MOSCOW, May 8 (RIA Novosti), Nikita Alentyev – The Pentagon’s offer to send military staff to Nigeria to tackle the Islamist Boko Haram group could return Africa to the days of imperial standoff among Western empires, Lindsey German, Convenor of Stop the War Coalition, told RIA Novosti Thursday.
“The African continent, for the past 150 years, has been a center of imperial rivalry and we can see that happening again,” she said, explaining that the current effort to help Nigeria is “part of an ongoing process in Africa” with more and more Western intervention, “particularly US, but also French and British” in the region.
German said that given all the other operations in the region “what they [US] are proposing with the rescue of the girls, is a relatively small intervention,” but the larger picture is different.
“The likelihood is that this then becomes not just about rescuing the girls, which I am also very dubious about if this is the best way to do it, this then becomes about supposedly stabilizing Nigeria afterwards, as the Nigerians can’t do it on their own even though they spend billions of pounds a year on military and on weapons,” she stated, speculating this might become “the reason for maintaining troops in Nigeria.”
North American powers have expressed readiness to take action against Boko Haram, with the Pentagon dispatching a small team of US military personnel to the Nigerian capital in the coming days and Canada pledging equipment for the search effort.
France announced yesterday it would be the second European nation to act on the threat to Nigeria’s security. Britain is also to join the effort by sending a team to Nigeria to help with the search, according to Downing Street.
The seemingly benevolent act to search for the abducted girls may lead to larger-scale implications for the entire region and the world.
“We are talking about quite a big problem already with a very big influence of Western intervention. Given that it’s also an area of a big Chinese investment, economic investment, we can see how military conflict, involving the major powers, is on the cards for the future if not immediate,” German continued.
The expert drew attention to the timing of the effort, which comes against the backdrop of “the legacy of the US intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan,” where the world has seen “overt and covert intervention by the US and Western Europe.”
“The Hague and Washington seem almost addicted to the idea that only they can solve what are admittedly horrific problems for the girls involved,” she concluded, stressing the need for a political resolution “rather than saying let’s put more military into an area that is already extremely militarized as it is not going to solve the conflict.”
On Wednesday, as many as 300 people were killed in another Boko Haram attack on the town of Gamboru Ngala on Nigeria's border with Cameroon, according to local reports. The Islamist Boko Haram also abducted roughly 275 schoolgirls on April 14, with US, Canada, France and UK offering military and intelligence help to Nigeria this week.
