Boko Haram: Terrorist Organization or CIA Covert Operation in Destabilization Plots Against Nigeria

The abduction of almost 300 girls from schools in northern Nigeria in recent weeks has received worldwide attention, including a pledge from the U.S. government to help investigate. The group behind these kidnappings, which calls itself Boko Haram, is allegedly part of a jihadist Islamist organization that has been linked to al-Qaeda and is responsible for a series of increasingly brazen attacks in Nigeria, currently the richest country in Africa by GDP.

Once virtually unknown, Boko Haram has now suddenly thrust into the Global media spotlight driven by the shocking kidnappings. But questions still remain about the true origins of the group and why the U.S. Government is getting involved.

According to reports provided by the Wikileaks, the US embassy in Nigeria was identified as a forward operating base for wide and far reaching acts of subversion against Nigeria which include but not limited to eavesdropping on Nigerian government communication, financial espionage on leading Nigerians, support and funding of subversive groups and insurgents, sponsoring of divisive propaganda among the disparate groups of Nigeria and the use of visa blackmail to induce and coerce high ranking Nigerians into acting in favour of US interests.

But beyond what we know from the Wikileaks report, many Nigerians also believe the US embassy’s activities in Nigeria fits into a long term US government’s well camouflaged policy of containment against Nigeria the ultimate goal of which is to eliminate Nigeria as a potential strategic rival to the US in the African continent.

Nigeria is a country with a population of 160 million and has been called the world's fastest growing economy. But today as Nigerians are reeling from the negative effects of an insurgency that has befallen the country and earnestly seeking answers to what all this portends for the future. One of the nation's largest watchdog groups, Green-White is warning that a silent, undeclared war of attrition is being waged against Nigeria by the Government of United States of America.

The Green-White Coalition is a citizen’s volunteer watchdog made up of Nigerians of all ethnic groups and religious persuasions. who have taken it upon themselves to expose and thwart all 'diabolical' plans in Nigeria. They say the American Government has been hijacked by corrupt corporate elements that have taken America and Americans hostage. The group is dedicated to ferreting out information and plan counter actions against any untoward moves by the United States Government in Nigeria.

BACKGROUND TO U.S. DEALINGS WITH NIGERIA AND TIMELINES - FROM ACRI TO AFRICOM

ACRI stands for Africa Crises Response Initiative and it was set up in October 1996. The purpose of the Initiative was to work with international partners and African nations to enhance African peacekeeping and humanitarian relief capacity. Through the ACRIprogram, the United States promised training and equipment to African nations seeking to enhance their peacekeeping capabilities and are committed todemocratic progress, principles, and civilian rule.

For years Nigerian activist have claimed the initiative was actually a counterweight to the Nigeria led ECOWAS Monitoring Group on the Liberian Civil War or ECOMOG as it is more popularly known.

"ACRI came to being from the secret reports and recommendations separately by the Africa-America Institute and the Brookings Institute commissioned by the Central Intelligence Agency, who were engaged in foreign activities pertaining to the Liberian civil war and the intervention of ECOMOG," says Iliyasu Gaduacri from Green-White.

According to Gaduacri, both reports zeroed in on the pivotal role Nigeria was playing in the ECOMOG initiative and noted pointedly the phenomenal success recorded by ECOMOG in containing the Liberian crisis without any significant role or intervention from any of the major western powers including the United States."

The report concluded that should ECOMOG be allowed to go the whole way, the major beneficiary will be Nigeria and that might form the basis for a pax Nigeriana in the West African sub-region eclipsing the influence of former colonial powers France and Britain.

The reports also called on the United States Government to note that Liberia being its creation should not be allowed to fall into Nigerian hands with consequences to US strategic interests in the country and the region. Specifically both reports noted that should Nigeria be allowed to have a foothold in Liberia, it will further embolden Nigeria to challenge the US and the West in carving its own sphere of interest at their expense.

In this regard, the report further recalled Nigeria’s role in helping to liberate the southern African countries in the 70’s and 80’s in clear opposition and defiance to the interests of the United States and its western allies which resulted in setback for Western initiatives in Africa at the time.

Both concluded with a recommendation that the US Government in conjunction with its allies should seek to contain the growing influence of Nigeria in the sub-region by forming a parallel organization to ECOMOG. But in order not to unduly alarm and antagonize Nigeria which the report admitted still had considerable influence in the region, the US government was advised to go about this using quiet diplomacy.

During the secret congressional hearing organized to consider the reports by both institutes on Nigeria’s role in the ECOMOG, the interagency team comprising representatives from the CIA, Pentagon and State Department formed to push the case, endorsed the recommendation that Nigeria be kept out of the alternate arrangements on Liberia that was being proposed.

The strategy was to win away some key African countries from participation enthusiastically in the ECOMOG initiative. The sweeteners for this were the promise and delivery of military and humanitarian aid. This was the line the then US Secretary of State Warren Christopher pursued when he visited a number of African countries excluding Nigeria to sell the ACRI idea.

Thus ensued, the stalemate in ECOMOG operations with some of the participating countries foot dragging in their commitment to the force and operations. On the diplomatic front, the US along with its allies namely Britain and France using the engineered stalemate as cover, proceeded to sell the idea that the ECOMOG initiative needed to be reviewed and given a new direction.

The US and its allies then argued that the intervention of outside powers such as the US and its western allies was the tonic needed to move the ECOMOG operation forward. But in order to prevent any worldwide backlash against this blatant interference in what should be a regional African initiative, the US and its allies sought to present it under the auspices of the United Nations with a select Asian and Latin American countries participating.

By the time the tallies were counted, the US had achieved the one objective of all the diplomatic and strategic maneuvers; the containment of Nigeria led ECOMOG initiative to resolve the Liberian Crises.

It was on the platform of this surreptitious American intervention in the Liberian crisis that the US Africa Command or AFRICOM was formed.

Unlike its precursor, the ACRI, which may have disguised US intentions in Africa particularly as it pertains to Nigeria under the cloak of multilateral humanitarian intervention, AFRICOM which came to being on October 1, 2008 is seems clearly programmed to serve US military-strategic interests especially with regards to the ever expanding global reach and influence of China in direct competition with the United States.

"In response to the growing influence of a rapidly expanding industrial China in Africa, the goal of AFRICOM is to seize key strategic areas in Africa and bring them under US control in order to block China’s access to vital energy and mineral resources for its expanding economy," said Gaduacri.

"But to effectively carry this out, such African countries of strategic importance must first of all be weakened internally and made to feel so vulnerable that they would have to inevitably seek US protection or intervention. A spur to this interventionist programme provides that any targeted African country that does not see the wisdom or resists the need to seek US protection will then have to suffer dismemberment with the pliant area carved out of the supposedly hostile area and given US protection."

We have seen this happen already in Africa where US Special Forces have been deployed to protect the countries there from so-called insurgents. In Sudan we have seen how a blanket cover of international humanitarian cries on the so-called Darfur crisis served as a prelude to the dismemberment of Sudan, who were pursuing landmark oil deals with the Chinese to the detriment of American companies.

We have also seen how Libya and Gaddafi were overthrown. But the greatest prize for AFRICOM, according to Green-White, is when it succeeds in the most strategic African country, Nigeria. This is where the raging issue of BOKO HARAM and the widely reported prediction by the United States Intelligence Council on the disintegration of Nigeria by 2015 comes into perspective.

From the 1st October 2010 bombing that rocked Abuja till the kidnapping of the schoolgirls, Nigeria seems to be locked in a vice like grip of a growing and intractable insurgency manifested in bombings of public places and sporadic attacks on public institutions resulting in the loss of scores of lives and destruction of properties. Predictably there has been a discernible growth in panic and tension in the country and not a few people are beginning to think that perhaps the country seems headed inevitably for a long drawn insurgency leading to a split. With the exception of the 1st October 2010 bombing incident, a shadowy group which goes by the name Boko Haram has laid claim to most of the subsequent incidents that have occurred in the country.

The seemingly intractable nature of the Boko Haram outrage has prompted a lot of questions from Nigerians. What really is this Boko Haram thing and what are their grievances if any? Why have they chosen to remain faceless in spite of the devastating effects of their activities on the psyche of the nation, and entreaties from Nigerian authorities to come forward for negotiations? Why are they able to perpetrate their attacks with relative ease and why has there not been a single clue at the scene of their acts to lead to them?

For sure, Nigerians are not unused to sectarian violence.  But many of those have been predictable and the modus and fault lines have been well known to the authorities who have always done well to keep them within tolerable limits.

The Boko Haram of Mohammed Yussuf which predated this new one can be so categorized and was well known through its operations, leadership and locations.

But how did a ragtag collection of largely half literate unsophisticated persons operating mostly on Okada transform literally overnight to being able to design, manufacture and deploy bombs in buildings and in vehicles costing in excess of a million naira and carry out attacks in several locations around the country?

How have their reach grown from just a corner of Nigeria to virtually everywhere in the country? For them to be able to mount such a sophisticated operation, they must necessarily have a well structured command and control system which in spite of their best efforts at concealment cannot remain undetected for long. So how have they seemingly defied the best efforts of combined security agencies in the country in detecting and foiling their activities?

The Green-White Coalition claims that the current Boko Haram campaign is a covert operation organized by the American Central Intelligence Agency, CIA and coordinated by the American Embassy in Nigeria.

"For some time now, the CIA has been running secret training and indoctrination camps along the porous and vulnerable borderlands of Niger, Chad and Cameroon. At these camps youths from poor, deprived and disoriented backgrounds are recruited and trained to serve as insurgents. The agents who supply these youth lure them with the promise of better life and work of Allah and further indoctrinated to believe they are working to install a just Islamic order from the ungodly one that currently holds sway in Nigeria," says Gaduacri.

According to Green-White, it is neither a coincidence nor guesswork that the National Intelligence Council of the United States Government estimated that Nigeria will disintegrate by the year 2015. The whole report actually is a coded statement of intentions on how using destabilization plots the US plans to eventually dismember Nigeria.

The whole goal of the destabilization campaign is to ensure that Nigeria is weakened internally by intractable crises leading up to 2015 when the next general elections are expected to come up. By that year there will be so much mutual suspicion among Nigerians that the elections itself might not hold or if they did at all will set the stage for a full rapture of the Nigerian state. By its calculation and design, the Nigerian state will be so fractious by then; it will be fully ripe for intervention and break up.

The main beneficiary will of course be the United States which started all this in the first place and which will be there to profit at the end. By engineering the break up of Nigeria, the United States would have eliminated a potential continental rival paving the way to the institution of a Pax Americana in Africa and secondly it would have limited its main global strategic rival China from direct access to badly needed energy and other mineral resources on the resource rich African continent.

Against this background we need to stop and ask critical questions; is the rise of Boko Haram and these heinous kidnapping all part of an intricate plot to destabilize the African nation of Nigeria. What about those Wikileaks reports. Was the US Embassy in Nigeria being used as a forward CIA operating base. Why is all this happening just ahead of perhaps Nigeria's most important election.

Why is it that a country which has always been known for its resilience and ability to resolve its problems without outside interference, now being forced to receive outside help? Why would someone somewhere be hell bent on engineering Nigerians to form the unNigerian habit of harbouring and perpetrating desperate, extreme and unforgiving actions against themselves?

Before the world simply jumps on the Islamic terrorism bandwagon, maybe we all should take a much deeper look at the history of this region and who stands to gain the most from acts of terror in Nigeria. Unfortunately none of this can bring comfort to those kidnapped children and their families. but the key to helping the Nigerian people lies in truth, and many questions are going unanswered.

"Should we all 160million of us stand idly by and allow the United States achieve its selfish and diabolical aim of sowing discord in our country leaving us with widows, orphans and humanitarian problems as it has done in other places," stated Iliyasu Gaduacri.

"From Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan and Latin America, America’s track record around the world has been nothing but ugly. In the words of its own statesmen, America has no permanent friends but permanents interests which translate into a healthy and utter disregard to the sensitivities and interests of other countries. That has pretty much formed the basis of US interaction around the world. The same situation will play itself out if we allow them in to our country."