Insurgencies rarely win; Nigeria’s will be the same (maybe)

But history shows that insurgents rarely win, and the case in Nigeria should be no different. Now that it finally has a winning strategy, the Jonathan administration is in a race against time to beat the insurgency before the public’s patience finally wears out.The cold hard truth about the Jonathan administration’s strategy of surging additional […]

But history shows that insurgents rarely win, and the case in Nigeria should be no different. Now that it finally has a winning strategy, the Jonathan administration is in a race against time to beat the insurgency before the public’s patience finally wears out.
The cold hard truth about the Jonathan administration’s strategy of surging additional U.S. forces into Nigeria with the aim of pacifying Boko Haram is that it could work if it is based on good intentions. Boko Haram insurgent group has succeeded in creating a lot of chaos; because the insurgents were lucky they faced an opponent with leaders unwilling to learn from their failures: the Nigeria government. But they are likely not strong enough to succeed in the long term.
Of course, history is not without genuine insurgent successes. Fidel Castro’s victory in Cuba is probably the best known, and there was the IRA’s partial triumph in 1922, as well as Algeria’s defeat of the French between 1954 and 1962. But the list of failed insurgencies is longer. If the current Nigerian administration maintains its will, establishes patriotic security in Nigeria, and succeeds in building a functioning government and army, there is no reason that the Boko Haram cannot be similarly destroyed, or at least reduced to the level of common thugs.
That’s why the real question in Nigeria is not whether the insurgency can be defeated; it can. The real question is whether the Nigeria government might have already missed its chance to snuff it out. Mr President’s body language on Boko Haram has included admission of failures, providing some hope that they might not be repeated. That’s welcome news, because one thing is certain: time is running out.
 
Ahmed Abdulrahman, Kadunn <[email protected]>;