Boko Haram Declares Its Own Caliphate In Nigeria
Unlike the U.S. response to ISIS, an expanding air campaign that is expected to soon target that group’s leadership and heavy weapons, Washington’s response to Boko Haram has been low-key. It is providing limited logistic and intelligence help for the Nigerian military, and last week announced a border-security program aimed at preventing the group from threatening Nigeria's neighbors. U.S. rhetoric has also been controlled and delivered in out-of-way settings, not by the president in a nationwide broadcast from the White House.
Emmanuel Ogebe, a Nigeria human rights lawyer, said one reason that there is so little interest in the conflict is that there are virtually no international media or aid and human-rights workers left in the region. "When the town of Michiko in Adamawa province fell last weekend, it was the last bastion of human rights workers, our staging area,” he said. “We were not allowed to stay overnight beyond that city. That was our safe haven, our front line. Now, it's much more difficult for us to tell the story."
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, visited the Nigerian capital of Abuja last week for a meeting of the U.S.-Nigeria bilateral working group. In remarks afterward, she said the threat was expanding. "Since our last meeting in August 2013, the frequency and scope of Boko Haram's terror attack have grown more acute and constitute a serious threat to this country's overall security," she said. "Boko Haram has shown that it can operate not only in the northeast but elsewhere in the country."
In many ways, ISIS and Boko Haram have followed similar paths. Like ISIS, Boko Haram has seized modern military equipment from the Nigerian army and sent government soldiers running for their lives after throwing down their arms. They've brutally killed thousands, beheading men who've refused to convert to Islam and forced their widows into marriage with Boko Haram soldiers, said Pham, acknowledging that some of the information is second-hand. And although Boko Haram has not seized a large city like Mosul, which has a population of 1 million, as ISIS did in Iraq, that could change in a matter of days. http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-nigeria-schoolgirls/while-world-watches-isis-boko-haram-declares-its-own-caliphate-n202556
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