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| Africa Subsaharan |
| Military top brass meet in Nigeria on Boko Haram |
| 2015-06-10 |
| [Al Ahram] Military top brass from Nigeria and surrounding countries met Tuesday to thrash out plans to take on 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... , as new Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari takes early steps aiming to defeat the bad boys. Chiefs of defence staff from Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon ...a long, narrow country that fills the space between Nigeria and Chad on the northeast, CAR to the southeast. Prior to incursions by Boko Haram nothing ever happened there... and a high-level military official from Benin held talks in Abuja to determine strategies for a new, African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... -backed regional force against the rebels. The meeting "points to our common resolve to work together to put an end to a menace that has become a regional and indeed a global problem", Nigeria's chief of defence staff Alex Badeh said at the start of talks. "If there is any time for us to rise in one voice irrespective of our differences, it is now," he added. The long-awaited Multi-National Joint Task Force, which was due to have been operational in November, has its headquarters in Chad's capital, N'Djamena, under a senior Nigerian officer. In the meantime, troops from Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon have been fighting Boko Haram holy warriors in northeast Nigeria ... a particularly crimson stretch of Islam's bloody border... for several months and have claimed a series of successes. The Nigerian military announced on Monday evening that the chiefs of defence staff meeting was being held in preparation for talks on Thursday between heads of state and government of all five countries. Buhari, a former army general, has been Nigeria's president since May 29 and has made ending Boko Haram's six-year insurgency the top priority for his administration. He immediately announced the transfer of the military command centre from Abuja to the strategic city of Maiduguri, in the northeastern rebel stronghold, and visited Niger and Chad to push for continued cooperation. On Sunday, he travelled to the G7 summit of leading industrialised nations to garner further support from world powers on the security threat, including intelligence and training. Buhari's nascent presidency has however seen an increase in suspected Boko Haram attacks, with 11 recorded since he took the oath of office and at least 93 deaths. |
| Posted by:Fred |