West Africa’s Islamic State: No Offensive Cartoons or Videos Here to Blame for Boko Haram.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/west-africas-islamic-state-1421799313
Boko Haram on Sunday killed three people and kidnapped 80, many of them children, in a raid on villages in northern Cameroon. After years of rampaging unchecked across its home base in Nigeria, Africa’s version of Islamic State is now terrorizing neighboring countries.
By the next day Cameroonian troops had freed 24 of the captives in a counterattack, pursuing Boko fighters back to Nigeria across the porous frontier, according to Cameroon’s Defense Ministry. Troops from Chad are also assisting in the anti-Boko fight.
The insurgency launched by Boko Haram—the name means “Western education Is forbidden”—is stretching into its sixth year, and the group has distinguished itself as a resilient fighting force. Its kidnapping of some 300 Nigerian school girls triggered an international campaign last summer. The girls weren’t brought back, and many are believed to have been married off to Boko’s jihadists. Does anyone remember Michelle Obama ’s #BringBackOurGirls?
The group has since captured the military-garrison town of Baga on the shore of Lake Chad. Boko fighters razed some 3,700 buildings and massacred an estimated 2,000 men, women and children, according to human-rights groups. Now the group is expanding its recruiting into Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
Boko’s mercilessness is a rebuke to those in the West who imagine Islamist violence is a reaction to Western iniquities. The children kidnapped and the thousands mowed down by Boko published no offensive cartoons or videos. They weren’t agents of “imperialism.” They were kidnapped and massacred because Boko, like Islamic State, sees itself as an agent of a new caliphate.
Boko is also fortunate in facing often inept opponents. The government of Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has too often tried to save face by playing down the Boko threat rather than confronting it. A French-led initiative calling on Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon to each contribute 700 troops went nowhere.
West African leaders have talked a tougher game of late, and the current military counteroffensive is a hopeful step despite its fits and starts. On Tuesday the U.N. Security Council for the first time condemned Boko’s actions, which it said could “amount to crimes against humanity.” The statement won’t amount to much, however, if Boko isn’t soon confronted with something more than weak African governments, empty U.N. statements and hashtags from the White House.
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