Just as about 300 Chibok girls were rudely woken up and yanked off their bunk beds in Maiduguri, Northeast Nigeria by Boko Haram terrorists, hundreds of Yazidi girls from Iraq, on the other side of the world were also similarly seized by the terrorist group, ISIS, under comparable circumstances.
Long after, the unfortunate incidents sent the chill down the spines and cuddled the blood of rational humans worldwide, both victims and families have remained overwhelmed by the sad experience of sorrow, tears and blood that have become the regular trademark of terrorists.
Memories are made of images of CNN footages of the rescue of some of the Yazidi girls from Sinjar mountain where some of them fled, when ISIS invaded their homes. Very remarkable and commendable are the rescue efforts by Western powers backed International Coalition Forces and the determination of the girls to flee into safety, demonstrating both the human spirit to survive and the sacrifice of men and women in uniform, who put themselves in harm’s way to save fellow humans.
The assertion above is given fillip by the fact that some efforts at rescuing victims have resulted in helicopter crashes that led to fatalities of military men.
Although both sad consequences of terrorism in Nigeria and Iraq have the common denominator of terrorism inflicted anguish and the sad consequence of human tragedy, the event in Iraq seem to be having a sort of happy ending as some of the Yazidi girls are being rescued and rehabilitated (some have undergone training in photo journalism etc and are being integrated into society as currently being depicted on CNN) while the Nigerian situation remains unresolved as the hopelessness in the prospect of the Chibok girls re-uniting with their families becomes more remote.
The simple reason for the situation described above is the intervention of coalition forces put together by Western powers, leading to the situation of some Yazidi girls being liberated from the clutches of their captors while lack of international intervention has left the Chibok girls in captivity.
So in a nutshell, the difference between the salutary outcome in Iraq and the unsavory result in Nigeria is the level of efforts and time invested by the super powers who posses the financial resources and military muscle to take on the increasingly sophisticated terrorists in Iraq and the lack of interest or commitment by the same Western powers to the cause of the rescue of Chibok girls in Nigeria.
Curiously, the catastrophe that befell humanity and particularly the Chibok girls, that were abducted from their school dormitory, reverberated across the globe, with celebrities like Michele Obama, wife of the U.S. President, Gordon Brown, former prime minister of Britain and Malala Yusuf-Zai, (Pakistani victim of the Taliban terrorists) as well as the movie super star, Angelina Jolie, amongst a host of other high profile personalities campaigning against the dastardly act with the hashtag ‘BringBackOurGirls’ that went viral in the social media.
Conversely , after the CNN dedicated television coverage that revealed the pathetic conditions of the Yazidis and the nerve raking and daredevil rescue missions by coalition forces, the superpowers made concerted efforts such as bombing ISIS locations to rescue and rehabilitate the Yazidis but not so for the Chibok girls despite equally high publicity blitz elicited by the involvement of celebrities and desperate efforts made by Nigerian authorities to seek Western powers assistance in military intervention.
The reason lies partly in the double standards in the U.S. application of the ubiquitous Leahy Law and the lack of value of the Blackman’s life viz-a-viz his or her white counterpart.
So very often, the color of a man’s skin and not the content of his character, as the foremost USA human rights activist, Martin Luther King once posited, determines the level of adversities or tragedy he or she faces in life. The situation persists, whether in the USA where black discrimination has thrived as reflected in the white police officers rampant killing of black people for flimsy reasons or the hypocrisy of the Japanese, when a girl of mixed Japanese and black American descent won the Miss Japan beauty pageant and she is being shunned for being of a mixed race.
Another disturbing anomaly in the issue of foreign relations and human rights, is the Leahy law prohibiting the sale of lethal military hardware to countries whose military have human rights abuse records.
What happens is that while countries like Nigeria that are deemed to be in breach, are denied access to such weapons to rein in rampaging Boko Haram terrorists and rescue the Chibok girls, countries like Egypt and Israel whose military have far more horrendous human rights records-Egyptian army under General, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi overthrew democratically elected government of Mohamed Morsi, killed and jailed politicians and the Israelis have practically razed down most Palestinian cities with massive human casualties using American weapons.
The fact is that Egypt and Israel are the U.S. strategic partners in the Middle East, hence the U.S. applies preferential standards by looking the other way when they engage in the obnoxious human rights abuses that have become a sort of emblem of both countries.
The U.S. excuse would be that Israel needs to survive in the light of the threat of annihilation by its violent Arab and Persian neighbours and Egyptian army needed to nip in the bud the extremist tendencies of the Islamic jihadist Muslim Brotherhood that had seized sovereign power in the hitherto moderate Islamic country. While those excuses offered by U.S. for buffeting their Middle East allies may be germane, equally altruistic is the fact that Nigeria -the most populous Black Country in the world is also under the threat of becoming another Iraq or Libya if terrorists like Boko Haram are allowed to continue their reign of terror on innocent victims.
Worse still, the U.S. Army records of human rights abuse stinks to the high heavens as evidenced by the recent bombing of a hospital in Kunduz, Iraq killing 22 patients and medical personnel comprising of 12 staffers of the humanitarian group, MSF popularly known as Doctors-Without-Borders.
If you add that and a previous fatal drone attack on a wedding party (mistaken for a gathering of terrorists) to the Guantanamo bay prison atrocities , the Black Hawk (US defense contractors) wanton killing of Iraqi civilians and the so called ‘rendition’ in Europe whereby (against United Nations, Geneva convention on prisoners of war), many suspected terrorists were tortured, in some cases to death, the U.S. stance against selling arms to Nigeria becomes hypocritical and a case of the pot calling the kettle black as they lack the moral authority to pontificate.
Just like the U.S. could make a mistake like she did in the unfortunate and sad incident in Kunduz hospital of which President Barrack Obama has now apologised and the U.S. defense authorities have suspended military support to the Syrian freedom fighters,(perhaps in the true letter and spirit of Leahy law) what’s the justification for her hard stance against Nigeria’s occasional human rights infractions , given the difficult conditions under which the military is also operating ? In the wisdom of the philosopher, Carrie P. Snow “When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find that more hideous crime has been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been in the name of rebellion”
This perhaps underpins President Muhamadu Buhari’s presumption in his address to USA law makers during his maiden state visit to Washington DC, USA, that Western superpowers who fail to assist in providing weapons to rout Boko Haram are vicariously guilty of collusion with or are acquiescing with terrorists to kill and maim innocent Nigerians.
Incidentally, this pattern of discrimination against Africa in global conflict resolution has been subsisting over the years as Western powers have in the past failed to intervene in the unfortunate deadly conflict between the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwandan in 1994 resulting in a human carnage of over 300,000 lives in a space of less than six weeks using Machetes.
According to reports by human rights scholar, Mahmood MandanI, despite the plea to UN Security Council by General Dallaire, the commander of the peace keeping troops in Rwanda to approve 2,500 more soldiers to enable him stop the impending massacre, his request was declined and 90 percent of the UN troops originally with him was withdrawn paving the way for the slaughter now known as Rwandan genocide. When the UN later approved redeployment of troops in the course of the horrific ethnic cleansing with, the U.S. stalled the move until the French, on humanitarian basis re-injected themselves into the conflict by sending troops swiftly to halt the massacre.
In a damning contrast, when a similar ethnic cleansing conflict arose between the Bosnians and Serbs in the old Yugoslavia, in 1995, NATO moved in to decisively settle the rift and split the country into different sovereignties by the names: Bosnia Herzegovina and Croatia/ Serbia, perhaps simply because they are Europeans and white in their color pigmentation.
Incidentally, the war was settled in Dayton, Ohio USA, the very same country that stalled quick UN intervention in Rwanda.
Tellingly, while the U.S. is once again acting true to type by denying Nigeria access to arms to resolve the Boko Haram insurgency, the French has once again weighed in by rallying countries around Nigerian borders -Chad, Niger and Cameroun- to a meeting in Paris, France where formation of a multinational armed task force to curb the activities of Boko Haram was agreed.
While that ugly blithe of injustice in the annals of international relations and diplomacy,(1948 UN convention institutionalised prevention of genocide so the color of a man’s skin as opposed to the letter and spirit of the UN convention ought not determine his right to be saved or die) was yet to be erased, the Western powers turned blind eyes again to the ethnic conflict unfolding in Sudan, Africa, where the Christian and atheist tribes, in the southern part of the country, Darfur, with their Muslim counterparts in Khartoum.
As the world (depending on religious and economic inclination) fanned the embers of the conflict from the sidelines, (with interest only on how to harness the rich oil/gas resource in the southern part) erstwhile kits and kin remain embroiled in a deadly war.
Commenting on the Rwandan massacre, Minorities Rights Group, MRG, Executive Director, Mark Latinner, noted “this level of killings , rape and displacement could have been foreseen and avoided…Darfur would not just be in this situation had the UN system got its acts together after Rwanda. Their action was too little, too late”
The origin of the conflict, Western power conspiracy and negligence, plus the probable options of how to end the war were the subject of my 2007 thesis in fulfillment of a masters degree programme titled ‘ Darfur: Why The West Failed To Help’ at the Fletcher School Of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Medford Massachusetts, USA.
It is a sad footnote on the integrity of the international community, particularly the United Nations, UN and African Union, AU as well as U.S.A, Russia and China (who use Darfur as theatre for proxy war) that the Sudan war is yet to come to a peaceful end. It is even more worrisome that the war which commenced since 1955 (intermittently off and on in the past 60 years) with debilitating effect on the community even after a tedious process of searing another country-South Sudan from the original Sudan, was concluded in July 2011, peace is still eluding the people while their resources are being pillaged by China etc.
The consequence of the lingering crisis is currently manifesting in the massive hunger and starvation ravaging the people in the land endowed with tremendous oil/gas deposit which is a throw back to how in the recent past, resource rich Congo was equally exploited (entire landscape despoiled by precious stones excavators) and dumped by super powers.
Given the previous disappointments from the USA failing to help in Rwanda and Darfur, Sudan, I’ve a deep feeling of dejavu in North east Nigeria that it’s neither USA military armaments nor regular UN diplomacy that would stem the tide of ongoing massive destruction of lives and properties by Boko Haram. If any external help is necessary, it would be through a diplomatic paradigm shift in the approach to how the world handles the issue of genocide and terrorism whose aftermath is often mass murder of innocent humans by people who hold extremist views.
To end the Bosnian genocidal war, a drastic intervention by NATO tagged ‘Operation Deliberate Force’ was introduced and that brought the conflict to a quick end. By the same token, it was a swift visit to Kenya by the former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan and former U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, that helped avert a blood bath that could have ranked with the Rwandan massacre when disputed presidential elections results between Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki (2007-8) degenerated into a deadly ethnic conflict. Perhaps, it’s the efficacy of the shuttle diplomacy in Kenya, to some extent, that encouraged the U.S. and UK to send their Foreign secretaries, John Kerry and John Hammond to Nigeria to dialogue with former President Goodluck Jonathan and challenger, Muhamadu Buhari, in order to dowse the potential ethnic conflict that was brewing in the run up to Nigeria’s election last February.
As l conclude this article, the words of Richard Holbroke, one of the foremost American diplomats who was the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State that supervised the resolution of the Bosnian slaughter, keeps echoing in my head when he declared the war as “The greatest failure of the West since the 1930s”.
As Daniel Goldhagen, a 30 – year veteran in documenting genocide pointed out in his highly acclaimed documentary ‘Worse Than War’, a TV chronology of genocides across the world since 1915, new international orientation to dealing with acts of genocide is needed in the light of the documented failures of the UN, set up to protect the sanctity of sovereignties.
Even reliance on courts such as the International Court of Criminal Justice, ICC which areslow and ineffective or diplomacy which by its nature is also sluggish, have proven to be inadequate so intervention should be forceful as was the case with NATO which successfully intervened in Bosnia in 1995.
In fact, Goldhagen’s pragmatic and innovative proposition on how to avoid or arrest genocide should be extrapolated for terrorism. l therefore posit that anti-terrorism and genocide standing army, similar to the mandate given to NATO in protection of European members should be set up with a clear mission to nip in the bud, any acts of extremism like genocide or terrorism world wide. That, in my view is the debate (a standing army against terrorism) that the UN should be having with a view to ending the global pandemic that terrorism is fast becoming. The recently successfully concluded P 5 +1 negotiation on the resolution of Iranian nuclear arms build up is great, but the establishment of a standing army to stop terrorism and genocide will be better, as it would have similar deterrent effect that NATO had on Europe before the common threat to the continent’s security and safety at a point on time-USSR disintegrated. Although recent Russian military incursion into Ukraine and bombings in Syria appear to be signaling a resurgence of the Cold War era which hitherto was thought to have been consigned to history.
The need for the elimination of the grind associated with the courts and bureaucracy entrenched in the UN, and replacement with the speed and agility associated with a standing army, cannot be over emphasised so we need the NATO PHENOMENON that stopped the Bosnian war from escalating into genocide to stop global terrorism.
If the Boko Haram onslaught is allowed to continue to fester, as ISIS has been tolerated in Iraq and Syria, Western leaders may find themselves saying’ Never Again’ as they did after Rwanda genocide.
Eerily, as the world becomes more integrated through common transport linkages, especially by air and sea, no country is free from terrorists when they decide to engage in their orgy of violence, leveraging global interconnectivity that enabled the infamous underpants Christmas day bomber onboard American airline (who incidentally is a Nigerian) to attempt killing innocent passengers over the skies of the USA.
Given the foregoing scenario, my plea is for the world to help Nigeria end Boko Haram insurgency and bring back our Chibok girls.
As wisely observed by the writers of the hit song ‘ We are the world’, (the USA For Africa project) produced by top American music stars to raise funds to save famine ravaged Africa in 1985. The musicians counseled”… we can’t go on pretending day-by-day that someone, somewhere will make a change… by giving, we are saving our own lives”.
The import of the song written and performed by the greatest musicians in America , in my view, is that citizens of the rich and advanced world would be saving their own lives when they help defeat Boko Haram in North-east Nigeria and terrorism all over the world.