I’m currently attending the Marrakesh Security Forum in Morocco, an annual confab that focuses on security issues in Africa, especially with regards to the Sahel and Maghreb. Representatives from nearly every African and European country, as well as China, Russia, and a large American delegation are here to discuss an area that doesn’t get the sustained attention it deserves, despite how crucial it is to regional and American national security.
One talk was given by Professor Narcisse Mouelle Kombi, a special advisor to the president of Cameroon. With regard to Boko Haram, he noted that in 2014, the group was responsible for more casualties than ISIS. As with the ISIS, there is increasingly a foreign fighter problem with Boko Haram. “Boko Haram soldiers are coming from everywhere,” he noted. As for the war against Boko Haram, he pointed out that it was political, ideological, and territorial, which is more than President Obama often acknowledges with regard to the fight against Islamist extremists.
One of the key points Mouelle Kombi made, however, that isn’t expressed enough is that while ISIS has been largely checked by the Kurds to its north and the Shi‘ites to its south and east, there is little to stand in the way of Boko Haram. It is expanding rapidly, not only in Nigeria but in Cameroon and in the Sahel as well.
This then raises the point: Obama has declared war on ISIS and he outlined a strategy to defeat the group in his September 10, 2014 speech that followed the beheadings of two American journalists. That strategy can be debated—it certainly seems to fall short—but at least the subject is up for debate, all the more so now with the submission to Congress of an Authorization for Use of Military Force.
But when it comes to Boko Haram—as grave a threat and territorially perhaps just as substantive with the ability to grow even faster—there is very little discussion. Expressions of outrage do not equate with a strategy. Nor does simple condemnation of the corruption of Goodluck Jonathan’s government in Nigeria. Boko Haram isn’t about grievance with the Nigerian government; it’s about Islamist ideology. Boko Haram versus ISIS should not be an either-or question, but rather a recognition that the two are flip sides of the same coin.