Only seven Yankees waka come?

Some Nigerians feel that the solution to an intractable problem has finally arrived. In abducting 200 plus schoolgirls at Chibok, Boko Haram thought it scored a big coup against Nigeria and against boko but there is this thing called Pyrrhic victory. One thing led to another; the abductions generated a wave of protests on Nigerian […]

Some Nigerians feel that the solution to an intractable problem has finally arrived. In abducting 200 plus schoolgirls at Chibok, Boko Haram thought it scored a big coup against Nigeria and against boko but there is this thing called Pyrrhic victory. One thing led to another; the abductions generated a wave of protests on Nigerian city streets that soon spread to other parts of the world. The international protests in turn put pressure on the leaders of the Big Powers to wade into the matter.
First the Chinese Premier, then US President Barack Obama, then British Prime Minister David Cameron, then French President Francois Hollande and then the Spanish Deputy Premier offered to assist in the search and rescue. Before last week ended, American and British teams had arrived in Nigeria while the French were about to deploy 3,000 troops in our neighbouring countries. Maybe these men “took it personal”, to use Nigerian parlance, because Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau called their names one by one in a recent video posting. He even mentioned Francois Hollande’s name correctly in its full French nuance.
Of all the offers of help, I think the French offer is so far the most substantial. If 3,000 French Foreign Legionnaires are stationed on our borders with Cameroun, Niger Republic and Chad and they seal off all the entry points, that should starve Boko Haram of weapons supply routes and refuge bases. French Presidents are traditionally more willing than their British and American counterparts to put their soldiers in harm’s way. The French Foreign Legion has been a key element in France’s foreign policy goals since 1830. It was not always successful, if you remember its disastrous engagement in Vietnam that culminated in Dien Bien Phu in 1956. It should do better however in the Mandara Hills.
French intervention in African trouble spots was a fairly regular occurrence in the 1970s. Some of the most memorable were the 1977 intervention in Shaba and the 1978 intervention in Kolwezi, both in Zaire. In recent years the French also intervened in Cote D’Ivoire’s civil war and in Mali against the Tuareg secessionists and the al-Qaeda linked group that displaced them. The French also recently intervened in CAR, though genocide took place on their watch.  
In anticipation of a major offensive against it, Boko Haram recently blew up bridges linking Gamboru with Cameroon as well as another bridge that connects the Zambiza Forest to the highway. This is a standard military tactic to slow down an advancing enemy. When German armies invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Stalin ordered the blowing up of hundreds of bridges in order to slow them down. Despite its aversion to boko, looks like Boko Haram has done some reading of military history.
Compared to the French deployment, the British team that arrived in Nigeria was a small one drawn from several agencies including DFID and Ministry of Defence. I was wondering: what will DFID do here? Something was said about counselling the Chibok girls after they are rescued. I thought that part should wait for now. There will be plenty of time to counsel them after they are rescued. For now, I will be happier to hear that elements of Britain’s Special Air Service [SAS] or the Special Boat Service [SBS] are among the British helpers.
The American team that arrived last Thursday was also very small compared to the French offer. It was said to comprise all of seven men, none of them being combat troops. The seven are said to include FBI agents skilled in hostage rescue negotiations. This is to say that the Americans expect to be negotiating with Boko Haram to secure the abducted girls’ freedom. I hope someone did not mis-brief the Americans on this matter. The FBI certainly has had a long experience with lone gunmen who take hostages and hold them as human shields in a building. Boko Haram however is not a lone gunman but a deadly group that thinks nothing of bombing a church full of worshippers on Christmas Day, or wiping out all the traders at a busy village market on the mere suspicion that some townsfolk tattled to the police about the sect. It is very unlikely that an FBI hostage negotiator, no matter how skilled, could talk Shekau into releasing the Chibok girls.
How things change within a short time. Only last year when the Americans opened a drone base in Niger Republic, Nigerians were up in arms, saying it should not be allowed to fire hellfire missiles into our towns the way they do in Pakistan’s Peshawar Valley. Some years earlier when the US signified its intention to move its Africa Command onto African soil, Nigerians were in the forefront of the agitation to keep it at bay in Stuttgart. Here we are, a short while later, begging President Obama to bring in the drones and the Marines.
Why is the Pentagon sending only seven people to help with this problem? Even if they are merely here to offer advice as an Embassy officer said, the US government had sent much larger teams of advisers to other lands in the past. There was this speech that Malcolm X made in 1963 where he mentioned that there were 45,000 American soldiers “in an advisory capacity” in South Vietnam. Maybe their advice was so much that it confused old President Ngo Dinh Diem.
What can seven men do, however skilled they are? That’s hardly enough men to operate an Abrams tank, man a missile battery or control a drone in flight over the Zambiza Forest. Certainly they aren’t enough to operate an AWACS as it monitors the Gwoza Hills for insurgent troop movements. When President Obama offered to help President Jonathan, I thought that troops of the 101st Airborne Division or the 82nd Airborne were on their way to Zambiza. Or even the US Navy Seal Team Six that he sent to Abbotabad to get Osama bin Laden.
I am surprised that no one has invited the Germans. Back in 1977 when some Palestinian group hijacked a plane and took it to Mogadishu airport, it was commandos from the German GSG 9 that did a very daring rescue operation. Compared to a plane, Zambiza Forest should be a piece of cake for GSG 9. No one has mentioned the Israelis in this matter either. Few nations in the world have as much experience in hostage rescue as have the Israelis but inviting them to Borno could only fire up conspiracy theorists.
Now, those people who are very optimistic that the Westerners could easily extricate the missing girls from Boko Haram’s clutches and help us to end the murderous insurgency may have another thing coming. It is not every problem that the Westerners can solve. Among the recent problems still festering on their plates are the missing Malaysian plane, Libya, Syria, Crimea, eastern Ukraine, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea. Western leaders are often paralysed by fear of the effect on public opinion of television images of troops returning home in body bags or of TV crews interviewing a dead soldier’s widow.
Still, this American help is inadequate. I suggest that before they proceed to Zambiza the team should first pay a courtesy call at the State House and greet our First Lady. Dame Impatience Jonathan will count the American helpers and say, “Only seven of you waka come?”