Boko Haram may have just killed 2000 people

[Os Cangaceiros]

Meanwhile, in Nigeria...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/01/09/boko-haram-may-have-killed-2000-people-in-one-attack/

[TheRadicalAntichrist]

The proletariat in Nigeria, especially the female comrades, need to arm themselves and organize to defend their communities, since the corrupt police and army bourgeois lapdogs are incapable and unwilling to do so.

[Os Cangaceiros]

After a week of bloodshed unleashed by Islamists Boko Haram left hundreds of civilians dead across north-eastern Nigeria (http://www.theguardian.com/world/nigeria), Ibrahim Abu wanted to try to forget. He and three friends had met for tea in an outdoor bar beside an open-air market in Potiskum, a small town in Nigeria’s Yobe state, when an explosion threw them to the floor.

“I looked up and saw body parts everywhere, then the body of a little girl cut in two,” he said, his voice still shaking as he recounted the incident. As traders scrambled around him, he felt paralysed with shock. The body of another child was being pulled out of the rubble. By the end of the afternoon, three other people were dead and 26 wounded.

The bombing by two suspected child suicide bombers in a crowded market on Sunday capped a week of horror and marked an ominous escalation in violence with elections in Africa’s most populous nation less than five weeks away.

A day earlier in neighbouring Borno state another young girl, who is also believed to have been about 10 years old, was stopped for a security check in the capital’s main market when bombs strapped to her detonated, killing at least 16 people.

Residents across Borno were already reeling after Boko Haram militants rampaged through remote villages for almost four days in what Amnesty International and the Nigerian army said was the group’s deadliest attack.

In Baga, a fishing settlement on the shores of Lake Chad, fleeing residents were unable to count the bodies that littered the fields. Amnesty put the number of dead at 2,000, although it didn’t say how it had verified the number. Other estimates suggested 600 was a more likely figure.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/11/child-suicide-bombers-nigeria-market

No shame in Boko Haram's game, goddamn

[consuming negativity]

why do these people still exist?

serious question

[DOOM]

why do these people still exist?

serious question

I've heard the Nigerian Government doesn't really bother.

I saw some videos depicting Boko Haram killing remorselessly people. I'm so angry right now

[bricolage]

Very grim.


On Monday, bodies still littered the bushes in the area.

"It is still not safe to go and pick them up for burial," said Musa Bukar, the chairman of the local government where Baga is located.

No emergency crews will enter the villages where militants are still running amok, local authorities said.

"Baga is not accessible because it is still occupied by Boko Haram," said Sen. Maina Ma'aji Lawan of northern Borno state.

The misery is far from over.

Those who survived the attack and tried to swim to Chad are now stranded on Kangala Island on Lake Chad.

Chadian authorities are asking the United Nations to help relocate more than 1,000 of them.

Abubakar Gamandi, a native of Baga who was away during the attack, said those trapped there are dying.

"‎I have been in touch with them on the phone," he said. "They told me ‎some of them are dying from lack of food, cold and malaria on the mosquito-infested island."

Of the 30,000 people displaced during the attacks, 20,000 camped in Maiduguri city. An additional 10,000 were being ferried from Monguno town, which is about 60 kilometers (36 miles) from Baga.http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/12/africa/boko-haram-deadliest-attack/

[bricolage]

I've heard the Nigerian Government doesn't really bother.
Yeah I'm definitely not an expert (so am happy to be corrected on any of this) but I've heard that the attacks are mainly on areas that the government doesn't get support from so is less interested in fighting back, also issues of south vs north/christian vs muslim conflict/discrimination. There's an election coming up so I wonder what role Boko Haram will play in it - I imagine they'll be terrorising those trying to vote but if it's mainly done in areas that Goodluck Jonathan's lot won't be getting votes to what extent will stopping that be a priority?

[Ⓐdh0crat]

why do these people still exist?

serious question
A toxic cocktail of corruption and the (particularly) dire socioeconomic situation in northern Nigeria. I don't think the central government's uninterested in fighting them - they pose a clear and intractable threat to their authority - so much as they are willing to tolerate their presence in certain areas. The official policy is best-described as one of containment. At any rate, they're doing nothing, and will likely never do anything, to address the diabolical conditions (illiteracy, poverty, unemployment) that provide Boko Haram with a permanent source of recruits.

[Prof. Oblivion]

I've heard the Nigerian Government doesn't really bother.

I saw some videos depicting Boko Haram killing remorselessly people. I'm so angry right now

The Nigerian military has been equally as brutal as Boko Haram. There have been numerous reports of human rights abuses and the mass slaughter of civilians by the Nigerian military, to the extent that many civilians have joined Boko Haram to attempt to escape the military. The Nigerian military joined with local spontaneous militias of young men in an operation called Operation Flush. These militias were supposedly set up to fight off Boko Haram, but they were essentially gangs who would capture civilians and beat them to attempt to extract a confession. Even if civilians continued to deny they were Boko Haram the militias and military would beat and murder them in the streets.

The sad part of the whole thing is that Boko Haram is getting all of this international attention and outrage, and the Nigerian government is not even though it deserves comparable outrage.

[jullia]

I think Nigeria and a lot of other nations in Africa should be divide. The actual borders don't fit and people are not ready to live all together.
It's just a necessity to redraw the country by taking in account the religion and the tribe of the people.
On a short term, it's the best decision.

[Bala Perdida]

It's strange to think, even as they ramp up activity they've completely slipped from the news ever since the mass abduction. I'm surprised that got as much attention as it did.

[bricolage]

A toxic cocktail of corruption and the (particularly) dire socioeconomic situation in northern Nigeria. I don't think the central government's uninterested in fighting them - they pose a clear and intractable threat to their authority - so much as they are willing to tolerate their presence in certain areas. The official policy is best-described as one of containment.
The military is fighting Boko Haram sure but I also think it's fair to say that the current government has little interest in it, I mean I don't even think Jonathan has even commented on it yet! One report said that one reason this area might have been attacked is that they had been forming vigilante groups because of the lack of state protection - that seems a trend in a lot of conflicts like this.

[bricolage]

I think Nigeria and a lot of other nations in Africa should be divide. The actual borders don't fit and people are not ready to live all together.
It's just a necessity to redraw the country by taking in account the religion and the tribe of the people.
On a short term, it's the best decision.
I'm sure the people of north-eastern Nigeria would love to be shut off in a state with Boko Haram...

But I actually saw a report today (it was on Mail & Guardian but now I can't find it) that said if you were to divide Africa by tribes you'd get over 2,000 states. And considering you've mentioned religion and tribe you're getting into even more confusions. I think socialists should at least try to respond to issues without substituting existing nationalism for tribalism or religious nationalism.

[jullia]

I'm sure the people of north-eastern Nigeria would love to be shut off in a state with Boko Haram...

But I actually saw a report today (it was on Mail & Guardian but now I can't find it) that said if you were to divide Africa by tribes you'd get over 2,000 states. And considering you've mentioned religion and tribe you're getting into even more confusions. I think socialists should at least try to respond to issues without substituting existing nationalism for tribalism or religious nationalism.

Obviously they don't want to live together and are not ready to it. Sometimes you must be pragmatic.
You said it in the post above, some people are consider as second class citizen.

[bricolage]

Obviously they don't want to live together and are not ready to it. Sometimes you must be pragmatic.
You said it in the post above, some people are consider as second class citizen.
Who is 'they' though? Does everyone in Nigeria want to country split by religion? Do Boko Haram speak for all Muslim Nigerians? Does everyone in Northern Nigeria want to be left in a new state at the mercy of Wahhabi nutjobs?

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I think South Sudan is a mark against the idea that creating additional national divisions can solve the real issues at hand. If people have a desire to split themselves into smaller as smaller states, whatever but I think we can usually trace the source of these movements back to a competing group of elites looking to gain control of resources in just about every case.

[xyouthxattackx]

I guess there are few hundreds of US soldiers with all necessary equipment in Nigeria. It's hard to believe that terrorists can slaughter thousands of innocent people while the army is near. So I'm trying to say that BokoHaram is a fake :unsure:

[jullia]

I think South Sudan is a mark against the idea that creating additional national divisions can solve the real issues at hand. If people have a desire to split themselves into smaller as smaller states, whatever but I think we can usually trace the source of these movements back to a competing group of elites looking to gain control of resources in just about every case.

The creation of south soudan don't avoid all the problem but it limit the number of trouble. I remember some times ago, people worry that thing will turn in a genocide.

[Hrafn]

The creation of south soudan don't avoid all the problem but it limit the number of trouble. I remember some times ago, people worry that thing will turn in a genocide.

It became a genocide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sudanese_Civil_War

Tens of thousands killed in inter-tribal war since December 2013, a million displaced.

Explain to me how you, my dear separatist, intend to solve the ethnic conflicts of South Sudan (http://gulf2000.columbia.edu/images/maps/Sudan_Ethnic_Linguistic_lg.jpg)?. Separatism solves nothing. There are no solid regions of 100% ethnicity, it's all mixed up. If you try to break them up into tiny little units, you'll also have to oversee widespread compulsory population displacement.

[Resistance Line]

I've heard the Nigerian Government doesn't really bother.

I saw some videos depicting Boko Haram killing remorselessly people. I'm so angry right now

Of course they don't. The bourgeois dogs are more interested in painting the average Muslim as the enemy or other than they are in offering genuine resistance against Islamic extremism.

Remember that, it's not White boys from the United States, Europe, and the settle nations of the Commonwealth, but rather, it's PKK and Iraqi Communist Party militants, among others, that are at the front lines of the struggle against ISIS.

From the Cold War, and into the modern era, leftist groups of every faction, from the Maoist to the Trot, from the avowed atheist to the devout Islamic socialist, in the Middle East and Western Asia have been branded as terrorists by the United States, Israel, and their allies for being willing to take arms in genuine resistance against Islamic extremists.

If the masses were able to rise up without fear of getting mowed down by Uncle Sam's patsies, the Wahhabi dogs would be to sleep once and for all.