Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Nigerian Military: “The Real Boko Haram”
16 Dec 2015
🖨️ Print Article

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

When the United States and Saudi Arabia partnered to spread global jihadist terror, they set the stage for massacres throughout Asia and Africa. The latest atrocity has claimed as many as a thousand Shia Muslim lives in Nigeria, a nation that has joined Saudi Arabia’s bizarre coalition against terror. “For the Saudis to be leading a war against terror is like the Pope leading a war against Catholicism.”

Nigerian Military: “The Real Boko Haram”

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

“The Nigerian military has long been suspected of manipulating Boko Haram to its own ends.”

Hammad Ibrahim, a soft-spoken, intelligent young man, accompanied his father, Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky, the leader of Nigeria’s Shia Muslims, to a conference on Solidarity with Palestine, in Beirut, last week. I was there, along with other reporters and activists. Young Hammad told our group that Boko Haram, the Nigerian jihadists, are terrorist thugs who get their weapons and money from both Nigerian and foreign donors, just like the Islamic State, with which Boko Haram is aligned. Hammad’s father, Sheikh Zakzaky, is recognized as a force for reconciliation among the various religious and ethnic groups in Nigeria. But Zakzaky’s Shia followers have been targeted by both Boko Haram and the Nigerian military, which has long been suspected of manipulating Boko Haram to its own ends. The Nigerian army killed three of the Sheikh’s sons in 2014 during a march against the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem.

By this weekend, Hammad was also dead, killed by the Nigerian military shortly after he arrived back in the country in a massacre of unarmed Shia Muslims that left his father with bullet wounds in both hands. The military claims the Sheikh’s followers were plotting to kill the army chief of staff when his motorcade was blocked by demonstrators. But, it was pure murder on a massive scale, with as many as 1,000 dead and two hundred bodies piled up at a morgue on the outskirts of town. The military then bulldozed a Shia shrine and Sheikh Zakzaky’s home. One of the Sheikh’s followers, Bukhari Muhammed Bello Jega, wrote on his Facebook page that “the REAL BOKO HARAM is now on the loose” in form of the Nigerian army, “bombing buildings and killing innocent civilians.” Soon after posting that message, Mr. Bello Jega was also killed by soldiers, along with his wife and infant child.

“It was pure murder on a massive scale, with as many as 1,000 dead.”

It is not strange at all that the Nigerian military, which for years did little to halt the rise of Boko Haram terror, has unleashed a hell on earth for peaceful Shia Muslims. Saudi Arabia, the fountainhead of funding for jihadists all over the world, has just formed its own bizarre coalition against terror, made up of 34 nations from Pakistan to sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria and its West African neighbors Chad, Togo, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Gabon, Guinea, and the Ivory Coast. For the Saudis to be leading a war against terror is like the Pope leading a war against Catholicism. Everything the Saudis touch turns into terror and chaos. The Saudi brand of Wahhabist Islam calls for the eradication of Shia Muslims and secular governments, worldwide – a crusade that the United States finds convenient to its own imperial purposes. When both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton say that Arabs and Muslims must fight their own war against terror, they are actually endorsing Saudi Arabia’s leadership of the Muslim world and the spread of proxy jihadist armies throughout Africa and Asia.

West Africa is the next front in these jihadist wars, which have already claimed so many of Sheikh Zakzaky’s sons. The resulting chaos will be used to justify further U.S military penetration of the African continent, under the pretext of putting out the fires that they themselves have set.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

 



Your browser does not support the audio element.

listen
http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20151216_gf_NigerianMilitaryJihad.mp3

More Stories


  • Pigment of your Imagination: Black magic mascots, props and sops?
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Pigment of your Imagination: Black magic mascots, props and sops?
    15 Jul 2021
    Could the pigment of your imagination cause Black magic mascots, props, sops— Black faces in high places— to short-circuit electrical gray spaces?
  • Defend the Cuba Revolution and Struggle for More Socialism, Not Less!
    ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    Defend the Cuba Revolution and Struggle for More Socialism, Not Less!
    15 Jul 2021
    Millions have turned away from the illusions and corruption of capitalism toward the possibility of organizing a society informed by the values of cooperation, equality, community, peace, and life.
  • The Assassination of Jovenel Moise: What Next for Haiti?
    Seth Donnelly
    The Assassination of Jovenel Moise: What Next for Haiti?
    15 Jul 2021
    Expect the Biden Administration to provide ongoing funding for Haiti’s brutal security forces.
  • The Julian Assange Media Blackout Must End
    Branko Marcetic
    The Julian Assange Media Blackout Must End
    15 Jul 2021
    Embarrassed by revelations, the Biden administration has now offered several “assurances” they would allow Assange to apply for transfer to a prison in his home country of Australia to serve out hi
  • BAR Book Forum: André Brock Jr.’s “Distributed Blackness”
    André Brock Jr.
    BAR Book Forum: André Brock Jr.’s “Distributed Blackness”
    15 Jul 2021
    The online aggregation and coherence of Blackness online, absent Black bodies, is what inspired the author’s book.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us