IT HAS KILLED MORE THAN 2000 PEOPLE

Boko Haram Militants

By Ekow Mensah

The Nigerian Militant group Boko Haram has become a very usual killing machine with some estimates indicating that it has already killed more than 2000 people including Muslims.

Nigerian Security Service estimates that Boko Haram has killed more 750 in this year alone.

It has bombed crowded public places, done drive by shootings and carried out assassinations and executions.

Although the group claim to be against western education, its founder was an American educated academic and it has no qualms aborting receiving substantial assistance from western source.

It is believed the Boko Haram is directly linked to Western financed insurgent desperately trying to topple the Assad Government in Syria.

The rise of Boko Haram’s type of military was deliberately promoted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States of America and other Western intelligence agencies in their cold war with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Osama bin Laden and others were recruited, trained and financed by the CIA and its collaborators to fight what they called the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

All other fundamentalist armed group fighting in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Egypt and elsewhere are all off shoots of Al-Qaeda and Taliban.

 Boko Haram has recently gained more notoriety by abducting about 300 school children and claiming that they have been converted to Islam.

The hypocrisy of the West is clearly manifest in the offer of help by the USA, France, Britain and others to free the captured girls.

In this issue we are throwing the searchlight on Boko Haram.

Editorial

NO DIGNITY

Those who refer to Boko Haram as a militant Islamic group only dignify what to all intents and purposes is a collection of cowardly criminal elements whose actions provide a pretext for imperialist intervention in Africa.

What in Boko Haram’s repertoire is religious or Islamic?

Is it the abduction of innocent school girls, the bombing of civilians or the senseless opposition to the acquisition of knowledge?

Only cowards would arm themselves to the teeth and sneak into a girl’s school to abduct unarmed 15 year olds.

Why is Boko Haram not attacking the Aso Rock and military installations?

There can be no doubt that it is the activities of Boko Haram which has provided the apparent justification for the presence of western troops in Nigeria.

 Indeed Boko Haram is not different from the other groups which are busily trying to destabilize Syria at the instance of the Western powers especially the United States of America, Britain and France.

 We urge all decent people of all faith to condemn the adventurism and cowardice of Boko Haram.

 It is not an Islamic group and it deserves no dignity.

The Kidnapping of a Country

Boko Haram terrorists operatives

By Lauren Bohn And Chika Oduah

The Road To Chibok Is Eerily Quiet, Lined With Checkpoints Manned By Civilians, Many Of Them Teenagers, Wielding Rusty Rifles And Serving As Added Security For An Area that has little. In this northeast Nigerian village, where more than 300 teenage schoolgirls were kidnapped by the militant Islamist separatist group Boko Haram on April 14, their stunned families were still waiting this week for them to come home.

Lawan Zanna was still waiting for Aisha, his 18-year-old daughter. “How can I sleep?” Mr. Zanna asked. “Anger is gripping my body.” After the girls were abducted, Mr. Zanna said, he and other parents searched the nearby Sambisa forest for their children, but came back empty-handed. As he spoke, Aisha’s sister Hawa, 19, stood in silence. The two girls shared a small bedroom and almost everything else.

More than 750 people have been killed this year alone in Boko Haram attacks; at least 29 boys were killed in a February school raid. This time, the government’s failure in rescuing the girls, and in addressing the issue, has incensed Nigerians and, increasingly, people around the world.

In the midst of the crisis, the World Economic Forum on Africa hosted a three-day summit meeting, May 7-9, bringing about a thousand delegates from around the world and Nigeria’s elite to Abuja, the Nigerian capital, to discuss economic growth and development. As the .001 percent opined in air-conditioned suites, far from the hot reality of Abuja’s streets and psyche, the government deployed 6,000 security officers for the event — an effort that many Nigerians half-joked, half-lamented would never be made to protect ordinary Nigerians, nor to retrieve the Chibok schoolgirls.

The city was at a standstill. Blue-uniformed security and police officers gathered around boomboxes perched on wooden benches and turned up to maximum volume, listening to voices shouting curses at the enigmatic Boko Haram. “We just don’t know who these people are or what exactly they want to do,” said a call-in guest on 95.1 FM Nigerian Info. “They say they want to impose Shariah law or whatever, but Nigeria is not an Islamic state! God go punish you!” A uniformed man holding a half-chewed juicy mango exclaimed, “Yes! God go punish them!” to nods of agreement.

Nigerian citizens exist in this surreal state of great contrasts, in a nation mired in corruption, under attack by an Islamist insurgency and at the same time brimming with potential and acclaimed as an economic engine for the African continent. With 170 million people, Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and largest oil producer. Its economy has surpassed South Africa’s, making it the largest on the continent. But that growth has only widened economic inequality. Economic activity has slowed to a trickle in regions where terrorizing at the hands of Boko Haram has forced farmers to abandon their fields, while young people without job prospects have left for the cities. More Nigerians are poor today than at independence in 1960, with over 60 percent below the poverty line.

For the past three weeks, we have been traveling the country reporting on youth unemployment, an issue consistently ignored by the government, but one that has been exploited by Boko Haram.

“The abductions are only the tip of the iceberg,” said Tayo Olufuwa, a bespectacled 23-year-old entrepreneur from Mushin, one of Lagos’s poorest neighborhoods. Mr. Olufuwa has started an online employment search company, Jobs in Nigeria. When we filmed him two weeks ago, walking on his old childhood streets for a multimedia report, plainclothes policemen detained us for four hours, confiscating our credentials and equipment. They told us they were protecting us from Boko Haram and other security threats, wrestled with our driver for a bribe and mocked a crowd of children. “We are a country sleeping with one eye open,” Mr. Olufuwa said afterward in exasperation.

It’s an expression used often by Nigerians, who are frustrated yet unsurprised by conflicting actions and reports from a government they have come to distrust. At least 16 Nigerians were killed in March in stampedes when nearly a half-million people applied for fewer than 5,000 government jobs.

Frederick Kusompwa, 30, eagerly joined thousands of job seekers at the national stadium in Abuja, one of the application sites, only to watch people climbing over one another, clawing for registration forms: “I just asked myself, What has my country become?” The interior minister, whose office oversaw the recruitment, announced that the dead “lost their lives through their impatience.”

Thousands apply for 20 full scholarships offered by the Institute of Petroleum Studies at the University of Port Harcourt in the Niger Delta. Celestina Johnson, an administrator at the institute, said she often wanted to cry during the interviews because so many of the applicants would never get a chance. As she spoke, the electricity went out — an everyday occurrence in Nigeria. “If this country’s condition continues, there will be a mass revolt,” Ms. Johnson said. “The country will break.”

In Lagos, the commercial capital of the country, a 41-year-old cabdriver, Oyebajo Adekunle, sweated as he swerved through rush-hour traffic. A college graduate with a business degree, he said he never thought he’d be driving people around, struggling to make enough money for his family of six. He pulled up to a cluster of people — one of the daily Bring Back Our Girls protests that have taken place here and around the country for weeks. “I would go out and stand with the women, but I have to hustle,” he said, wiping sweat from his brow. “It’s like the government makes the hustle so hard, so that we’re too tired to do anything about things like this.” He rolled down his window to shake one of the female protesters’ hands, locking eyes for a mere second, and then sped off to pick up another client.

Lauren Bohn and Chika Oduah are the recipients of a GlobalPost reporting fellowship in Nigeria for 2014.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on May 15, 2014, on page A29 of the New York edition with the headline: The Kidnapping of a Country

Bring Back our Girls - and Boys (?) - and the Consequence of Impunity

By Bolaji Aluko

My People:

As the father of three daughters, two of who were in school together in one secondary school for a number of years, the vision of 200-plus school girls being carted away by wicked kidnappers - girls with hygienic, dietary, sanitary and other needs, and traumatized by the prospects of all kinds of evil designs - is quite haunting.  This event should represent a tipping point for all people of conscience.  The political, revolutionary or religious credentials or antecedents of the Boko Haram are now irrelevant: this is a criminal enterprise without reprieve, as the most vulnerable in any society - women and children - have now been combined together in one fell massive swoop.

Unfortunately, echoing (and taking some poetic licence on) activist Shehu Sani on his Facebook;

Nigerians want Federal Security Chief President Jonathan to rescue the Chibok girls,

 Jonathan (G and P ) want State Security Chief Borno Governor Shettima to find the Chibok girls, Shettima wants Security Rank-and-File to get back the Chibok girls,

 Security wants frightened and hapless Nigerians to 'help in finding the Chibok girls'

Lord have mercy, this is quite messy.  Nigerians and the world just want our girls back....don't care how or by who...

But for goodness sake, how many are they - 0, 80, 180, 200,  230 or 276?  How can it be that after 20 days, we are still at a total loss about this exact number?  Are we even sure that there are no boys among the abductees, because we now understand that the "Girls School" had become mixed for some time now, but just  - inscrutably - never changed its name to reflect that coed-dedness?

To get at this number, let us, like First Mother Dame Jonathan opined, start again with the parents:  do they know where their children are who went to Chibok to sit for exams?  Whether they do or they don't, they should please come forward and tell...otherwise, are we looking for ghost girls or what?  Let us call this number A+ and A-  of parents who step forward one way or the other.

Let us move on to WAEC (eg national official Charles Eguridu):  what are the names of the students who registered to do exams at Chibok? Let us call this number B; it appears to be 530.   All of them students should be invited to Abuja to do their aborted exams  - with assurance of safe passage, transportation and lodging - and count those who show up:  let us call this number C.  Those who do not show up (D  = B- B) might be reasonably assumed to be either ghost exam takers, or abductees.

Next we move to the Principal of the Chibok school (i.e. Mrs. Asabe Kwabura):  how many the heck were the students who reported to your schools to take the exams - let us call this number E - and how many of those who reported have been accounted for since the abduction - let us call this number F? 

Somewhere between the arithmetic of the numbers A through F is the "passing grade" that shows the actual number of abducted students, so that we can actual begin to know the real immensity of our search mission - if we are not to leave any girl behind.  It matters not whether they are all Christian or all Muslim, all Northerners or Southerners...or even whether they are all Nigerians or of mixed parentage or religion.

Final points: the major cause of escalation of the criminal corruption, bombings and kidnappings etc. in our country is impunity, wherein the first actors are allowed to get away completely, or if punished at all, get away with light sentences due to outright bribery or some ethnic, religious, political or other elite considerations. On quite a number of occasions, alleged infractors are eliminated extra-judicially without society being assuredly comforted about due process - this happens most often with armed robbery.  All of this is coupled with inadequate security intelligence, personnel, equipment and speedy dispatch to prevent crime before it occurs; or to stem it and collect credible court-tendersble data while it is occurring/just occurred; or successfully prosecute and punish the crime after it occurs.

Consequently, we  must work hard  and pile pressure on officialdom to eliminate impunity in our society, which a relentless press and dedicated civil society are paramount for.  We must punish criminals swiftly and publicly, with terms commensurate with the crime. We must also improve our security and judicial value chain - starting with community and state policing as a sine qua non.

Meanwhile, we must continue to watch, work and pray to #BringOurGirlsandBoys?Back....and remember to build secure fences and provide security personnel around educational institutions and public places, and have an accurate record always of the students within.

And there you have it.

Bolaji Aluko

BOKO HARAM AND THE LORD’S RESISTANCE ARMY: BROTHERS OF DESTRUCTION

An LRA Soldier

By Max Siollun

A religiously inspired armed group has been terrorising the north of the country for several years, and has upped the ante by kidnapping over 100 schoolgirls and taking them to a bush hideout. The group plans to “hand out” the girls as trophy wives and sexual slaves for its fighters, and is led by a mysterious man who claims he is acting on orders from God. There is a multi-million “bounty” on the head of the group’s leader. The group is fond of kidnapping small children, and forcefully conscripting them to join and fight for it.

You may have instinctively assumed that the paragraph above is about Boko Haram. Wrong. It is about Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).  The religion may be different but the violent tactics and kidnapping are similar. The LRA is Boko Haram’s Christian cousin from northern Uganda. The similarities between the two organisations are remarkable. Boko Haram’s kidnap of schoolgirls is not without precedent. Eighteen years ago the LRA kidnapped 139 schoolgirls from St. Mary's College in Northern Uganda (an Italian nun named Sister Rachele Fassera followed the girls and the LRA fighters into the bush and negotiated the release of all but 30 of the girls)

VIOLENCE FROM THE NORTH

Both armed insurgencies mushroomed in the impoverished north of Uganda and Nigeria. The LRA’s campaign commenced after decades of northern leadership of Uganda was interrupted by Uganda’s first substantive southern President Yoweri Museveni. The LRA’s ancestor was an anti-government armed force called the Holy Spirit Movement; which was led by a spirit medium called Alice Auma. Auma claimed that she was possessed by a spirit called “Lakwena”. When Auma’s forces were routed by the Ugandan army, some of its remnants re-emerged as the much more violent LRA. The LRA is led by Auma’s relative: the former altar boy Joseph Kony.

Similarly Boko Haram’s violence became more intense after the Nigerian army destroyed its mosque, killed hundreds of its members, and its leader Mohammed Yusuf. Yusuf was succeeded by the much more violent and implacable Abubakar Shekau. When the LRA’s Kony gives orders to his fighters, they are not merely carrying out his orders. Instead Kony presents his orders as divinely inspired edicts from God. Similarly, Boko Haram’s leader Shekau has justified some of his decisions as being based on instructions given to him by Allah.

FACT FILE ON BOKO HARAM AND THE LRA:

	BOKO HARAM
LRA
Geographic Base		Northern Nigeria		Northern Uganda
Religion		Islam		Christianity
Ethnicity of Recruits		Mainly Kanuris from northern Nigeria		Mainly Acholi from northern Uganda
Kidnap Targets		Children and women		Children and women
Biggest kidnap		Over 250 schoolgirls		139 schoolgirls

The way these things start is that there is a grievance that sparks the weaponisation of the terror group. However once they cross the Rubicon into violence, it is exceptionally difficult to reign in that violence. Typically a merry go round of violence then commences, escalates, and becomes so intense and cyclical, that everyone forgets what they are fighting about and just keeps amplifying its horrific violence against its enemy.

VIOLENCE AS THE MEANS AND THE END

The kidnap of the Chibok schoolgirls has exposed the aimless nature of violence by groups such as Boko Haram and the LRA. This is not tactical violence with a cogent aim. It is violence for the sake of violence. Groups once regarded as terrorist organisations such as the IRA, PLO, Irgun, and the Tamil Tigers at least had identifiable aims (the struggle for an independent country). They were prepared to put their guns back in their holsters once they achieved their aims. Violence was the means, not the end. Not so for Boko Haram.

The behaviour of Boko Haram since the kidnap of the Chibok schoolgirls is an abject demonstration to those who think that negotiation with, or amnesty to, Boko Haram is the most prudent course of action. A group with logical aims would have realised that with the Chibok schoolgirls in its possession, it could negotiate from a position of strength and demand massive concessions from the government. It could for example have offered to release the girls in exchange for the release of Boko Haram members detained by the government, for ransom money, or for amnesty. Instead of presenting the customary list of demands as per archetypal kidnappers, Boko Haram did not ask for anything in return. Their leader instead flaunted the fact that the girls will be “sold” like chattels. In other words Boko Haram are so resolutely welded to confrontation and the use of force that they do not even realise the tactical advantage of having several hundred school children in their possession, with the eyes of the whole world on them, and the considerable leverage they could exert by dangling the carrot of the girls’ release. Instead they are willing to throw away all their bargaining chips by openly declaring their intention to “sell” the girls.

TACTICAL TERROR

Although I have stated that Boko Haram and LRA violence is without a coherent strategy, there are some elements of its violence that are chillingly and cold-bloodedly tactical. Boko Haram and the LRA often force their kidnap victims and recruits to commit murder and other atrocities. This is intended to sever the social bonds between members and their communities. The scale of atrocities they commit means that members have nowhere to go since they cannot realistically return to, or be reintegrated back into, their communities and societies. Fear or reprisals if they return to their communities often welds members to the groups’ cause. Such tactics have been used before with terrifying effectiveness by the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, and by the Revolutionary United Front in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

The kidnap and rape of schoolgirls is not random either. They do not kidnap small infant children because they are too small and weak to carry weapons and equipment. They usually kidnap children aged 10 and older, and pretty teenage girls. Their intention is to repopulate and sustain their membership on a long-term basis by producing offspring from the “marriages” between their members and kidnapped girls.

The vast majority of escaped Boko Haram and LRA rape victims, or those who return to their families pregnant, are often stigmatised. Also, very few men are willing to marry them. They therefore often leave their families and communities to start new lives far away in anonymity. Their fear of such rejection and such a fate often means that they have no choice other than to remain with Boko Haram/the LRA.

It matters not that most people may not share the belief systems of groups like Boko Haram and the LRA. The important thing is that many of the members believe in the groups’ aims strongly enough to kill people they do not know. This is what Nigeria is up against: an enemy that does not have logical aims that you can accept or reject, compromise on, or bargain with. Just an enemy that kills and terrorises simply because it can.

Islamic law and the rules of war

By Heba Aly

Islamic law is a jurist’s law – it is determined by scholars

HIGHLIGHTS

• Shariah law not cut and dry: open to interpretation
• Expansionary jihad not a religious obligation
• “Allah does not love those who exceed the limits”
• Aid workers can negotiate Islamic pledge of security 

With the majority of today’s conflicts taking place in Muslim countries or involving Muslim combatants, aid agencies are operating - arguably more than ever before - in situations where Islamic norms govern the terrain in which they work.

Islamic law contains a rich but complex set of rules on the protection of civilians. But can that centuries-old canon be reconciled with modern international humanitarian norms?

In this series of reports we explore the tension (and overlap) between Islamic jurisprudence and international humanitarian law: we report on how jihadists are interpreting Islamic edicts , and how humanitarians are using those same principles to further access.

Do humanitarian norms exist in Islamic law?
As one expert of international humanitarian law (IHL) and Islamic law put it: “Islam has always handcuffed its fighters’ hands.”

Islamic norms emphasize restraint and stress the importance of not doing more harm than is necessary to accomplish the goal at hand.

“While according sanction to fighting in self-defence…[the Koran] enjoins concurrently, humanitarian rules of warfare to mitigate the human suffering it inflicts,” writes former Pakistani Foreign Minister Agha Shahi in his book The Role of Islam in Contemporary International Relations.

“Fight in the way of Allah with those who fight with you, and do not exceed the limits,” says the Muslim holy book, the Koran, “surely Allah (God) does not love those who exceed the limits.”

Much like in IHL, “Muslim jurists balanced practical interests against various imperatives,” writes Khaled Abou El Fadl, a professor of Islamic jurisprudence at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). “Muslim juristic discourses were neither purely functional nor moralistic. Even more, they were far from dogmatic or essentialist in nature.”
The actions and statements of the Prophet Muhammad and of the early Caliphs of Islam point to strong humanitarian considerations.

In a famous decree, Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, the first Caliph, told his military commander: “Stop, O people, that I may give you ten rules for guidance on the battlefield. Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies; do not kill a woman, a child, or an aged man; do not cut down fruitful trees; do not destroy inhabited areas; do not slaughter any of the enemies’ sheep, cow or camel except for food; do not burn date palms, nor inundate them; do not embezzle (e.g. no misappropriation of booty or spoils of war) nor be guilty of cowardliness…You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone."

More than a millennium before the codification of the Geneva Conventions, most of the fundamental categories of protection which the Conventions offer could be found, in a basic form, in Islamic teachings.

According to Islamic tradition, Muslim rulers have the right and even obligation to suspend the law in the interest of justice. In addition, the evidentiary standards of many Islamic laws are so high that they should, in principle, rarely be implemented. 

Still, for Mohammad Fadel, associate professor of law at the University of Toronto, tension sometimes exists between morality and legality; in other words, between “religious values - which tend to be on the more humanitarian side and that’s reflected in popular Muslim discourse - and technical, juridical discourse - which tends to be a lot more abstract and a lot more concerned with philosophical problems.”

Is Islamic law reconcilable with IHL?
It depends on who you speak to. Many scholars, especially those with a contemporary view of Islamic law, see in early Islamic rules of war many roots of modern IHL.
“By affirming the principle of humanity in the midst of war, al-Shaybani and [Imam] al-Awza’I helped pioneer the modern law of armed conflict,” writes the International Committee of the Red Cross, mandated by the Geneva Conventions as the guardian of IHL, referring to early codifiers of Islamic rules of war.

The limits placed on Muslims in the conduct of war “gives to jihad [ holy struggle or war ] an ideological-cum-ethical dimension that is obviously missing from the pre-Islamic practice of war,” writes Kanina Bennoune in the Michigan Journal of International Law. “More than a millennium before the codification of the Geneva Conventions, most of the fundamental categories of protection which the Conventions offer could be found, in a basic form, in Islamic teachings.”

In fact, many of the restrictions placed on combatants by Islamic law go far beyond what is required by IHL, especially in the arena of non-international armed conflict. When Human Rights Watch organized meetings with civil society leaders in the Muslim world to discuss the protection of civilians, “we were not encountering arguments that Islamic law had different standards,” says Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division. “If anything, people would stress the congruence of IHL and Islamic law, and perhaps even overstate that congruence.”

One of the basic tenets of Islamic law is that treaties must be respected. As such, some scholars argue that combatants in Muslim countries are religiously bound by the Geneva Conventions signed by their governments. Mainstream Muslim theologians and authorities, including al-Azhar, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan, all accept the principle of Muslim states and sovereign authorities signing international agreements. 

However, neo-classical Muslim scholars - now the minority - who interpret Islam to be fundamentally at war with the non-Muslim world, see Islamic law and international law as inherently irreconcilable.

When is the use of force permissible under Islamic law?

When is “jihad” acceptable?

This is perhaps the biggest point of debate in Islamic jurisprudence on the laws of war.
The term jihad, often translated as “holy war”, actually means struggle or exertion. The Prophet Muhammad referred to battle as a “minor jihad” in comparison to the struggle against the evil of one’s soul - self-exertion in personal compliance with the dictates of Islam - which he describes as the “superior jihad”.

Military jihad is the only form of acceptable war in Islam, which prohibits the use of force for material gain or revenge. As such, in the 7th century, the very concept of jihad acted as a primary limitation on the use of violence.

But under which conditions is jihad permissible in Islam?
During the formative period of Islamic law in the 7th and 8th centuries, early Muslim jurists – referred to as the classical scholars - argued that Islam was in a default state of war with the non-Muslim world.

As such, classical scholars argued, if polytheists refused to either convert to Islam or sign a peace treaty with Muslims, the use of force against them was authorized.
While jihad for the purpose of spreading Islam is considered an obligation, collectively, on Muslims, many scholars say in the modern world, this can be done through peaceful means, namely da’wa, or missionary work. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an influential - though controversial - Muslim Brotherhood scholar, argues Muslims have many means at their disposal to counter wrongdoing in their own societies, other than war.

As such, the more common contemporary interpretation is that offensive jihad is not legitimate, except in a few circumstances: aggression against Muslims, assistance for victims of injustice (akin to humanitarian intervention), defence of the homeland (including pre-emptive attacks), and guaranteeing security for Islamic missionary activities.

Many chapters of the Koran support this more limited interpretation of the use of force: “If they withdraw from you but fight you not, and (instead) send you (guarantees of) peace, then God hath opened no way for you (to war against them)” (4:90); “But if they (the enemy) incline towards peace, do thou (also) incline towards peace, and trust in God: for He is the One that heareth and knoweth (all things)” (8:61).

The Henry Jackson Society, a UK-based think tank, recently published a handbook of theological refutations of militancy in which it claims there is no religious duty to re-establish an expansionist Islamic state.
Accordingly, non-Muslims should not be attacked simply because of their disbelief - “Let there be no compulsion in religion,” the Koran says - but rather only if they pose a threat to Muslims. Advocates of this interpretation point to Koranic references to fighting in self-defence only.

Islamic law should be understood as a field of debate and disagreement. There is usually no single Islamic position on a question.

In his book, Fiqh al-Jihad (the Jurisprudence of War), one of the most seminal texts of modern interpretations of the Islamic laws of war, al-Qaradawi argues jihad cannot be waged to eliminate disbelievers from the earth or force people to convert. Instead, he has a narrower definition of acceptable jihad: “Islam has only justified fighting those who fight them, or aggress against their honor, or seek to disrupt and divide them in religion, or repel them from their homes, or block the path of the Islamic mission (da’wa) and violate their right to spread Islam through proof, argument and clarification or kill their missionaries.”

Upon his return from the last known raid in Islamic history, Prophet Muhammad said: “We have returned from the lesser jihad to embark on the greater jihad,” describing the latter as the fight against inner demons controlling one’s ego. 

Can civilians be targeted?

Specific prohibitions on the methods of warfare were given by the Prophet and the first Caliphs (rulers of the Muslim community) to Muslim warriors as they went into battle.
Before departing for the conquest of the Levant, Caliph Abu Bakr told his warriors: “When you meet your enemies in the fight, behave yourself as befits good Muslims…. If Allah gives you victory, do not abuse your advantages and beware not to stain your swords with the blood of one who yields, neither you touch the children, the women, nor the infirm, also men, whom you may find among your enemies.”

However, as mentioned above, scholars disagreed over whether disbelievers could be killed simply for their disbelief or only if they posed a danger to Muslims.

Followers of the former school of thought justified the killing even of women and children disbelievers who refused to either convert to Islam or live under Muslim rule and pay a tax, citing a verse from the Koran: “When the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever you find them” (9:5). The Prophet is also reported to have said: “I have been commanded to fight mankind until they say ‘There is no God but Allah’.”

But Abdelhamid Kishek, a prominent Sufi sheikh during the jihadist attacks on nightclubs and bars in Egypt in the late 1980s and 1990s, argued this ‘Kill the infidel’ mentality had no basis in Islamic logic: Satan, he told Salafists at the time, promised God that if he was kept alive, he would send Adam, the first Prophet, to Hell. Islam’s purpose was to show people the light. By killing the so-called ‘infidels’ and sending them to Hell, Salafists were not helping God; they were helping Satan.

By the 10th century, according Abou El Fadl, the predominant view was that only those who fought could be killed.

“God does not forbid you to show kindness to unbelievers who do not fight you because of your faith or drive you from your homes,” the Koran says (60:8-9). “Do not promote disorder in the earth after peace has been established” (7:56).

In a 2009 study published in an attempt to “correct” the wrongful ways of some of its adherents, al-Qaeda member Fadil Harun wrote: “I wish to make clear to those who choose random targets purposely causing [innocent] casualties, be they Muslims or non-Muslims: this is not our method.”

One major exception to the general prohibition against targeting civilians is defensive jihad, at which time illegal acts become permissible out of the necessity of protecting Islam from destruction. This parallels the notion of “supreme emergency” put forward by some secular philosophers to justify killings of civilians in order for a society to save itself from the “ultimate threat” of annihilation.

Who is considered a civilian?

Generally speaking, even in the neo-classical interpretation, women, children, peasants, and religious or medical personnel cannot be targeted.

However, civilians can lose their protected status if they take part in the fighting. As in IHL, the definition of direct participation in hostilities (DPH) is hazy.

“Once they carry weapons for fighting, or contribute intelligence, war strategies or suggestions to the army, their status changes from civilians to combatants,” says a 2011 article by Malaysian professors, published in the International Journal of Humanities and Social Science.

According to more extreme interpretations, supporting the enemy even by opinion, propaganda or moral support makes someone a combatant.

In a situation of invasion or occupation, all those associated with the effort, even if not carrying arms, are considered legitimate targets and all Muslim civilians are under obligation to fight to defend the homeland.

Muslims versus non-Muslims
Islamic law distinguishes not only based on status - combatant vs. non-combatant - but also based on identity - Muslim vs. non-Muslim. In some cases, it distinguishes further between fellow “scriptuaries” – Jews and Christians - and other non-Muslims, such as pagans.

Muslims are not supposed to fight other Muslims unless they oppose Muslim rulers because of a diverging, but plausible, interpretation of religious texts.

Just as IHL has a different set of rules for international armed conflicts and non-international armed conflicts, Islamic law differentiates between war among Muslims (non-international armed conflict) and war between the Islamic state and the non-Islamic world (international armed conflict). Unlike IHL, the rules of war governing conflict between Muslims (internal armed conflict) are stricter than those between Muslims and non-Muslims. 

“If Muslims fight one another, the fugitive and wounded may not be dispatched. Muslim prisoners may not be executed or enslaved, and children and women may not be intentionally killed or imprisoned. Imprisoned male Muslims must be released once the fighting, or the danger of continued fighting, ends,” writes Abou El Fadl.

If the Muslim is considered an apostate, as many Muslim governments are labelled by rebels in today’s conflicts, none of these exceptions apply.

But Usama Hasan, a senior researcher in Islamic studies at the Quilliam Foundation, which works to counter extremism, says these restrictions were relevant in ancient and medieval Islamic jurisprudence. “Modern Islamic law would make no distinction between Muslim and non-Muslim: the overriding principles are those of justice and public welfare.”

Destruction of civilian property
In his address to warriors, Caliph Abu-Bakr added: “In your march through the enemy territory, do not cut down the palm, or other fruit-trees, destroy not the products of the earth, ravage no fields, burn no houses…Let no destruction be made without necessity.”
He reportedly went so far as to say that when Muslim armies ran out of food, they should only take food from civilians in enemy territory enough for one meal.

Interpretations shifted over time, with Abu Hanifa, founder of the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam, concluding in the 8th century that everything which fighters could not conquer should be destroyed, including homes, churches, trees, and livestock.
But the overwhelming majority of scholars argued against destruction of property.

Prisoners of War
There is a wide range of opinions on permissible treatment of prisoners of war, with most scholars concluding it is up to the imam or Muslim ruler to decide whether to execute, enslave, exchange, ransom or release them, based on what is in the best welfare of the Muslims. A minority argue killing prisoners is prohibited unless it is impossible to give them safe passage without harming Muslims.

However, one of the Prophet’s hadiths was to treat captives well and there are a number of verses in the Koran sending the same message, including Chapter 76, verse 8, which says: “And they feed, for the love of God, the indigent, the orphan and the captive” and Chapter 47, verse 4, which says: “So when you meet in battle those who disbelieve, then smite the necks until when you have overcome them, then make [them] prisoners, and afterwards either set them free as a favor or let them ransom [themselves] until the war terminates.”

Caliph Abu Bakr said: “Treat the prisoners and he who renders himself to your mercy with pity, as Allah shall do to you in your need; but trample down the proud and those who rebel.”

Prohibition against torture
Torture and mutilation are strictly forbidden under Islamic law, regardless of the enemy. The Prophet is reported to have said: “God will torture those who torture people on earth.”
According to Bennoune, except in cases of necessity, the Prophet prohibited killing enemies by burning or drowning, as these methods inflicted unnecessary suffering. But some scholars say that while he opposed “treacherous killing and mutilation”, he allowed Muslims to retaliate in kind against such practices.

Child soldiers
In Islam, defensive jihad is considered a collective obligation on all adult men (past the age of puberty).

The Taliban’s Code of Conduct, for example, explicitly says: “The deployment of children in Jihadi ranks has its own moral disadvantages which are legally forbidden.” However, in January, a girl less than 10 years old was caught wearing an explosive vest in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province. According to media reports, her brother, a Taliban commander, had forced her to wear it.

Proportionality
Particularly in the context of internal armed conflict (rebellion by Muslims against a Muslim ruler), “Muslim jurists advocate a type of balancing test according to which the possible evils are weighted against the potential good,” writes Abou El Fadl. “This is similar to the notion of proportionality in the Western jus ad bellum tradition, by which the act of resorting to force might be justified if the total good outweighs the total anticipated evil.”

The scholar al-Qaradawi also argues that the harm caused by war must be less than the harm war tries to correct.

Accountability for war crimes
According to Bennoune, Islamic tradition outlines clear standards of responsibility and accountability.

The following hadith encourages fighters to refuse to commit war crimes on the battlefield: “It is obligatory for one to listen to and obey a Muslim ruler’s orders, unless these orders involve disobedience to God; but if an act of disobedience to God is commanded, it is not listened to or obeyed.”

In one example, the Prophet’s companion, Abdullah bin Umar, refused to comply with an alleged order from his commander Khalid bin Walid, one of Islam’s greatest generals, to kill all prisoners since bin Umar saw it as unjust. His decision was later vindicated by the Prophet.

In addition, Bennoune says, fighters who committed “war crimes” during the Prophet’s time were subject to punishment.

After the conquest of Egypt, the son of governor General Amr ibn al-‘As beat an Egyptian Copt without legal justification. Caliph Omar, the Muslim ruler at the time, whipped ibn al-‘As’s son as punishment.
However, according to Fadel, criminal and civil liability only applies if a Muslim power violates the rules of conduct against other Muslims. “Islamic law does not provide any remedial regime for violations of those restraints against non-Muslims. There could be moral blame, but there is no legal liability as such.”

Are aid workers protected?
Humanitarian work in general is validated within Islamic law: the Koran affirms that the needy have a right to aid and that believers must give to the poor, the orphans and the captives “for the countenance of Allah” (76:8-9). For some analysts, this places an obligation on Muslim fighters to either provide aid themselves or allow others to do so.
Under Islamic law, one way to ensure safe passage for aid workers is through a concept known as aman, a pledge of security. Respecting promises made or contracts signed is a very important principle within Islam.

“Both moderates and salafists agree that the concept is valid, but it is a question of negotiating it and making sure that other groups know you are protected by it,” says Andrew March, associate professor of Islamic law at Yale University. 

Practically speaking, when groups like Médecins Sans Frontières and the International Committee of the Red Cross negotiate with armed groups for safe access to conflict zones, they are negotiating an aman, even if the specific terminology is not used. 

However, different groups may not respect the amans signed by others. As such, aid workers have to ensure they understand what each aman means in each context.

The justification for targeting humanitarian workers, says Fadel, of the University of Toronto, is that “these are just another part of an invading army. They haven’t come here with our permission. They haven’t gotten any sort of formal protection from us.”

West bad faith shifts P5+1 goalposts

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani

By Finian Cunningham

The Western powers are shifting the goalposts in the P5+1 nuclear talks, thus making a comprehensive deal with Iran elusive.

Since the P5+1 of six world powers signed the interim deal with Iran, the latter has met the demand to limit uranium enrichment.

By pledging a limit of five per cent enrichment of the nuclear fuel, Iran was demonstrating its oft-repeated claim that its nuclear program is for peaceful, civilian applications. At that level of uranium processing, it is nowhere near possible to build a nuclear bomb.

Western powers have been accusing Iran over the past 10 years and more of secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons, which Iran has consistently denied. The US, Britain and France have never provided any proof to support their alleged suspicions, but on the basis of their allegations they have imposed deleterious economic sanctions on the Iranian people.

The ongoing nuclear negotiations - the next round is in four weeks - are supposedly aimed at lifting the sanctions in return for Iranian guarantees about the peaceful nature of its program.

It should be noted that Iran's self-imposed restriction on uranium enrichment at the five per cent level is arbitrary. It is not mandated by any law or international treaty obligation. As a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran could in principle enrich uranium to any level - 80 per cent or more - if it so wanted. Certainly, Iran has developed the technology to do so despite the inimical Western-led blockade on its national economy.

So, the five per cent enrichment limit agreed to by Iran six months ago is a goodwill gesture that Iran has freely conceded to in order to prove its constant claim that its nuclear program is for peaceful civilian uses, such as energy production, medical isotopes and scientific research.

Since signing the interim deal last November, the IAEA inspectors, who have been given unprecedented access to Iranian nuclear facilities that few other countries would permit, have reported Iran's full compliance. There are no grounds whatsoever for continuing Western claims that Iran is doing or might do anything untoward.

Iran has gained some sanctions relief as a result of the six-month interim so-called handshake. But the bulk of US and European-imposed trade and finance embargoes remain in place, inflicting a harsh toll of human suffering on Iranian civilians, from the shortage of certain life-saving medicines, to the higher cost of food and other daily staples, owing to currency inflation and impediments to conducting normal international commerce.

The latest round of talks in Vienna at the end of last week clearly shows now what is preventing completion of a final nuclear agreement. It is Western shifting of the goalposts for reaching any deal.

The supposed point of any comprehensive accord is for Iran to demonstrate its commitment to peaceful nuclear development. Iran has done so with much forbearance, as even the Western-biased IAEA testifies.

Why a final deal was not reached in Vienna last week is because the US-led Western camp introduced a new variable into the equation - the issue of Iranian ballistic missiles. The West now wants - in addition to a cap on uranium enrichment - restrictions placed on Iran's formidable arsenal of long-range conventional military missiles.

These restrictions are supposedly an assurance sought by the Western powers that if Iran were to "break out" from its self-imposed five per cent limit of uranium enrichment that the country would then not have the delivery means to fire a nuclear warhead. This alleged Western safeguard is directed at ostensibly securing the Israeli regime - even though the latter has illegally stockpiled up to 400 nuclear weapons that remain beyond any international legal oversight.

In an editorial column at the weekend, the Washington Post described "the difficult path to a nuclear deal with Iran". The newspaper - which reflects official US thinking - puts the onus on Iran to make concessions over the latest demand for controls on long-range ballistic missiles.

At this point, we need to stand back and see what's going on. The moving of goalposts by the Western powers is not merely churlish haggling over the interim deal. More sinisterly, the sidetracking shows Western bad faith - bad faith that destroys confidence in the chances of arriving at a mutual comprehensive accord and an end to the decade-long nuclear deadlock.

What this strongly suggests is that Washington and its European allies are not serious or sincere about finding a genuine solution to the nuclear standoff with Iran. In particular, the lifting of the barbaric Western sanctions on Iran, the ongoing impact of which very arguably puts these measures in the category of a crime against humanity.

Against this inveterate Western mentality of aggression, Iran unfortunately may never be able to satisfy Western demands for assurance over its nuclear program. No sooner is one condition met when another condition is introduced, and so on, and so on.

The latest bad faith display by the West at the P5+1 talks in Vienna confirms what many observers have already noted - namely that the nuclear issue is not really the Western concern. It is but a chimera to conceal the real Western objective, which is to subjugate Iran and inflict misery with sanctions in order to foment regime change. The West could not easily get away with such criminal aggression towards the Iranian people otherwise.

But this realization is not a dead-end for Iran. While the Western powers may try to shift goalposts in their fake P5+1 negotiations, the global economy is shifting away from these has-been powers. This week sees the Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, where they are expected to sign a strategic energy deal. The global economy is moving inexorably away from the bankrupt Western capitalist powers and the spent US dollar as the international reserve currency.

Rather than wasting time and resources on pandering to Western intrigues, Iran might be better off walking away from the P5+1 altogether, and concentrate its interests in developing a new global economic axis. Russia and China should also snub the P5+1 charade. After all, the same subterfuge of US-led regime change is being pursued against Moscow, as should be obvious from the current Ukraine crisis.

The Western powers do not deserve the respect of negotiations. They are arrogant rogue powers, with the innocent blood of millions on their hands. Their bad faith is endemic and incorrigible. That should be clearer more than than ever after the latest setback at the P5+1 talks.

Editorial

MAHAMA’S MOVES

President John Dramani Mahama has been very busy since his election as Chairman of the Economic Community of West African States.

 He has moved from one country to another and invited his colleagues to Accra to find ways of combating terrorism in the Sub-region and beyond.

 So far it appears that President Mahama and his colleagues are focusing attention on raw and hard military action as a way out.

 Over view is that the problem of terrorism can effectively be dealt with by improving West Africa’s intelligence capability rather than military might.

 It is also clear that Western interventions in West Africa can only worsen the situation especially as the West profits from the Boko Haram insurgency.

Before the insurgency, West Africa had said no to the establishment of US Military bases but now the situation has facilitated the presence of the US, Israeli, British and French military in the Sub-region.

 The fight against terrorism in West African is a West African problem which must be dealt with by West Africans.

We commend President Mahama for taking the initiative in finding a solution to the problem but we still have to be careful.

SFG MILITARY INTERVENTIONS IN AFRICA

Kyeretwie Opoku, SFG Convener

The Socialist Forum of Ghana (SFG) is deeply concerned about the recent increase in military intervention in West and central Africa. We are equally concerned that these interventions might be used to perpetuate impunity and the rule of self-serving African elites and their collaborators in the exploitation of African resources. The SFG identifies France as the most blatant imperialist power intervening militarily in Africa. We are alarmed that in some instances France has referred to Agreements it signed with African leaders who were desperate to lead their countries into independence from France more than fifty years ago as providing it legitimacy for her military interventions. We have no doubt that like all neo-colonialist countries France is only interested in Africa for economic reasons which it seeks to maintain through military might and cultural domination.

We recall that France conducted three nuclear bomb tests in Algeria on February 1960, November 1961 and January 1996. This was despite worldwide protests in 1959 led by organisations such as the Sahara Protest Team, the British Direct Action Committee (DAC), and the United States Committee for Non-violent Action (CNVA) and the Ghana Council for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). So when it comes to infringing the sovereignty of Africa with impunity, France has a pompous history that has no equal.

When forced by world events to grant independence to her West African colonies in the early 1960s, France ensured that her economic interests would be secured through facilitating and underwriting a fee-applicable monetary union among her former colonies. Using this ‘economic interest’ and so called ‘historical responsibility’ as pretexts, France stationed troops in several African countries in order to guarantee an ill-defined ‘internal security’ for each country. Since then any nationalist attempt at questioning France’s economic dominance in her former colonies has been suppressed using troops strategically stationed in Africa.

France intervened in the Chadian civil war in 1978, 1983 and 1986 to ensure her continued domination of the internal affairs of that country. France has a permanent base in Niger to protect uranium production exclusively mined by a French owned company. So it is not surprising that the French Army intervened in Niger in 2013, ostensibly, to ‘flush out Al-Qaeda’. Referring to an Agreement signed with Ivory Coast in August 1961, France intervened in that country in 2012 to stop the elected government of President Laurence Gbagbo from supressing a military uprising and installed the leaders of the rebellion who were more amenable to French influence. French involvement was also highly evident in the Burkina Faso coup in 1987 which removed the anti-imperialist government of Captain Thomas Sankara and replaced it with the pro-French regime led by Captain Blaise Compaoré. We must also recall that in the early 1960s France sabotaged attempts by Guinea and Mali to join Ghana in a union aimed at pooling their development efforts and increasing their strength at international trade negotiations. France also sabotaged similar attempts by Maurice

Yameogo, then President of the then Upper Volta to form a political union with Senegal, Benin and Mali in 1961.

The recent French military interventions in Mali and the Central African Republic however have a heightened viciousness and hypocrisy which behoves us to call on all pan Africanists to take note and act to expose this French hypocrisy no matter how it is camouflaged. France as the former colonial power is directly responsible for creating poverty and misery in her former colonies through the unremitting exploitation of their resources without adequate compensation. France is also responsible for not allowing her former colonies the space to develop local solutions to the problems of poverty, youth unemployment and hunger. Having strategically created the conducive conditions for civil war in her former colonies, it is highly hypocritical for France to claim that her military interventions are humanitarian.

French hypocrisy is currently exemplified in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Mali where France claims her military intervention is aimed at preventing genocide. The SFG asserts that the underpinning reason for French interest in CAR and Mali are economic and geopolitical. The interventions have a long tunnelled vision of exploiting African resources well into the future. Africa must wake up and act to stop this relentless exploitation of African resources by former colonial powers. We owe it to future African generations to preserve our natural resources or at the minimum get the best deal for their exploitation.

The challenge is here and now.

First we must ensure that we seek Africa led solutions to all our conflicts. Africa has the capacity and is capable of resolving her own conflicts devoid of foreign meddling. Any assistance from outside Africa should be what Africa asks for and not what the donors claim they can offer.  The SFG contends that military assistance offered by France, the UK and US at best provide solutions which provide short term relief in conflict situations whilst hardening the underlying reasons for the conflicts which were carefully implanted in the colonial era.

Second, we must heed the clarion call made over fifty years ago by Kwame Nkrumah for the formation of an African High Command. In 1958, Nkrumah predicted with frightening accuracy what the consequences for Africa would be if an Africa High Command was not put in place. The foreboded consequences have been with us since 1963 when the coup in Togo overthrew a leader who questioned French imperialism. It is time for African leaders to put aside narrow and short sighted objectives which serve the interests of former colonial masters. We call upon all Africans to see French intervention for what it really is, and to mobilise the African masses to end conflicts, and remove imperialist force from African soil.

The SFG calls on Africa to come together and act now!

Dauda Mohammed Suru

For convener

Nigeria's Giant Military Is No Match For Boko Haram

Nigeria Military officers

By Michael Moran

There was a time not so long ago when a mutiny by Nigerian soldiers invariably led to bloodshed, arrests and a new government in Lagos.

On Wednesday, when army troops launched an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate one of their country's most prominent generals, it sent a shiver down older spines.

 
The attempt was unsuccessful and appears to be no threat to the country's government. But like the current standoff with Boko Haram, a militant group that kidnapped more than 200 girls last month from a remote village school, the botched assassination is shining an unwelcomed spotlight on a flailing military force.
On Friday, President Goodluck Jonathan abruptly canceled his planned visit to the area due to security concerns. 

 
Nigeria's army came by its reputation for brutality honestly. The military ruled Nigeria as a dictatorship for most of the period between independence from Britain in 1960 and 1998, when the last of its venal strongmen, Sani Abacha, died under mysterious circumstances.
The generals, tainted by repression, a brutal civil war in the 1960s and a world-beating reputation for corruption, retreated to the barracks.

 
Protesters march in support of the girls kidnapped by members of Boko Haram in front of the Nigerian Embassy in Washington May 6, 2014.

 
Then they remade themselves as important contributors of troops to United Nations and regional peacekeeping missions.

 
But Boko Haram's violence and kidnappings are putting the military back in the headlines.
The army's inability to counter the group has forced the national government to do something unprecedented: invite the United States, French and British militaries to help them rescue the young hostages.

 
Wednesday's assassination attempt, in fact, occurred at the headquarters of the very division charged with finding the girls.

 
Nigeria's 7 Division is based in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, amid Boko Haram's stronghold in the northwest of the country and the same region where the schoolgirls were abducted on April 14.

 
Nigerian press reports say that 7 Division soldiers fired on the vehicle of their commander, Maj. Gen. Ahmadu Mohammed, as he addressed troops at the Maimalari Barracks.
Mohammed's division is on the front lines of the fight against Boko Haram, and its troops have suffered heavy casualties - and, according to human rights groups, retaliated against civilians in the region.

 
Military officials in Nigeria's capital have denied the incident, claiming that 7 Division soldiers merely fired in the air to commemorate four comrades who had been killed in a bloody skirmish with Boko Haram.

 
But Nigerian media report soldiers fired on the general's vehicle as the bodies of slain comrades were being brought to the base morgue.

 
Nigeria's military has opened an investigation.

 
Few see the incident in Borno as a threat to Nigerian democracy, but it has highlighted the low morale and poor capabilities of the 60,000-strong army.
Boko Haram Nigeria

 
Nigeria’s military, with a budget of over $6 billion a year, simply is not an effective force. And as the events in Borno state indicate, it lacks the discipline of a professional military, too.
"We’re now looking at a military force that’s, quite frankly, becoming afraid to even engage, Alice Friend, the Pentagon’s principal director for African affairs, said in congressional testimony Thursday.

 
The Nigerian military has the same challenges with corruption that every other institution in Nigeria does. Much of the funding that goes to the Nigerian military is skimmed off the top, if you will.

 
This is not all the government’s fault. While Nigeria�s economy is growing fast, and it overtook South Africa�s to become sub-Saharan Africa�s largest last year, oil revenues have dropped due to flagging global prices and corruption remains a huge problem.
Nigeria is under pressure � like all countries hoping to raise money in international bond markets to control public spending. Its growing population needs jobs, its increasingly vocal middle class demands services, and the government’s inability to fund these changes through oil exports is exacerbating long-standing religious and ethnic tensions.

 
Yet, far from splurging on new military capabilities, the government in 2012 and 2013 actually cut defense spending. That’s one of the few ways to balance a budget without touching popular social programs like food and fuel subsidies.

 
Military expenditures fell in 2013 by over 5 percent, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

 
That said, cutting defense in Nigeria does not have the same effect that it does in the US or Europe, where capabilities are immediately affected. Nigeria�s defense budget is almost entirely consumed by a mixture of payroll, basic supplies and graft.

 
Purchases of new weapons systems are rare, with new equipment often amounting to refurbished platforms that spent their most useful years in Western forces. The former US Coast Guard cutter pensioned off cheaply to the Nigerian Navy in 2012. The ship, the former USCG Gallatin, first sailed in 1967.

 
On paper, Nigeria has almost 95 aircraft and 75 warships, for instance. In reality, fewer than one-third of these aircraft have flown in recent years � most have been cannibalized for spare parts. Its warships include a host of small coastal patrol craft � in effect, motorboats.

 
But the most serious problem may not be equipment but doctrine. Great �kit� isn�t much help fighting a violent guerrilla insurgency, a fact the US military discovered in Iraq and still struggles with in Afghanistan.

 
To the extent that US and European forces can bring lessons learned in those wars to Nigeria�s hinterland, they may be of some help. But even the most adaptable militaries take years to make such adjustments.

 
For the more than 200 schoolgirls in Boko Haram�s clutches, that�s simply too long to wait.

New Epidemic of Sleeplessness

By Clive Cookson

Sleep? We don’t get enough of it. That lament has been heard for many years, but alarm about mass sleep deprivation is being expressed with growing urgency by experts concerned that the distractions and pressures of modern society are exacerbating the problem.

Typical is a warning last month by Richard Wiseman, psychology professor at the University of Hertfordshire, about a “new epidemic of sleeplessness”. It came on the back of an online survey showing that 59 per cent of adults in Britain get seven hours’ sleep or less a night. That is a significantly higher proportion than earlier surveys had suggested.

“The results are extremely worrying, because getting less than seven hours sleep a night is below the recommended guidelines and is associated with a range of problems, including an increased risk of weight gain, heart attacks, diabetes and cancer,” Prof Wiseman said.

His survey pointed to one potential cause of sleeplessness: 78 per cent of respondents (and 91 per cent of those aged between 18 and 24) had used a computer, smartphone or tablet in the two hours before going to bed.

“The blue light from these devices suppresses the production of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin, so it is important to avoid them before bedtime,” explained Prof Wiseman.

Not everyone is convinced by such arguments. One distinguished dissenter is Professor Jim Horne, sleep neuroscientist at Loughborough University. His guest column in this FT special report points out that concern dates back at least to 1894, when the British Medical Journal blamed the “hurry and excitement of modern life” for increasing insomnia.

Prof Horne believes claims about growing sleeplessness reflect misunderstanding of past sleep surveys and that links between sleep debt and disease are overstated. But his seems to be a minority view, among a fast flow of studies identifying links between disease and sleep problems.

During 2014 researchers in labs around the world have reported among other things that good sleep improves the survival prospects of women with advanced breast cancer; poor sleep doubles the hospitalisation rate in heart failure patients; young children who sleep less eat more and are at greater risk of obesity; poor-sleep quality is linked to an acceleration of cognitive decline in older men; suboptimal sleep activates genes that lead to depression; fragmented sleep accelerates the growth of tumours; and sleep deprivation leads to the loss of brain cells.

Epidemiologists have long noted a U-curve relationship between sleep and disease. People who normally sleep between seven and eight hours a night have the best health. Death rates rise not only as average sleep duration decreases below seven hours but also as it increases beyond eight.

The latest study, carried out at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and published this month in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, assessed 15,200 female nurses and found those who slept five or fewer hours or nine or more hours a night had significantly worse memory in old age – a deterioration equivalent to two additional years of age – than those sleeping seven hours. A big change in sleeping habits between middle and old age was associated with a more rapid decline in memory.

As with many epidemiological observations, it is hard to move beyond the association and prove that sleeping too little – or too much – really causes poor health, rather than being a manifestation of another underlying health problem.

Even so, Elizabeth Devore, associate epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, says: “Our findings suggest getting an average amount of sleep – seven hours a day – may help maintain memory in later life and that clinical interventions based on sleep therapy should be examined for the prevention of cognitive impairment.”

People who sleep too much may be able to force themselves to get up sooner than they would like, with the help of an alarm clock. People who sleep too little may find the going harder.

Few, if any, professionals recommend long-term medication with sleeping pill prescriptions as a solution, because all existing drugs have significant side-effects and none induces brain activity that matches natural drug-free sleep.

So the healthiest bets for better sleep are to avoid the aggravating factors that can lead to insomnia, such as bright artificial light and intensive mental activity before bedtime. Of course, it helps to have a comfortable, quiet bedroom maintained at a moderate temperature (about 19C works well for most people).

And if you find yourself awake in the middle of the night and unable to go straight back to sleep, then instead of panicking about insomnia and how exhausted you will be the next day, indulge in pleasant thoughts or even a little light problem-solving as you lie awake.

Everyone knows caffeine in the evening exacerbates sleeplessness, but a recent study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine shows that consuming coffee or tea as much as six hours before bedtime can significantly disrupt sleep.

Christopher Drake, study leader at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, says: “Drinking a big cup of coffee on the way home from work can lead to negative effects on sleep, just as if someone were to consume caffeine closer to bedtime. People tend to be less likely to detect the disruptive effects of caffeine on sleep when taken in the afternoon.”

But one of the biggest factors working against good sleep is to have your body clock or circadian rhythm disrupted by intercontinental travel across time zones or working shifts during the night.

Scientists at Oxford university have identified a ‘buffering’ system in the suprachiasmatic nuclei, the brain area that controls the body clock, which slows down its adjustment to time changes.

“It makes sense to have a buffering mechanism in place to provide stability to the clock,” says Stuart Peirson, one of the Oxford university researchers.

“The clock needs to be sure it is receiving a reliable signal, and if the signal occurs at the same time over several days, it probably has biological relevance.”

In nature, nothing crosses several time zones in the course of a day.