The Nigerian Army has been at its best in the North-East of late.Nothing
proves it more than a news item the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera TV aired not
long ago. Its reporter had gone to areas affected by insurgency in the
North-East to investigate what he called a resurgence in house
construction. He made sense. When houses begin to spring up in a war
zone, it means people have gained confidence, they believe normalcy is
returning. But our North-East and the new houses aren’t where I’m going.
Libya is; no, it’s Syria that actually comes first. Then, I’ll take the
route in reverse order back to our North-East. Unfortunately, it’s this
same route paid fighters in Islamic State in Syria and Iraq are taking
at the moment. That they may end up in our North-East to cause us fresh
troubles is what I focus on here.
If the reader asks me what
difference can be between two groups that take up arms against the
state, I don’t know. But it’s important we don’t take both to be the
same. The West is particular about this. The United States, for
instance, has scant view of al-Assad’s government, actively supports
Syrian rebels, but hates IS. Al-Assad is fighting Syrian rebels, and it
fights IS at the same time. Russia supports al-Assad, and fights both
the rebels and IS. It’s a crazy scenario.We knew that a large part of
Syria had been taken over by Syrian rebels since 2014. They say they
want President Bashar al-Assad out of power. Those ones are different
from the fighters for Islamic State.
But the US and its western
allies see clearly through it. They want Assad out of power. They want
Syrian rebels that they call moderates to organise a new government. In
order to help rebels against al-Assad, they fight IS from the air,
dropping bombs on as many fighters as they can.
The government of
Syria didn’t start out fighting IS. It began by fighting rebels. All of
that had followed a protest for entrenchment of democracy which the
government repelled, forcing rebels to fight back. They soon controlled
parts of Syria. With government losing control of parts of its
territory, IS reinforced from Iraq that had been in chaos for a longer
time, occupied parts of Syria and thereafter proclaimed a grander
caliphate as Boko Haram had done across nations in the Lake Chad Basin.
We know however that there are more facts in the public space about what
IS has and does not have than Nigeria has about Boko Haram. By 2014,
territory under the control of IS in Syria and Iraq had peaked. Its
annual income was $2.9 billion from oil and gas installations in both
countries. It has also robbed banks of about $1 billion dollars. Some
$500 million come from sales of crude and refined oil smuggled out of
IS’ area of control. It illegally sold antiquities taken from museums.
It raised over a billion dollars in taxes as well as tariffs on goods
coming in and going out of its territory. Extortions through kidnapping
have also earned it some $45 million, and there are the donations from
sympathisers abroad.
With the West’s relentless bombing these
days, IS’ income is significantly reduced. The US military says IS’
territory has been cut by about 40 per cent in Syria and 20 per cent in
Iraq. It had also killed thousands of IS fighters. The outcome? Less
funds to pay fighters. So, many dropped their weapons to return to where
they came from, or where they could get paid for fighting. Libya is one
of such.
IS itself has always worked at having a foothold in
Libya. Europe has a fair idea of the number of its citizens that are
heading back home, or to Libya. African nations don’t, and they don’t
seem to care. But West Africans, including Nigerians, are known to have
fought in Syria, and are fighting in Libya.
It was a fact that
proliferation of arms across West Africa was noticed during the civil
war that brought down the former Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi. Civil
war continues in Libya, and it’s the country IS targets for a home with
the squeeze it’s getting in Syria.
Why is Libya a viable home for
IS? Like it happened in Iraq and Syria, IS is exploiting the collapse
of a central government in Libya, as well as the ongoing civil war.
Here, one government in Tripoli to the West, and another in Tobruk to
the east, claim to be in control of Libya. Both want to maintain the
territory under their control; they have no desire to wrest control of
territory from each other.
IS controls Sirte on the coast of the
Mediterranean Sea and some 200km around it. Since IS’ territory is
between the two rival governments, it’s largely at ease, even hoping to
expand in both directions.
Moreover, Sirte, Gaddafi’s hometown,
has world-class infrastructure such as a seaport, oil installations and
an international airport, making it attractive to IS. But it also means
IS can easily infiltrate Europe and cause havoc.
As things stand,
West Africa too is not safe. Having sworn allegiance to IS, Nigeria
needs to worry that Boko Haram may show IS fighters the route to our
North-East. IS reportedly has some 5,000 fighters in Sirte, and it
continues to attract to itself Africans that travel to Libya for the
purpose of getting into Europe. These migrants need money, and IS pays
good dollars. If it means to, IS can attract as many West Africans as it
needs. This situation is real to me, because in my movement across
northern Nigeria, I have had information from persons who know someone
that has gone to Libya.
In fact, there’s a recent case of a
Nigerian male who’s fighting in Libya and is alleged to have lured two
Nigerian girls to join him. What this means is that if things ever get
tight for IS in Libya, Nigeria should be prepared to fight another round
of war against Boko Haram tomorrow. And this will be on two different
fronts. One will be against our citizens who go out of the country that
we don’t know of yet. They are radicalised and when they return home and
mix up with people, they may form cells and cause mayhem. Then there’s
Boko Haram leadership that may lead IS fighters in this direction.
Part
of our challenges is that we don’t seem to know exactly the magnitude
of what confronts us. Nigeria still doesn’t have the needed information
on its enemies, except what foreign governments offer.
That is
okay where IS and Al-Qaeda are concerned. But foreign governments cannot
give us better information about our own citizens than we can. The
state of our information gathering is such that one worries about.
Sometimes one feels Nigeria doesn’t have agencies that are responsible
for gathering information at all. There’s that sense of chaos. When
killings took place in Enugu State recently, allegedly by herdsmen, our
agencies were preoccupied with trying not to be seen to have failed in
discharging their duties. One agency said the attackers were from
outside the country, without providing facts. The Nigeria Immigration
Service said the attackers were not foreigners, without providing facts
to back its claims. The picture here is, one doesn’t get signs that
these agencies are on top of the situation they are given statutory
power to control.
What does all of that tell us about the job the
military has on its hands in the war against terrorism? A difficult
task. The military is combing North-East for terrorists, but it hasn’t
relevant information about the next possible line of attack from
terrorists. I doubt that we’re watching Libya closely in order to
project what precautionary steps we should take. The other day, an
international body warned that the Nigerian military shouldn’t think
once it removes Boko Haram from its hideouts in Borno State it could go
and rest. I agree. Some of the issues raised above are the reasons the
organisation said what it said. What this means is that we may know when
we clear Sambisa forest of Boko Haram. What we don’t know is when and
how the enemies will launch the next attack. It’s the reason we must
prepare for tomorrow’s war, today.x
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