Nigerian Kidnaps: What Can Really Be Done?
Updated: 2:46pm UK, Tuesday 06 May 2014
By Sam Kiley, Foreign Affairs Editor
The temptation to "do something" is almost overwhelming. Some 270 school girls abducted, many already raped, dragged into the bush and now threatened with being sold into slavery.
Of course the "do something" instinct comes to the fore.
In fact it's only really become an international cry since the leader of Boko Haram, which means Western education is sinful, delivered a 57-minute diatribe in Hausa, Arabic and English, threatening the girls with slavery this week.
Inside Nigeria, the government has been under growing pressure to "do something".
Dr Sakyimah Akilu, a presidential adviser and spokeswoman on national security, told Sky News that it was true that there was a general impression that the Nigerian government had failed to react to the mass abductions.
"The truth is that we are pursuing every lead we have had. But you have to understand that they have been taken into the Sambisa forest and perhaps into the mountains in Cameroon - there are many places to hide," she said.
This fatalism may explain why the Nigerian administration of Goodluck Jonathan appears to have been flat footed in hunting down the radical Islamist group which is now threatening the girls with a most un-Islamic torment.
William Hague said: "Using girls as the spoils of war and the spoils of terrorism is disgusting and immoral. It should show everybody across the world that they should not give any support for such a vile organisation …
"Britain is offering assistance, but of course the primary responsibility will rest with the Nigerians, and I hope they will do what is necessary to reunite these girls with their families."
The British Foreign Secretary is vague on what that "assistance" could be.
In all likelihood, it would take the form of Special Force advice on how to track the girls. Perhaps some help, too, with surveillance.
But both would be limited. More of a gesture than anything else.
Special Forces from South Africa, Britain, the United States and other Western nations have been on the trail of the similarly horrible Lord's Resistance Army in the Central African Republic for decades.
Their analysis has been that while they could probably kill the leadership of the LRA, a capture operation would be almost impossible.
A similar military analysis would emerge on Boko Haram - finding and saving the missing girls would be almost impossible - slaughtering elements of Boko Haram would not.
But killing won't solve the problem.
The sad truth is that Nigeria's missing children are likely to stay that way.
Efforts to negotiate a peace deal with Boko Haram's leader Abdulbakar Shekau over the last four years - while 4,000 Nigerians died - have come to nought.
Now he has the attention of the whole world, he won't want to give up on the limelight the missing girls have given him.
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