A Confusion of Choices By Emman Usman Shehu Sixty-seven days today. That is how long the hapless schoolgirls have been in captivity since their abduction from the far-flung town of Chibok in Borno State. The subsequent outrage led to a flurry of activities nationally and internationally, aimed at ensuring the girls are rescued. As the days go by, the fate of the girls is not eliciting hope. In Abuja, a daily sit-out to spur the Federal Government into matching rescue promises with certified operational action will be into its fifty-first day today. On sit-out day forty-six, as the regulars and new comers gathered, the general mood was one of disbelief that the rescue operation had still not yielded any tangible outcome. Apart from the girls who escaped by their own devices, none has been retrieved by the military. One of the day’s co-coordinators asked if those at the sit-out were tired. They responded with a collective “No, but the vigour was a few decibels less than the usual. “When shall we stop?”, the co-ordinator asked, waving hands to raise their spirits. The response, “Until our girls are back alive and well,” managed to be a few more decibels louder and firmer. Other familiar call and response phrases followed. For a sit-out that has lasted this long, it is not a surprise that some procedural patterns have become standard, including the call-and-response slogans. Several faces have become recognizable too, such as that of the Chairman of the Chibok Community in Abuja, Tsambido Hosea-Abana. As is the case with several people from Chibok, a few of his relations are among those missing girls, a sister and three nieces. Before the coordinator could move on to the next item after the last slogan, Mr Hosea-Abana offered to say something. “To be honest, I am tired. I am tired of coming here every day and the girls are not yet back. I am tired but all I can do is come here every day. That is all I can do.” A long pause followed. Then the others clapped perhaps in appreciation of his frankness. He did not look exactly defeated, but he cut the picture of a man with a heavy burden. The burden has become a rallying point for the protesters despite their varied ethnic and religious affiliations, who have made the Unity Park the venue for the daily sit-out. It is also an uncomfortable burden for the country’s leadership. No matter how it tries to play it, the longer the girls remain in captivity the more the burden of its inefficiencies become exposed. When three Israeli teenagers, Gil-Ad Shaer, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifra were kidnapped in the West Bank last Thursday, the response from the Israeli authorities was typically swift. A search and rescue operation was immediately activated. Israeli Defense Force Spokesman Brig. Gen. Moti Almoz said the mission of extensive searches across Judea and Samaria is to bring the three teenagers home safely and as soon as possible. A stark contrast to the Chibok situation which was mired in all kinds of controversies including a false rescue operation, and even more damning was the fact that the authorities initially did not believe an abduction had taken place. It only took sustained national and international pressure from concerned citizens for the semblance of a search and rescue operation to get going. That gave the abductors ample time to disappear. From the early days of the belated rescue effort, representatives of the administration were making contradictory statements, further exposing a lack of cohesion in policy information management. However it showed an even greater problem, the absence of a standard course of action on counter-insurgency that should have taken hostage-taking into cognisance. Abductions are not just criminal activities, but one of the strategies in the ever growing dangerous portfolio of terrorists. Just as globalization is facilitating closer co-operation between countries, it is also fostering interaction between criminal groups and terrorist organizations. Even before the Boko Haram insurgency spiraled out of control, Nigeria was already having to contend with a number of trans-national crimes including kidnapping and child-trafficking. It is definitely a revelation of a dearth of pro-activeness that the administration never worked out a possible scenario of the aforementioned vices being copied by the insurgents, and putting in place some contingency plans. Interestingly even the Niger Delta militants used hostage taking as an operational strategy not just for drawing attention to their cause, but also as a source of funding. That Boko Haram followed suit as their more visible sources of funding were targeted, should not have been a surprise. Abductions of all sorts had been escalating before the Chibok highpoint. The lack of preparation for the possibility of large scale abductions and the kinds of counter-actions to be taken, raises more questions about the leadership’s commitment to the task of counter-insurgency. It is not possible to do counter-insurgency without research dwelling on possible scenarios, so as to outwit the insurgents. So while the administration and the security services have been mainly reactive, it is the insurgents that have been pro-active though in a negative manner. This partly explains the ineffectiveness of the State of Emergency which is in its second phase in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states. The planning capabilities of the insurgents is further highlighted by their activities in the wake of the international support that Nigeria has received after the Chibok abductions. There is a glaring spike in deadly attacks on communities that resembles a scorched earth tactic. It could be part of a design to achieve a couple of things. By dislodging several communities, it makes intelligence gathering more difficult for the military. The insurgents could also be using it to give the impression of having enough numbers to operate over a large territory. Since their approach is more guerilla-based, they do not need to hold large swathes of territory but having the striking ability means they can keep a conventional army bogged down and busy at various points. These widespread raids are certainly opportunities for getting basic survival essentials. This has to be considered in the context of having to sustain the large number of girls held hostage. It is a logistical nightmare which would make the abductees a burden rather than a strategic advantage. They may have looked at past situations of large-scale hostage taking and realized that keeping all the hostages in one place is a huge disadvantage. The evidence of history is that in situations where hostages are kept in one place, the end result is always bloody. The negotiation capacity of the hostage-takers is less flexible, while rescuers tend to think of a quick armed-assault. In 2002, 850 hostages were held in a Moscow theatre. The rescue assault resulted in the death of 130 hostages. Two years terrorists held 1,000 hostages at a school in Russia. Although hundreds were forcibly saved, 334 hostages were killed. 40 out of 800 were killed in 2013 when an al-Qaeda affiliate struck at an Algerian gas plant. Since hostage taking is a means to an end, and not the end itself for terrorists, they may have studied scenarios like the previous ones. Thus more than one plan could be in place. So apart from not keeping the girls in one place, the Boko Hram abductors would by now have split them into smaller manageable groups. The more the negotiations linger, it is possible that they would traffic most of the girls as an alternative safer option, relying on that aforementioned criminal-terrorists network. That gives them more funding and enables them avert the negative consequences of an armed rescue. As long as there is no proven outcome of the rescue operation, the administration’s reliability credibility continues to wane. Despite the plethora of assistance, what should have been an advantage has become a problem. A situation traceable to the administration’s inherent lack of pro-activeness, and the ability to work at cross-purposes. So it is now facing a confusion of choices. The latest being its decision to consider the Sri Lankan approach to fighting terrorism. That has already drawn flak from the human rights sector because the approach is notorious for endangering hapless civilians. Rescuing hostages is a difficult and bloody business that can easily be worsened by the lack of a coherent pragmatic approach to counter-insurgency.
Posted on: Fri, 20 Jun 2014 05:29:34 +0000