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Nigeria Military Studies Sri Lankan Tactics for Use Against Boko Haram

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06.23.2014 at 12:51am

Nigeria Military Studies Sri Lankan Tactics for Use Against Boko Haram by David Dolan, Reuters (13 June)

Nigeria is studying the military tactics used by Sri Lanka to crush the rebel Tamil Tigers for its own battle against Islamist group Boko Haram, the defense ministry said, after holding talks with officials from the island nation.

Abuja has been criticized for its failure to contain the militant group, which has killed thousands since 2009 and has stepped up its devastating attacks after abducting more than 200 girls from a school in northeast Nigeria.

Boko Haram, which wants to carve out an Islamist state in northern Nigeria, has exposed severe weaknesses in Abuja's security forces and heaped political pressure on President Goodluck Jonathan, who has declared a "full-scale operation" against the group…

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Mark Adams

What am I missing here? Can’t for the life of me see the parallels between the Sri Lankan and Nigerian situations.

Bill C.

The following article, just published in “New York Times Magazine,” seems to provide an good overview of our African operations and the overall concept within which we are working.

The title of the article is: “Can General Linder’s Special Operations Forces Stop the Next Terrorist Threat?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/15/magazine/can-general-linders-special-operations-forces-stop-the-next-terrorist-threat.html?ref=magazine&_r=2

It is so interesting and comprehensive, it may even need its own thread.

Question: Do “Sri Lankan tactics” fit in here someplace?

KingJaja

Similar scorched earth tactics were used during the Nigerian Civil War (1967-70), with Britain providing most of the weapons, combat advisors & diplomatic cover.

If you guys remember “Biafra” and 1-2 million kids deliberately starved to death. The Nigerian Army couldn’t have pulled that off without British support.

It can happen very easily in future – after all, the crude oil is still in the South & Britain still needs the crude oil (Shell is still a major player).

It is likely to kick-off after the next elections.

Robert C. Jones

One of the biggest problems with current (and historic for that matter) COIN Doctrine and thinking is the continued failure to separate the “insurgent” from the “insurgency.”

The “insurgents” are those acting out illegally, and often violently, to coerce change of some existing system of governance.

The “insurgency” are those conditions existing within the population base the insurgents emerge from. Conditions based upon a widespread believe within that population that the current system of governance is intolerable in its current form, and equally, that no effective legal mechanism exists to implement the necessary changes to address those aspects of governance perceived as intolerable.

These are two VERY different things. Most all COIN focuses on the insurgent. In fact, a widely cited recent study of COIN victories and defeats conducted by RAND used two criteria to determine a COIN victory: The insurgent was defeated; and the government remained un-coerced. To me, this is not “victory,” this is simply suppression of the current team of challengers in a manner that merely suppresses the active symptoms of insurgency for some period of time. IMO, RAND completely missed the ball on this one. They are in good company, but just because everybody else is standing in the wrong line is no reason to queue up behind them.

So, to the Sri Lanka example. The Sri Lankans defeated the insurgents, and frankly, the Tamil Tigers as insurgents were not healthy representatives of the very valid insurgency existing within the Tamil population of Sri Lanka. The problem with the Sri Lankan strategy is that while it was extremely effective in defeating the insurgent; I strongly suspect that by its very nature it was equally effective in making the underlying insurgency STRONGER.

This is not a COIN victory for the government of Sri Lanka; and it is certainly not a governance victory for the people of Sri Lanka. The strategy did buy time and space for governance to adopt necessary and reasonable reforms to address the critical grievances of the Tamils – but if they believe they “won” they are unlikely to take advantage of what this harsh military action has bought them to undergo reform. Winners rarely seek to evolve (look at the post Cold War United States as a great example of that).

Most likely the Tamil insurgency will roar back to life within 10-20 years (based on historical precedent elsewhere when insurgents are defeated but insurgency goes unaddressed). Or as early as 2-3 years later if one takes the current Iraq example for what it is.

We really debate the wrong thing when we argue waging COIN as war vs. waging COIN as some sort of community service project. Neither approach is likely to succeed if one is only interested in defeating the current insurgent and preserving the current government. The real issue is the failure to recognize and address the causal role of governance in insurgency, and the failure to recognize that insurgency is a very naturally occurring condition when certain negative perceptions of governance come to grow within a particular population.

Our founding fathers recognized insurgency for what it is. Jefferson, Franklin and John Adams detailed this in the Declaration Independence; Madison designed powerful mechanisms to prevent the growth of insurgency in the Bill of Rights; and John Quincy Adams (our greatest diplomat) often recognized the right and goodness of foreign populations to rise up and remove the heads from despotic leaders.

We have lost our way as a nation over the past 70 years and have come to believe that stasis of government is the path to stability of governance. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The answer to a better American future lies in our troubled American past. We should not fear that history or those beliefs. They are both wise and sound – and are very applicable to the modern age.

I do not recommend the Sri Lankan approach, but nor do I condemn them for using it. I suspect it will blow up in their face, particularly if those who offer them advice do not appreciate the distinction of what they truly accomplished through their actions, and what they must do now to heal the wounds across a war torn population. Not just those injured by the Tigers, but among those represented by the Tigers as well.

Nigeria has serious problems of governance. Boko Haram is just a symptom of those problems. Adopting a Sri Lankan approach my well destroy Boko Haram, but I suspect it will speed and feed the growing clash between the deeply divided populations of that nation.

Bob

MoorthyM

At the end of a day, a solution has to be specific to a problem.

As an Indian Tamil myself and the author of Defeating Political Islam, here are my perspectives on this.

I must say that the Sri Lankan leadership understood their LTTE enemy and waged an incisive war, thanks largely to home-grown strategies. Indeed, the leadership also understood that it should not look toward the Western nations for any advice or strategy given the West’s proven inability to overcome modern insurgencies.

Yes, sadly tens of thousands of Tamil civilians have apparently been killed in the final phases of the war. But I do think that if Sri Lanka can grow its economy, over time, this will lead to a natural integration of its Tamil population. This is because the Tamil population in Sri Lanka is predominantly Hindu and is largely secular.

Those who want to apply the so-called Sri Lankan strategy to tackling Muslim insurgencies must be beware of an important distinction. The Hindu temples in Sri Lanka, by and large, were not the base of ideological indoctrination. But mosques in a Muslim community are usually the place from which indoctrination originates.

An incisive war on Muslim radicalism, be it directed at Boko Haram or any other militant group, has to find a way to make the mosque benevolent. There are ways of doing that.

KingJaja

I’m not justifying anything. I’m just telling you what is likely to happen, having lived almost all my life in Nigeria.

In 1980, 5,000 people were killed in a single day to deal with the “Maitatsine crises”. It went on & off for 10 years, but it was finally dealt with – with terrible brutality.

In 1994, the Nigerian Army (with the support of oil & gas companies & not too much trouble from the British) destroyed 30 villages & killed 3,000 people in a single day. Same was repeated in 1999 in Odi (in the Niger Delta) – about 2,400 were killed then.

If you doubt the complicity of the oil & gas companies (& a nod and wink from the British) – go and read about Ken Saro-Wiwa’s death.

During Nigeria’s civil war, Shell transported govt troops in disused tankers & the British flooded the FG troops with arms – those troops later went on to starve millions – while Harold Wilson defended it.

These are historical facts.

Insurgencies have always been put down with maximum brutality in Nigeria. Doesn’t matter whether it was Hugh Trenchard’s Southern Nigeria Regiment or Murtala Muhammed’s Second Division – & we know the British, they support the brutality, always have – their protests mean nothing. Nigerian leaders can smell their hypocrisy from a mile.

So in summary; I don’t justify brutality, but we Nigerians know what will happen – & we also know that the British & American govts will silently support the massive brutality that is coming Boko Haram’s way.

They’ve always done that – & they know the Nigerian Army is eventually going to adopt a Sri Lankan or an Algerian solution to this problem.

KingJaja

Considering that:

1. Algeria dealt brutally with an insurgency.
2. There’s no example of the “touchy-feely” approach the West advocates comprehensively dealing with an insurgency in Africa.

It is safe to say that the Nigerian Army will adopt something along the lines of Sri Lanka/Algeria to finally finish off Boko Haram.

I don’t support it, but that most likely reflects the thinking of senior Army leadership.