Article

2018-12-06 Africa Subsaharan

Durotoye says Boko Haram still alive only because powerful people are making money from counter-insurgency

[PULSE.NG] Presidential candidate of the Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN), Fela Durotoye, believes the only reason Boko Haram

... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
's insurgency has not ended after nine years is because there are powerful people making money from the nation's counter-insurgency.

The terrorist group's insurgency escalated in 2009 after its spiritual leader, Mohammed Yusuf, was extra-judicially murdered by coppers. Hundreds of the group's members were also killed during the crackdown by the military.

While speaking during an interview with Pulse on Tuesday, December 4, 2018, Durotoye said the military has not been deliberate in its prosecution of the war because certain people are profiting from it.

He said unnamed military sources have previously told him that soldiers on the frontlines are sometimes ordered to not kill faceless myrmidons in their sights for unexplained reasons.

He further accused the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of using funds meant to prosecute the war to fund elections instead.

He said, "I spoke with a couple of military guys in the last two weeks and some of them were saying, 'Sir, we don't understand what's going on because sometimes even when you see the people and you want to attack them, they'll tell you not to.'

"This is what they said. They said they'll get orders from above to say, 'Don't kill them, capture them'. But these guys here have guns they want to kill you and you say don't kill them. If you say capture them, then there's a problem.

"I think it's important that we have military that are deliberate about ending this whole terrorism.

"For me, if you see that $1 billion is spent on arms against Boko Haram every four years just before election, you realise that there's more than meets the eye there.

"We know that every war all across the world, there are people, especially in the military, that are making a lot of money from it. In Nigeria, it's no different."

He said the APC and PDP have both used funds meant for financing the military to fight Boko Haram to achieve political means and urged Nigerians to vote both leading parties out in the 2019 general elections to prevent a future recurrence.

He said, "There are people that are making money from this and every war situation because there are people who are there and supposedly buying arms but we saw with Dasuki-gate especially where the money for the arms went. The money for the arms went to Ekiti election.

"PDP did it, APC did it. The only way to make sure it does not happen in the next four years is to make sure that it's not PDP or APC you're voting. That's the only way. We cannot continue to do the same thing the same way and expect different results."

Posted by Fred 2018-12-06 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11131 views ] Top
File under: Boko Haram (ISIS)

#1 Yup. War is a racket.

Posted by Herb McCoy 2018-12-06 00:36|| 2018-12-06 00:36|| Front Page Top

#2 In past ages, a war, almost by definition, was something that sooner or later came to an end, usually in unmistakable victory or defeat. In the past, also, war was one of the main instruments by which human societies were kept in touch with physical reality. All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers, but they could not afford to encourage any illusion that tended to impair military efficiency. So long as defeat meant the loss of independence, or some other result generally held to be undesirable, the precautions against defeat had to be serious. Physical facts could not be ignored. In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four. Inefficient nations were always conquered sooner or later, and the struggle for efficiency was inimical to illusions. Moreover, to be efficient it was necessary to be able to learn from the past, which meant having a fairly accurate idea of what had happened in the past. Newspapers and history books were, of course, always coloured and biased, but falsification of the kind that is practised today would have been impossible. War was a sure safeguard of sanity, and so far as the ruling classes were concerned it was probably the most important of all safeguards. While wars could be won or lost, no ruling class could be completely irresponsible.

But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous. When war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity. Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or disregarded. As we have seen, researches that could be called scientific are still carried out for the purposes of war, but they are essentially a kind of daydreaming, and their failure to show results is not important. Efficiency, even military efficiency, is no longer needed. Nothing is efficient in Oceania except the Thought Police. Since each of the three super-states is unconquerable, each is in effect a separate universe within which almost any perversion of thought can be safely practised. Reality only exerts its pressure through the needs of everyday life -- the need to eat and drink, to get shelter and clothing, to avoid swallowing poison or stepping out of top-storey windows, and the like. Between life and death, and between physical pleasure and physical pain, there is still a distinction, but that is all. Cut off from contact with the outer world, and with the past, the citizen of Oceania is like a man in interstellar space, who has no way of knowing which direction is up and which is down. The rulers of such a state are absolute, as the Pharaohs or the Caesars could not be. They are obliged to prevent their followers from starving to death in numbers large enough to be inconvenient, and they are obliged to remain at the same low level of military technique as their rivals; but once that minimum is achieved, they can twist reality into whatever shape they choose.

The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three super-states, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed for ever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This -- although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense -- is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: War is Peace.

Posted by Herb McCoy 2018-12-06 00:39|| 2018-12-06 00:39|| Front Page Top

#3 Herb, you are absolutely correct. Back when war was black and white Bertholdt Brecht wrote about where it was going in Mother Courage. It is a racket, as inhuman as it might sound, there's no reason to feel sorry for those who insist on living on the edges of it.

Posted by M. Murcek 2018-12-06 05:26|| 2018-12-06 05:26|| Front Page Top

#4 "There's war / plague / piracy / tyranny here. I guess we'll just have to stay." I'm supposed to feel sorry for that POV?

Posted by M. Murcek 2018-12-06 05:28|| 2018-12-06 05:28|| Front Page Top

#5 We keep getting told we have to "contain" Russian / Iranian / Islamist aggression by means that have been failing for half a century. MAD kept the Soviet Union in check. The ChiComs have a different outlook, may not care about MAD.

Build Prompt Global Strike, het it down around 18 minutes. Design / test / develop / build every possible missile defense technology. No 355 ship Navy. Too damn bad. No 6th generation fighter. Too damn bad. Spend taxpayer dollars to defend taxpayers, not to make Beltway contractors fat on offensive weapons that our politicians won't use anyway.

Start now.

Posted by M. Murcek 2018-12-06 05:37|| 2018-12-06 05:37|| Front Page Top

#6 There's a comfortable career, world travel, and prestige in peace processing.

Posted by Rob Crawford 2018-12-06 06:13|| 2018-12-06 06:13|| Front Page Top

#7 Nice dissertation, Hemingway. In the future, you might wanna cite your plagiarism = George Orwell

Posted by Frank G 2018-12-06 08:35|| 2018-12-06 08:35|| Front Page Top

#8 nice catch Frank

Posted by 746 2018-12-06 11:29|| 2018-12-06 11:29|| Front Page Top

#9 It wasn't plagiarism genius, the quote about the Party's slogan being "War is Peace" didn't tip you off?

Posted by Herb McCoy 2018-12-06 11:52|| 2018-12-06 11:52|| Front Page Top

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