Leaders mull force to fight Boko Haram

A satellite image, released  by Airbus Defence and Space satellites and made available by Human Rights Watch, shows evidence of large-scale destruction of the area surrounding Baga, particularly in the town of Doro Gowon, on the shores of Lake Chad, in the far north of Borno State in northeast Nigeria following attacks since January 3 byBoko Haram militants.

Reuters/AFP/Accra/N’DjamenaWest African leaders are considering creating a military force to fight Nigeria’s Boko Haram militants and will hold a regional summit next week to discuss the issue, Ghana’s President John Mahama said yesterday. Regional bloc ECOWAS will seek the support of the African Union (AU) for its plans, said Mahama. “Nigeria is taking military action and Cameroon is fighting Boko Haram, but I think we are increasingly getting to the point where probably a regional or a multinational force is coming into consideration,” Mahama, who currently chairs ECOWAS, told a news conference. “It is what we want to discuss at the AU because, if that must happen, there must be a mandate to allow such a force to operate,” he said. Boko Haram is fighting to create a hardline state in northeast Nigeria along the border with Chad, Cameroon and Niger. But it has recently expanded its field of activity to neighbouring countries. The group’s fighters seized the military base and town of Baga, in Nigeria on the shores of Lake Chad, on January 3. Baga was the headquarters of a multinational force with troops from Chad, Niger and Cameroon.  Meanwhile, dozens of Chadian tanks have headed out of the capital south towards Cameroon to help fight Nigeria’s Boko Haram insurgents. The convoy, seen by an AFP journalist, roared out of the city after Chad’s parliament voted to send armed forces to Cameroon and Nigeria to fight against the militant group. Cameroon’s President Paul Biya had announced on Thursday that Chad President Idriss Deby had agreed to send “a substantial contingent” of troops to help Cameroonian armed forces, who have faced repeated attacks from Boko Haram. Earlier yesterday, Chad’s parliament in N’Djamena voted 150 to 0 to send an unspecified number of “Chadian armed troops and security forces to assist Cameroonian and Nigerian soldiers waging war against the terrorists in Cameroon and Nigeria”. Cameroon has been critical of the passivity of the Nigerian authorities and of muted international reaction in the face of Boko Haram aggression. Since Boko Haram’s insurgency began, around  135,000 people have fled the restive northeast of Nigeria, and at least 850,000 have been displaced inside the region. So far Chad has been spared, but its border is not far from the Islamists’ headquarters in the Nigerian state of Borno. The entry of Chadian forces in the increasingly regional fight against Boko Haram may prove valuable in halting the extremists’ series of ruthless offensives. After describing Boko Haram as a direct threat to the nation’s “vital interests”, Chadian leaders moved quickly to deploy units of the country’s powerful armed forces to resume its position as one of the region’s most hostile anti-jihad forces. In 2013 Chadian troops became formidable allies of French forces battling militants who’d taken control of northern Mali, and played an important role in routing those extremists out into the remote areas of the Sahel.  As they did so, Chadian soldiers gained a reputation for ruthless efficiency in pursuing and liquidating retreating militant fighters, and were credited with killing some of the most wanted radical leaders. One of Chad’s main objectives in joining its neighbours to take on Boko Haram is re-taking the northeast Nigerian town of Baga, which the extremist group stormed in a stunning show of force January 7, provoking the flight of 5,000 people. Over 3,500 of buildings in the strategically-situated Baga and outlying areas were thought to have been raised, perhaps 2,000 people massacred, and hundreds of people taken captive in Boko Haram’s offensive. “Boko Haram kidnapped at least 300 women and held us in a school in Baga,” a non-identified woman quoted in a statement released on Thursday by Amnesty International said.  “They freed the older women, the mothers, and most of the children after four days, but they are still holding the younger women,” she said.   On Thursday US Secretary of State John Kerry deplored Boko Haram’s activity as a “crime against humanity, nothing less”, and suggested the torment of Baga was a particularly stark reminder of the threat the group poses to the region and world.