnapped girls? On Tuesday, the Nigerian government accepted a US offer to send a team of military and law enforcement officials to help the search and rescue effort. The United Kingdom will send a similar team. China and France have pledged assistance, too.
In the wake of the kidnapping, the rest of the world was slow on the uptake. Only after Nigerians criticized the international media's initial indifference to the massive kidnapping did the foreign press start covering the attack. Since then, global outrage has grown by the day. The Twitter hashtag #BringBackOurGirls has been tweeted more than a million times. On Wednesday, First Lady Michelle Obama tweeted her support.
How is the Nigerian government fighting the broader Boko Haram insurgency?
Jonathan has vowed to defeat Boko Haram, but the insurgency is deadlier now than at any point in the group's history. In the the first few months of 2014, the Islamist militants have already killed 1,500 people.
As Mother Jones reported last week, one reason the Nigerian government has not been able to stem attacks by the group is that the military does not coordinate with security forces in the countries that border northern Nigeria—including Cameroon, Chad, and Niger—where Boko Haram hides out. And the military's expenditures are not tracked, so it's hard to tell how much of the $6 billion a year the country spends on defense actually goes toward fighting Boko Haram.
Human rights advocates charge that Nigerian security forces' response to the insurgency, which often includes the indiscriminate killing of northern Nigerian men, has aggravated Boko Haram violence.
The United States provides about $1 million a year in aid to the Nigerian military, as well as $3 million in law enforcement assistance. And the US military will soon start training Nigerian special forces to fight Boko Haram.
Update, Thursday, May 8, 2014: Boko Haram killed more than 300 people in an attack on a northern town of Gamboru Ngala this week, the New York Timesreported Wednesday night. There were no security forces in the town because they had all been drafted to search for the missing girls.
Who are ‘Boko Haram’, and what are they up to in Nigeria? Nigeria’s premier terror circus conveniently grabbed the headlines away from an embattled White House this week (simmering scandals, Behghazi, and IRS), just in the nick of time, pulling off the terror caper of the year. Without booking any coaches, a relatively small group of Boko Harem operatives managed to kidnap up to 300 young girls from a secondary school in Chibok in remote northeastern Nigeria on April 14th. If this was indeed a real kidnapping even, the response time is pretty pathetic – nearly one month? Barack and Michelle Obama were a bit slow on the uptake of this story, not least of because Washington has been busy ginning-up war with Russia, shipping weapons to Islamic extremists in Syria and pretending to care about the missing airliner Flight MH370. Not worry, the FBI have been sent to Nigeria to take control of the crime scene – which may, or may not be good news for Nigerians. If the FBI were really there to figure out what happened, then they should dig into this: for some unknown reason up until a few months ago, the White House was trying to keep Boko Haram off the State Dept’s Official Designated Terror List, and there’s probably a very good reason for that…
TAKING OWNERSHIP OF “OUR GIRLS”: First Lady takes a break from shopping to engage in what appears to be the latest CIA-linked theatrical production in Africa. Curiously, the news claims that fifty-three girls managed to escape Boko Haram’s evil clutches but over 200 remain captive after being abducted from on 14 April. Take all of the complicated Wikipedia text away, and in real Nigerian modern informal language, ‘Boko Haram’ actually translates to, “everything is haram”.
According to their colourful Youtube and other sock-puppet videos (early videos had the Pentagon’s own SITE or Intel Center’ logo embossed on them), the “al Qaeda-linked” group(s) wants to impose sharia law in Nigeria, Niger, and even Cameroon. It’s main activity is killing and terrorising Christians, attacking and bombing churches and schools, government buildings, kidnapping western tourists, and has recently decided to try its hand in the child trafficking business. Nigeria is resource-rich and has the largest population and workforce in Africa, but it is a nation divided along sectarian tribal and religious lines (thank the British for that, par usual), a poor nation ruled by a corrupt super-class in collusion with Oil giants like BP.
If Nigeria remains divided, then there will almost certainly be no challenge to Britain, US and the Netherlands oil conquest of the country. To keep it divided, trouble needs to be stirred periodically. “The US embassy’s subversive activities in Nigeria fits into the long term US government’s well camouflaged policy of containment against Nigeria the ultimate goal of which is to eliminate Nigeria as a potential strategic rival to the US in the African continent”, News Rescue reports.
But that is only the first layer to the new African onion. Here’s the bigger project… One of the primary foreign policy goals of the US and NATO during the Obama Administration was to gain a greater military footprint in Africa, all of which is outlined in Washington’s AFRICOM policy directives which were set into motion in 2007 during the Bush presidency. This was arguably a much easier sell with African-American president Barrack Obama in the US than it would be with any other leader. One only needs to read the strategic briefings in U.S. AFRICOM documents to realise the true endgame for Africa: the eviction of China economic and political influence throughout the continent, and when it comes to achieving that goal – anything goes (including a theatric Boko Haram production it seems).
One AFRICOM study justifies US interventions on the basis of fears that China will eventually dispatch troops to Africa to defend its interests there: “Now China has achieved a stage of economic development which requires endless supplies of African raw materials and has started to develop the capacity to exercise influence in most corners of the globe. The extrapolation of history predicts that distrust and uncertainty will inevitably lead the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to Africa in staggering numbers…” Washington understands better than anyone, that in the 21st century, the simplest way to ramp-up a police or military presence in any region is to create a public enemy. Understanding what the US project for a new American century in Africa is all about, you need to understand the McDonald’s model of business: franchises.
As an example, Nigeria’s illusive terror brand called “Boko Haram” has always been hard to pin down, not least of all because there are 4 or 5, or even 6 different ‘Boko Haram’ outfits in Nigeria. One thing which the Obama Administration has excelled at over the last 6 years in running guns. Whether it’s within the US and Mexico with Operation Fast and Furious, or guns trafficked in Libya via Egypt during the Muslim Brotherhood’s short reign there, then from Libya to Syria, ore even directly from the CIA to jihadist terror groups in Syria, and also from the new Libya out to “Al Qaeda affiliates” in Algeria, Mali and Nigeria.
Boko Harem was certainly hooked into the gun-running market and has benefited from heavy weaponry originally sent to arm Libyan rebels during NATO’s proxy war on the ground, where the CIA manage Libyan fighting groups, as well as carefully manage media reports coming out on a daily basis (Washington was in careful coordination with their ally Qatar’s al Jazeera TV network throughout the process).
Following NATO’s hostile intervention in Libya in 2011, we learned that AQIM had joined forces with the Al Qaeda linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) – all of which are inexorably tied to the CIA and British intelligence agencies since Al Qaeda’s inception after the Soviet war in Afghanistan during the 80′s. Now the baton has been passed to a franchise trading under the Boko Haram brand. “In addition to support by the Saudis, Boko Haram has received indirect assistance from NATO via Libya’s al-Qaeda mercenaries”, explains Global Research. “During an interview conducted by Al-Jazeera with Abu Mousab Abdel Wadoud, the AQIM leader states that Algeria-based organizations have provided arms to Nigeria’s Boko Haram movement ‘to defend Muslims in Nigeria and stop the advance of a minority of Crusaders.’ It remains highly documented that members of Al-Qaeda (AQIM) and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) who fought among the Libyan rebels directly received arms and logistical support from NATO bloc countries during the Libyan conflict in 2011,” writes Nile Bowie.
A closer look at all of the so-called terrorist ‘franchises’ which the CIA are steering and managing throughout the continent reveals their true function – destabilisation, sectarian division which, of course, requires a US or NATO presence all over the continent. They are as follows:
Active CIA-MI6-Mossad-linked ‘franchisees’:
Boko Haram in Nigeria, Niger, Mali – see there exploits here and here.
Al Shabab in Somalia and Kenya – see there exploits here and here.
Al Qaeda in Islamic Magreb (AQIM) Algeria and Mali – see there exploits here and here. Musilm Brotherhood in Egypt – see there exploits here and here.
Libyan Islamic Fighting Group – see there exploits here and here.
Al Qaeda (all singing and dancing, ubiquitous pan-African/global brand name).
Non-existent, but still promoted in Washington: Joseph Kony in Uganda (last scene in 2006, but that hasn’t stopped Obama from sending US troops into Uganda the hunt the ghost). Last fall’s Kenyan Mall Massacre was alleged by “western terror experts” to have been carried out by “the al Qaeda affiliate known as al Shabab”, but curiously enough, as is the case with Boko Haram, there seems to be a few different al Shababs, and rather predictable, the most extremist, over-the-top and theatrical franchise has been linked to the CIA-MI5-Mossad intelligence nexus in Africa. African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM), a peace keeping mission operated by the AU in Somalia with approval by the UN, is ‘something for the locals’ – a subset of US AFRICOM, but within that framework, various shadowy elements view “manageable insecurity” as a good business. Firedog Lake blog has even gone so far as to label Boko Harem as ‘Obama’s African Death Squad’. They explain Boko Haram’s ties to Washington: “A CIA Death Squad under President Obama’s control Murdered at least 12 Africans in Nigeria with a car bomb Thursday. The group Boko Haram claimed responsibility: http://www.theguardian.com/world/feedarticle/11322064
WikiLeaks revealed that they are part of the US Central Inteligence Agency: http://imnig.org/boko-haram-cia-covert-operation-%E2%80%93-wikileaksBoko Haram is an ODS – an Obama Death Squad. The President has several such groups, carrying out Lynchings in Africa, and Murdering journalists in Honduras and Mexico. Boko Haram stepped up its operations exponentially when Obama became President. According to US officials, Boko Haram has Murdered over 10,000 Africans (Some were ordered by President George W. Bush, before Obama was in office): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boko_Haram#State_counter-offensive
Because of its affiliation with the Empire CIA, the US State Department refused to designate Boko Haram a Terrorist group until a few months ago, despite its decade of lynchings: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/13/us-designates-boko-haram-terrorist-organization/?page=all
They hold Rape Fests. http://www.ticotimes.net/2014/04/30/boko-harams-horrendous-abduction-of-234-teenage-girls
~&~ http://leadership.ng/features/353367/ordeal-hands-rapists-boko-haram-camps
To manipulate the news, they staged a battle with other CIA members and with Great Britain’s MI5: http://tribune.com.ng/news/top-stories/item/952-boko-haram-fg-engages-cia-mi5/952-boko-haram-fg-engages-cia-mi5 “
Popular and nearly entertaining Boko Haram Sock-Puppet Video…
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