A Nigeria Thread (Non-Music Division)

i don't see this debate as anything new, really. al qaeda and other militarized forms of islam have been at the center of debates about islamic identity for decades.

the question is what counts as 'islamic theology', who makes that call & why. the broader your definition of a blanket term the less useful it becomes as an explanation of events&motivations. if you argued that say, islam, oppressed women you would have to exclude certain elements as inessential, despite lots of people explicitly identifying as islamic feminists

no disagreement from me. that a particular ideology emerges from islam means more about the ideology than it does about islam as a whole (which is too complex to reduce to most sociopolitical generalizations)

A pretty good summation of what a lot of Nigerians think is really going on here, albeit with a very strong Jonathan/PDP bent
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/05/season-conspiracies-goodluck-jonathan/

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/05/23/nigerias_house_of_cards_growth_boko_haram_inequality

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/08/world/africa/nigerian-newspaper-weekly-trust-says-army-blocked-distribution.html

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/boko-haram-may-have-killed-thousands-attack-say-experts-n283011

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30728158
From the BBC story on this

While President Goodluck Jonathan, who is seeking re-election next month, has condemned the attack on a French satirical magazine in Paris as dastardly, he has not commented on the violence at home, our reporter says.

this story made me so sick + sad
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/world/africa/suicide-bomber-hits-maiduguri-nigeria-market.html

Terrible. Using a 10-year-old girl as your suicide bomber.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/12/-sp-boko-haram-attacks-nigeria-baga-ignored-media

More on why the Baga killings have gotten little media attention

journalism has had trouble covering African conflicts (thinking specifically sudan, congo, nigeria, mali off-hand) for a long time now - it's not safe so it's hard to keep ppl out in the field and i guess it doesn't generate enough clicks to dedicate specific reporters to various areas. so a lot of western media can only re-report african news stories which are often underfunded themselves.

Plus, as the article and others have noted, Nigeria's own politicians, especially its prez, don't even want to talk about it:

Media analyst Ethan Zuckerman said that the president is “understandably wary of discussing Boko Haram, as it reminds voters that the conflict has erupted under his management and that his government has been unable to subdue the terror group”. Nigeria’s elections are set to take place on 14 February. The president was also criticised for celebrating his daughter Ine’s wedding over weekend, in the aftermath of the killings.

The situation in the north can seem so hopeless. Will the February elections make a difference?

I don't see how it could help.

Couldn't a new president help improve the military, the government bureaucracy, and work with other nations better to make life in the north better for the citizens(controlling or defeating extremists and making life better for others so they won't wanna join the extremists). Naive dreams?

Maybe if we all started wearing t-shirts that said "I Am Nigeria"?

Nigerians in the diaspora are already tweeting stuff like that!

First thing to do is to get shot of this clown, Goodluck Johnson.

http://touchvision.com/video/96698

The PDP is by far the most powerful political party in Nigeria and has won every election in the country (handily but by no means uncontroversially) since sustained civilian government became a reality 16 years ago. This may change in the future if the newly formed APC continues to gain traction, but it almost definitely won't during next months election. In that sense thinking of Goodluck as the problem isn't really helpful, especially if we're not giving due consideration to what the most likely alternative would be.

The government's silence on the Baga situation is odd and inexcusable but not entirely surprising. Goodluck's unfailing tactlessness as a leader and public figure aside, the level of intrigue surrounding Boko Haram and power brokers in the north is crazy and looming elections only serve to exacerbate that. The silence is certainly calculated but trying to parse what the logic behind it might be is futile and depressing.

The military was quite purposefully hobbled both in terms of manpower, funding and bureaucratic infrastructure, retaining usefulness in the fulfilment of foreign mandates but severely limited in its capacity to act meaningfully within the country. Of course in the wake of a deadly civil war and the coups and counter-coups that brought about numerous military dictators this made absolute sense. Now of course things are different, the army isn't equipped to deal with Boko Haram and Washington is blocking attempts by the Nigerian government to purchase arms on human rights grounds.

As for cooperation with other nations...
http://www.punchng.com/news/chad-niger-pulled-out-soldiers-from-baga-cds/

Sadly, things will most probably get worse beyond the election, which is likely to see unprecedented levels of violence. Plummeting oil prices has put tanked the economy with the added insult of Nigerians not experiencing the benefit of reduced prices. The Naira is in a hole and public sector workers aren't being paid, so yeah I guess naive dreams is about right.

it should probably be mentioned that chad soldiers have been pretty controversial as well

Was reading about refugee issues across the borders in the North. Folks are fleeing

The idea of Goodluck Jonathan not wanting to talk about Boko Haram for reasons of political expediency is sickening.

unless you are considering them (very) recent converts to Islam?

Forced conversions, of course.

That image reminded me of Ceddo, Ousmane Sembene's 1977 drama about the forced Islamisation in the 17th century Sahel of his native Senegal. It's on YouTube with French or English subtitles.

bh now in cameroon

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2015/01/chadian-troops-join-war-against-boko-haram-201511815165034154.html

interesting -- didn't chad mostly intervene on the side of Séléka in CAR? not that they couldn't be okay w/ one form of nationalist islam and be disgusting by haram (and who wouldn't be tbh)

Don't know.

A Nigerian general from the 1980s is back:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/world/africa/muhammadu-buhari-nigeria-election.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

After ruling Nigeria with an iron hand 30 years ago as the country’s military leader, Mr. Buhari is now a serious threat at the ballot box, analysts say, in large part because of Boko Haram’s blood-soaked successes.

http://pando.com/2015/01/28/the-war-nerd-boko-haram-and-the-demon-consensus/

I was hoping ilx would get all fired up about this super provocative piece but I just realized that like only 4 of us actually read this thread so it's unlikely most of ilx is going to even see it.

I liked it fwiw, his points abt the "Left" are mostly on target although imo a bit reductive in terms of seeing 'the Left" as some monolithic entity

love his slam on colonial Britain as well

basically an article that needed to be written, hope it gets read more widely than it probably will.

I have missed this left-wing Boko Haram apologism. Does it exist?

did he mention left-wing apologism for boko haram or just the left-wing cynical exploitation of boko haram to deflect attention from charlie hebdo but otherwise total ignorance?

At the end he approvingly quotes Mark Ames saying that the left views Boko Haram style jihadis as an anti-imperialist hence progressive force.

People who wanted to divert attention from CH to Nigeria probably wanted to say something like “the West doesn’t really care about Islamic terrorism, it only cares when it hurts white people, or when there is political currency to be gained by appearing to care”.

well i mean i agree w/ mark ames analysis of the post-colonial left (aka any enemy of the west is a friend of mine) but i think he's more speculating about why the left doesn't care so much about boko haram (or seleka, or houthi, or a few years ago janjaweed in darfur, etc) under normal circumstances, but not suggesting that there's a cottage industry of boko haram apologia which would be too crass for everyone.

for one thing, you have to know something about these countries before you can even start on the apologia. easier to just ignore it.

People who wanted to divert attention from CH to Nigeria probably wanted to say something like “the West doesn’t really care about Islamic terrorism, it only cares when it hurts white people, or when there is political currency to be gained by appearing to care”.

I did see this

That guy paints with too broad a stroke re "the Left", "Sahel/Muslim" etc and of course only takes on certain "cool bloggers" (meaning Greenwald, et. al)while ignoring governments and "the right" and right-wing bloggers. Acknowledging enduring aspects of colonialism is propably too cliched left for this guy (some of his writing I just skimmed so I could b ewrong). Thus, it seems like he is just more interesting in some "gotcha" points against certain lefty bloggers, than in trying to get people to really care about Africans in the affected areas.

well to be fair he makes it clear that he has been trying to get ppl to care about that for years now, and this column was mostly venting about the way the issue has recently come up

i think he legitimately cares, but yeah his shtick is a kind of matt taibbi style outrage for the geopolitical set- he's not a particularly sensitive writer. (but also i don't think he feels the need to condemn the right-wing since Pando/Exile is nominally left wing - so they're swinging at ppl in their group)

mordy you do a good job being "provocative" by posting the most asinine "thinkpieces" on political issues, even ones you disagree with. i'm not sure if you think you're going god's work or what.

i'm instantly skeptical of anyone who invokes "the left" as some kind of monolithic enterprise

note to self: never click on a mordy link again. i've wasted so much time reading thinkpieces by smart people making really dumb, overly broad arguments.

idk about "god's work" but I do prefer a "wrong" provocative piece to a "right" boring one

your reaction to an article you didn't like seems a bit over the top imo

i'm just sick of reading stupid thinkpieces, is all.

idk about "god's work" but I do prefer a "wrong" provocative piece to a "right" boring one

― Mordy, Friday, January 30, 2015 1:08 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

disagree. who need to get their blood pressure up for no reason? not me.

Maybe its a worthwhile discussion in its own right but I'm not particularly interested in the whole leftist disingenuity wrt Islam angle he hooks the piece on. His gloating on the matter cheapens whatever genuine interest and sympathy he purports to have; even more so when he links back to earlier pieces in making his point that feature the same factional sneering.

Beyond that its a pretty good illustration of the nonsense you're likely to come up with if you evaluate culture and religion in broad strokes and through the prism of warfare. His conflation of all Sahelian conflict is particularly daft. His relating of Boko Haram to Arab racism/skin tone is baffling and completely nonsensical.

The blunt vilification of the Kanuri is appalling bordering on outright racist. In fact much of the ethnography he employs in that piece vacillates between patronising, ill considered and flat out malicious. Its baffling to me that he thinks it makes sense to refer to century old sources that are couched in the scientific racism that underpinned the colonial period and use them unreservedly in blanket evaluations of modern day people. He might as well bring out some tape and start measuring skulls.

This is a decent (and relatively concise) appraisal of much of what the article touches on for anyone that's interested.
http://africanarguments.org/2014/12/19/the-tragedy-of-borno-state-local-dimensions-of-boko-harams-insurgency-by-michael-baca/

The history he lays down is extensive (even admirably so) but also deeply flawed. You're better off disregarding his description of the civil war and its causes entirely. The narrative that places the Igbo as victims of Nigerian history and the Hausa/Fulani as the hand of oppression is seductively elegant and easy to swallow but also beyond facile. I strongly suspect that much of his understanding of the Biafra war and the Igbo people came from Chinua Achebe's "There Was a Country" and while a great read, it is a reflection of Achebe's place in Nigerian history as an Igbo man that loved his people and fought for Biafra. It reflects his growing disillusionment with the realities of Nigerian statehood shortly before he passed. It is a memoir, not a dedicated historical text but it's quite clear that this guy has treated it as such.

A weird piece. Aside from the Igbophile streak and a blanket disdain for Islamic Sahelian cultures I can't really understand where he's coming from or place what paradigms he's followed to get to a lot of the conclusions he's made. I can't be too mad at that because he's essentially working in a vacuum with this. The people he considers his peers aren't likely to challenge what he writes here and I guess that gives him room to take a lot of license with the topic. At least in that sense the lack of "Hunger for Knowledge" he refers to presents a real issue.

To his credit I will say the aside about Ben Okri made me chuckle.