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200 children kidnapped in Nigeria to be sold.

farmerbarleymow said:
It's a fucked up part of the world sadly. Nigeria is one of the countries where polio is a serious problem too I think, and the WHO has issued some kind of alert about it posing a serious threat. All down to the religious nut jobs dissuading people mot to get vaccinated. :(
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The spokesman for the Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria said that the vaccine was created by "evildoers from the West" to make Muslim women infertile and give Muslim men AIDS https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/war-nerd-boko-haram/
 
Manter said:
I'm not sure you can consider the continuing existence of Boku Haram without considering state corruption tbh... And it's the complete loss of trust in the state and linked rise of extremism that has contributed to the flight from what is seem as Western attempts to manipulate the population, including healthcare.

E2a that's not me excusing them- they are clearly sick bastards, and those girls are living a nightmare- just that if we consider them in a vacuum they make no sense and we have to dismiss them as evil: which doesn't move us forward in understanding or combatting them
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There was a piece in the Guardian about how the government also kidnapped women and children before this - http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-detained-women-and-children-as-weapon-of-war - which obviously helps things greatly.
 
I'm surprised at the low post count in this thread....
Such a horrible event perpetrated by radicals who have a view of women and girls that is so antiquated and utterly alien to us in the west.
Where are the feminists?
Where are the political activists?
Where are the anti racists?
Where is everyone?
Or do we only concern ourselves with our own problems on our own patch?
I used to think the world was getting smaller...but really we are just pulling further and further away from the third world...
Very sad.....:( :( :(

I don't want anyone to take this personally so please don't.
 
It's all over twitter and facebook. I think a lot of people aren't posting on it because, well, what really is there to say? The whole thing is too horrific to just post a trite 'wow that's awful' to. And it's a bit beyond signing petitions and liking/sharing pictures to 'raise awareness'.
 
eatmorecheese said:
You are right, these are huge factors, but I believe that the Nigerian state lost the trust of Nigerian people of all regions many years ago, plus it has had a tendency to be seen and handled as a Muslim/Christian divide issue. I suppose the conditions, political and economic, in Northern Nigeria, combined with external influences (Wahabi funding over the years, nearby semi-religious warlordism in the Sahel, etc) have all been profoundly influential.

I am basing my opinion on admittedly limited reading tbh...
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One of my best mates is Nigerian* so I know a bit more, but its a hugely complex history, and whatever you hear seems to be twisted by tribal loyalties. My friend is unusual in that his dad is Igbo, his mum Yoruba, but he comments often that each side of the family have their own world view that is very entrenched and unbothered by facts or evidence :D

* he's now taken British nationality as it was unsafe for him to go back there as person with a mixed tribe background- there is all sorts of extremism developing over there
 
weepiper said:
It's all over twitter and facebook. I think a lot of people aren't posting on it because, well, what really is there to say? The whole thing is too horrific to just post a trite 'wow that's awful' to. And it's a bit beyond signing petitions and liking/sharing pictures to 'raise awareness'.
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yeah- plus we don't know all that much about the issues over here. I mean most people can make a fist of talking about the middle east conflict or Kosovo, but the Biafran war? Sani Abacha and the third republic? Its just not in the news, not in the school curriculum…

(there'll be someone with an encyclopaedic knowledge who appears to prove me wrong in a minute)
 
Yes...we don't know much about the background....the culture etc.
But we do know about human rights.
I just find it very depressing that there doesn't seem to be more of an outcry.
If 276 white girls in a US school were kidnapped by extremists I think the world as in the first world would rightly be up in arms...
Is the world up in arms? Somehow twitter facebook and hashtag don't seem to me to be reflective of a world reaction or action..

I read a while ago that the Nigerian gov have asked for assistance.

There are unconfirmed reports of girls sold already for $12.

:(
 
bubblesmcgrath said:
Yes...we don't know much about the background....the culture etc.
But we do know about human rights.
I just find it very depressing that there doesn't seem to be more of an outcry.
If 276 white girls in a US school were kidnapped by extremists I think the world as in the first world would rightly be up in arms...
Is the world up in arms? Somehow twitter facebook and hashtag don't seem to me to be reflective of a world reaction or action..

I read a while ago that the Nigerian gov have asked for assistance.

There are unconfirmed reports of girls sold already for $12.

:(
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the Nigerian government didn't ask for help- the world have rather forcefully offered it. Goodluck Jonathon is now saying they are grateful, but he wants drones, planes, training on radars etc, and one of the issues of giving that is that there are fears they would be turned on civilians (again). The Nigerian government has been trying to contain Boku Haram for nearly a decade now- and has killed thousands of innocent citizens in the process.
 
Manter said:
the Nigerian government didn't ask for help- the world have rather forcefully offered it. Goodluck Jonathon is now saying they are grateful, but he wants drones, planes, training on radars etc, and one of the issues of giving that is that there are fears they would be turned on civilians (again). The Nigerian government has been trying to contain Boku Haram for nearly a decade now- and has killed thousands of innocent citizens in the process.
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Very true.......I hope there are other ways of helping besides military ones.

I had read that it was reported that they did ask for help....
http://m.aljazeera.com/story/20145423528504411

Let's hope the girls plight doesnt get lost in political and military rhetoric and posturing.
 
bubblesmcgrath said:
Very true.......I hope there are other ways of helping besides military ones.

I had read that it was reported that they did ask for help....
http://m.aljazeera.com/story/20145423528504411

Let's hope the girls plight doesnt get lost in political and military rhetoric and posturing.
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yeah, read the timeline in there- on Saturday the US say they have offered help. On Sunday the Nigerian government accept it and say they asked for it, and appeal for more :rolleyes: After 3 weeks. And he's accusing the families of 'not cooperating'- the families who have had to set up their own search parties as so little was being done http://www.360nobs.com/2014/05/angry-nigerians-and-rest-of-the-world-cry-out-bringbackourgirls/
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/04/world/africa/nigeria-abducted-girls/
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11250916

"Mutah Buba joined the search party hoping to find his two sisters and two nieces. They got directions from villagers along the way who said they had seen the abductors with the girls on a forest path. Finally, an old man herding cattle at a fork in the road warned them that they were close to the camp, but that they and their daughters could be killed if they confronted the militants.

The searchers returned to Chibok and appealed to the few soldiers there to accompany them into the forest. They refused, point blank, Buba said. Parents in Chibok ask why they came within a couple of miles of their daughters, yet the military did not.

"What was strange was that none of the people we spoke to had seen a soldier man in the area, yet the military were saying they were in hot pursuit," said Buba, a 42-year-old drawn home to Chibok by the tragedy from Maiduguri, the Borno state capital 130 kilometres to the northwest.

The military says it is diligently searching for the girls, with extensive aerial surveillance"
 
10274271_834254179921769_2220131541666898858_n.jpg


Malala Yousufzai's comment.
 
Something I don't get. This is a terrible thing, no doubt. And there is global outrage, with the US offering military assistance.

World pressure on Nigeria is mounting over its slow reaction and failure to rescue hundreds of schoolgirls kidnapped by terrorists in a remote part of the country.
Tuesday, President Obama called the abductions "outrageous" and "heartbreaking'' and said Nigeria has agreed to accept U.S. law enforcement and military assistance.
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/05/06/kidnap-nigeria/8760549/

So where is the similar outrage and potential outside military intervention to fight the Lord's Resistance Army?

More than 3,400 abducted by the LRA in DR Congo, CAR, and South Sudan since 2008, including over 1,500 children as of March 2011 [10, 11]
  • DR Congo: 2,615 people abducted, including 886 children, as of December 2010 [4]
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http://www.theresolve.org/the-lra-crisis/key-statistics/
 
Me, because I'm cynical, I can't help wondering whether that grand old warlord / manipulator / regular backer of rebels / crocodile / President of Chad, Idriss Deby, might have a hand in it somewhere. He has been embroiled in all sorts of stuff going on nearby (C Afr Rep, Libya, etc.) But that's not to say there aren't more than enough entirely local reasons for BH to flourish in N E Nigeria.

What is difficult to express to people who've not been there is just HOW DIFFERENT northern Nigeria is from the south - it's not only a matter of faith and language/ethnicity, but a whole way of being. In the north the climate is different (desert and scrub rather than former rainforest or swamp), the foods and crops are different, the approach to authority is different, it's generally much poorer, less developed, even more remote from authority in Lagos/Abuja.

In the north there is also a centuries-old tradition of regular 'cleansing of Islam' type uprisings which get knitted together with rebelling against colonial / central government authority. And there is also a very particular (highly fundamentalist and highly backward) interpretation of Islam which pretty much rules life for everyone but particularly for women.

When I was in Northern Nigeria in the mid 90s it seemed miles more like the Middle East than Africa in a lot of ways ... not least that you simply did not see (local) adult women around, anywhere. Unlike southern Nigeria (where women traders rule the markets and women have a good deal of status), women in the north had no public profile at all. They don't use the veil or the burqa or the niqab. They just NEVER GO OUT. Not ever. FGM is also common. (hausa proverb: a good woman leaves her home only twice in her life - once to get married, once to get buried.)

So yes, this is just one (floridly expressive) aspect of a longterm cultural problem - the "worthlessness" of women and the desire to lock them up. BUT - Northeastern Nigeria is not just Northern Nigeria, either. It's even poorer and dustier and less controlled than anywhere else. Nobody from the big cities goes there. It is an utterly marginalised place - other Nigerians see it as "the end of the world / the f*cking desert". (And I wonder really if a reason why BH has been allowed to go relatively unchallenged so long was that until now, frankly, nobody in power in Nigeria really cared one way or the other.) It makes me laugh to see the UK media scratching around for "comment from Nigerians in the UK" as if this was relevant, because almost none of these Nigerians are from the North (never mind the Northeast) so most of their thoughts have to be filtered through a massive regional bias.

Also: it amuses me to see people saying the Nigerian government "ought to do something" - well what? More than what they're already doing? They're not very good at doing things. Especially military things ... as Manter already pointed out - the untold story of this is the extreme and extremely brutal and ineffective campaign the Nigerian Army's been mounting in the Northeast for years now, which has mostly resulted in scoress of villages being destroyed and hundreds of (probably) uninvolved peasants being massacred.

Having said all that I still cannot figure out whether Boko Haram is/are really:
- an arm of Al Qaida
- an expression of indigenous, local Islamic militancy (in local tradition)
- just another political, regional separatist group exploiting the weakness of the federal state (like the rebels of the delta region, but without the oil wealth)
- a gang of criminal bandits who're in it for the money / the rape opportunities
- a catspaw for another regional leader
- a bunch of misfit guys who want to fight/or pose around with weapons

Or, most likely, a bit of all of the above...
 
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weepiper said:
It's all over twitter and facebook. I think a lot of people aren't posting on it because, well, what really is there to say? The whole thing is too horrific to just post a trite 'wow that's awful' to. And it's a bit beyond signing petitions and liking/sharing pictures to 'raise awareness'.
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Yes, you wonder what would actually be constructive to the situation. I doubt if a petition will do anything other than make people feel better.

You could get up a fund to hire a shitload of mercs (and you might accidentally cause a war.)

Or, get up a fund to ransom them (and you'd only encourage them to continue).

You could get up a fund to improve security at schools so the children who haven't been abducted will be safer.

It certainly doesn't look like the government of Nigeria can be relied upon.
 
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DotCommunist said:
mercenaries. You have to pay them to fight, and if you are really unlucky you have to pay them to stop fighting
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on the other hand they do it reasonably well - you can attribute all the altruistic motives to the Nigerian security forces you like*, but competance would not be on that list.

*i wouldn't, but there you go..

what matters? whether the girls are found and returned unharmed, or that no one of questionable moral compass gets paid?
 
kebabking said:
on the other hand they do it reasonably well - you can attribute all the altruistic motives to the Nigerian security forces you like*, but competance would not be on that list.

*i wouldn't, but there you go..

what matters? whether the girls are found and returned unharmed, or that no one of questionable moral compass gets paid?
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Mercenaries are a gang of cunts, mercenaries in Africa doubly so.

You think they'd actually find the girls are returning them? Or just hunker down in some brothel somewhere and then head off to Abuja for their payday?

Not sure if this link'll work, but there's a good briefing (PDF) here:

http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/sites/default/files/AprEn12.pdf
 
likesfish said:
Well if executive outcomes were still about competant and deniable :hmm:
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Competent, you say?

Although it is clear that PMFs fillll an important role in the global
security market, it is also clear that PMFs do not always respect the
international standards of armed conºict.32 For instance, in 1995, the
government of Sierra Leone hired the South African PMF, Executive
Outcomes (EO), to help subdue the rebellious Revolutionary United
Front.33 EO quickly assumed control over all offensive operations and,
when asked how to distinguish between civilians and rebels, EO
commanders supposedly ordered their pilots to just “kill everybody.”34

http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1082&context=iclr
 
Another such example involves DynCorp, an American PMF currently
active in Iraq.35 While working in the Balkans, several DynCorp
employees allegedly ran a prostitution ring, selling the services of girls
as young as twelve years old.36 Despite these wide-spread accusations,
none of the accused DynCorp employees were brought to trial or disciplined
in any way. 37 Rather, DynCorp has addressed the issue by ªring
the whistle-blower who exposed the prostitution ring.

I know everybody! Let's get some mercs in! That'll solve this problem!
 
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