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
  • omnibus

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

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 [email protected].

 



Your browser does not support the audio element.

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

More Stories


  • from mississippiriverdelta.org
    Justin Hosbey, J.T. Roane
    A Totally Different Form of Living: On the Legacies of Displacement and Marronage as Black Ecologies
    01 Dec 2021
    This is a brief reflection on water, swamps, bayous, wetlands, and Black life in the United States, and the forms of freedom and racialized unfreedom that these ecologies have facilitated.
  • The Racist, Imperialist War on Venezuela
    Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
    The Racist, Imperialist War on Venezuela
    24 Nov 2021
    We are reprinting Glen Ford’s 2019 article on Venezuela not to demonstrate that he was prescient on the issue of U.S.-Venezuela policies, but because it is still relevant and demonstrates the t
  • Kenyan Families Say U.S. Government Fueling “War on Terror” Disappearances and Killings, Demand Records
    Center for Constitutional Rights
    Kenyan Families Say U.S. Government Fueling “War on Terror” Disappearances and Killings, Demand Records
    24 Nov 2021
    Security forces trained by the CIA and the UK's MI6 use the "war on terror" as justification for killing and abducting Kenyans. In fact, the US/EU/NATO axis wage a war of terror against African
  • Rittenhouse and Verdict Mania
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Rittenhouse and Verdict Mania
    23 Nov 2021
    Black people give great attention to certain court cases in hopes of receiving justice when the system is designed to be unjust.
  • The Delusional Commitment to the Doctrine of “Full Spectrum Dominance” is leading the U.S. and the World to Disaster
    ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    The Delusional Commitment to the Doctrine of “Full Spectrum Dominance” is leading the U.S. and the World to Disaster
    23 Nov 2021
    U.S. actions around the world seem mysterious unless the commitment to white supremacist notions of domination is clearly understood.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us