MIlitary Awaiting Presidential Directive To Declare Total War Against Boko Haram Insurgency

                                  President Jonathan you have waited enough declare total war on boko haram insurgency as Nigeria’s military are awaiting for your directive to declare total war against Boko Haram insurgents. They appeared tired of fighting clinical war, assuming they ever tried it. Sources within the military, suggest the newspapers, are eager to receive the orders. The eagerness is a reflection of the frustrations the Nigerian military has endured since the war against the militants began to go badly.

 Now, arguing that Boko Haram were recruiting child soldiers and their commanders were using women and children as shields, Nigerian military brass are putting their hope, perhaps the last hope, in the adoption of the Sri Lankan war strategy described as Total War.

The tactics puts enemies and shields equally at risk. But it is surprising that local hunters and others who reclaimed Mubi in Adamawa State from Boko Haram last week were neither hamstrung by child soldiers and women shields nor did they blast their way indiscriminately through the civilian maze.

It will be recalled that sometime in May, Sri Lankan defence chiefs visited Nigeria and presented papers on how their country, using the strategy of Total Security, defeated the Tamil Tigers who had fought a 26-year insurgency against the country. Rising from the lectures, Nigerian military chiefs suggested they would study the Sri Lankan strategy and adapt it as much as possible.

This columnist was alarmed by the eagerness with which the Nigerian military was prepared to adopt a tactics that wars against our country’s culture, ethnic pastiche and religious sensibilities. Should we go ahead to adopt the Total War concept, this columnist argued somewhere else in this newspaper in June, Nigeria’s security crisis could become more complicated.

Sadly, however, even the 19 northern states governors and other northern elders have tearfully advocated the Total War doctrine. They are shortsighted. On June 19, I had offered the following argument: “Sri Lanka may have defeated the terrorist Tamil Tigers in 2009, but that country’s democratic credentials remain suspect, with no prospect for a change for the better anytime soon.

In fact the consensus is that the 26-year civil war ‘undermined democracy and eroded the rule of law.’ The United Nations (UN) estimates that some 12,000 people detained by Sri Lankan security forces have disappeared, and are presumed murdered by the state. Sri Lanka acknowledges that about half of the detainees have died. The civil war itself cost about 80,000 to 100,000 lives, about half of them civilians.

“Sri Lanka may have defeated Tamil insurgency, but it is a country with a population of less than 21 million, a little more populous than Lagos State. In addition, its demographic make-up is infinitely less complex. With more than 70 percent Sinhalese majority and less than 12 percent Tamil, the civil war was a straightforward Sinhalese versus Tamil conflict.

Nigeria’s ethnic and religious pastiche is on the other hand problematically complex, a situation Boko Haram has more imaginatively exploited and aggravated. Total War or Total Security may seem sound on paper, in reality, however, the Nigerian anti-terror war calls for a much deeper understanding of the issues involved and a scientific approach to solving it.”

The objective conditions on the ground in the Boko Haram war have not changed a bit. Our soldiers flee battle not because they are inherently cowardly or are lacking in battle experience, but because, as the Borno State governor once said, they are not as motivated as the militants.

With the supply of fresh weapons and now regular payment of allowances, it was expected our troops would fight more sure-footedly. If they are not doing so, it is because, as I also said somewhere else, they are not motivated by their country and its leaders. Our troops, like the rest of us, have no great concept of country to fight for or defend, let alone die for.

 They are exasperated by what the government has made of democracy, and are not inspired by a president who is neither inspired himself nor clever enough to even visit despondent victims of the insurgency, such as the parents of abducted Chibok schoolgirls, and hundreds of students massacred while they slept or assembled for morning devotion.

The problem with Nigeria’s counterinsurgency strategy is not just lack of sophisticated arms, corruption, and Boko Haram using women and children as human shields. Until we have a great sense or concept of Nigeria which a vast majority can identify with, and a leadership that knows how to inspire the people to feats of derring-do, our soldiers will flee battle, a situation no amount of Sri Lankan-style Total War can redeem.