Over 2,000 people feared dead in Boko Haram massacre

[Simfan34]

BBC: Nigeria's Baga town hit by new assault

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However the matter is not entirely clear. AFP also quotes Musa Bakar, who says that the 16 neighbouring towns have been destroyed, but does not give the 2,000 figure to them.

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NBC News spoke to a senator who said that over 2,000 people were "unaccounted for" while also saying several towns were destroyed

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However, Reuters cites the (other?) district chief as saying as "over 100" were killed, horrendous but a far cry from several thousand.

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It's not at all clear what's happened, or where the officials themselves are getting their news from, but it looks like we're looking at atrocities on unprecedented scale here. Most of them have been overlooked in the news. 

[politicus]

Oh God, this year certainly starts well...

[politicus]

Its cynical to focus on that, but this might cost Goodluck Johnathan the presidency. He has been highly ineffective in fighting the terrorists.

[Antonio the Sixth]

It seems tragedy never ends.

[Simfan34]

The world appears to ignore atrocities in Nigeria because Nigerians themselves appear to ignore it. A look at the websites of some Nigerian newspapers (here's one, and here's another) shows that they make little to no mention of it. Whether 200 or 2,000 in almost every country- including places like China- you would think an attack on this sort of scale would be the leading news story, as reporters seek to verify the reports. But many feel fit to pretty much ignore it.

Goodluck Jonathan, while he did blame Buhari for the poor performance of the army against Boko Haram while campaigning today, as far as I know, has not bothered commenting on this yet, although he did express remorse for the events in France. So even Goodluck Jonathan seems to place more importance on French lives than Nigerian ones. I doubt we'll get a minute of silence for this.

The telling thing is this- in the words of Goodluck Jonathan- refer to Boko Haram as an "embarrassment". Not a "problem", not a "crisis", but an embarrassment. This, while blaming "western propaganda" for its instability, as the ambassador to the US said a few days ago.  The implication of the choice of words is that if no-one noticed the "embarrassment" there would be nothing problematic about it, that the government is not as much interested in defeating Boko Haram as they are making people forget about them.

This sort of approach is the result of an attitude that allows leaders to deny the presence of the obvious. It's what allows a newspaper to seriously run the headline "Boko Haram suffers heavy defeat in surprise attack on military base" about the attack when the military was forced to desert its last key base in Borno state in a defeat so atrocious that Niger and Chad stopped cooperating with them (something that was also denied). Indeed, they've had the nerve to blame the United States for their own failure to find the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls, and for declining to send Cobra helicopters and other heavy military equipment and instead sending trucks, armor, ammunition and supplies of that sort to the Nigerian armed forces- a military lacking those very same basics and one whose soldiers who ran away from Boko Haram.. It's what allows people to condemn "negativity" about corruption while said military lacks said ammunition despite a multi-billion dollar budget. It's what makes people complain when others talk about poverty that they neglect to show a "balanced picture", by which they mean acting as if the living standards of the wealthiest members of society can be enjoyed by the average person.

What that attitude is, I think, is a response, a sort of coping mechanism, to the country's deeply-rooted and innumerable faults. Just as people, when facing serious problems, often like to pretend that nothing is wrong, the same psyche seems to apply on a national scale to Nigeria- or at least its leaders and a good many people. If they tried to face all of the problems at once, they would be completely overwhelmed by it and be crushed- so better to act as if they don't exist. That psyche leads to everything being deniable, that one cannot be certain about anything no matter how convincing the evidence, and it leads to a 9/11 scale attack being relegated to a mere "rumour" not even worthy of mention in the news.

And why should the world care about rumours coming out of Africa? How can the armed forces take something seriously when the favoured approach is to deny as much of it as possible?

[Storebought]

I think the matter is that most Nigerian news sites and blogs are based in and report news from the south of the country, where there is no insurgency. Of the African news sites I read, kidnapping and oil bunkering are more pressing issues.

[Simfan34]

I think the matter is that most Nigerian news sites and blogs are based in and report news from the south of the country, where there is no insurgency. Of the African news sites I read, kidnapping and oil bunkering are more pressing issues.

I think you are giving them too much credit. It's difficult for the international media to give this the attention it would otherwise be getting if the Nigerian media, which is more or less free enough to at least not be dismissed as government propaganda, is not giving these claims the light of day (even if international groups like the UNHCR, Amnesty, and the Government of Chad are). With the election nearby, any matter like this is going to be sensitive and the incumbent government is going to want to downplay and cast doubt on this. But to many observers, when a country's President apparently does not find it worth his time to make a statement on the unprecedented atrocity that has just taken place in his country, or just responding to "rumours" of such an attack, even while campaigning for re-election (in front of the media, which apparently does not see fit to ask him about it, either), it just looks like the reports should, at the very least, be regarded with considerable skepticism. No amount of regionalist bias ought render reports of a massacre of 2,000 people in the country, again, or even rumour of such, not worthy of mention by the government or much of the media.

The critical thing is that this apparent lack of concern, and the resultant lack of media interest, makes it extremely difficult to say with certainty what the true extent of the killings were- were 2,000+ ''really'' killed, or were there "only" (the fact this is considered "low" is itself disturbing) around 100 fatalities. This, according to one newspaper (the very same one I had mentioned, actually, that claimed the Nigerian army had repelled the attack on the MNJTF base headquarters in Baga on 3 January) supposedly quoting the district chief, and that the "BBC lied" as the headline reads?

Curiously enough, if you now read the BBC's article on the massacre, the figure of 2,000+ dead is buried deep in the report and they mention "other reports" of less extensive fatalities (they also say that 2,000 people were killed by Boko Haram last year, which is flat-out wrong- over 10,000 were.) whereas they initially put it right in the lead.  So the effect has been to only muddle our understanding of what happened and, in some cases, perhaps suggest that nothing happened at all.

[Simfan34]

As mentioned before, domestic Nigerian media and some government officials (but decidedly not all of them) continue to deny that the massacre took place at all:

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Chillingly, in many ways this "delegitimisation by disinformation", so to speak, is not all that unlike what is seen in the Russian media, as was described in a recent article in Politico- deliberately spread disinformation, contradictory insinuations, and tales of ambiguous yet malevolent foreign agents plotting against the country all work to thoroughly disorient viewers and readers of the news. For Russian audiences the aim is to forment the belief that the present government, portrayed as the sole real constant in society, as the only thing preventing the country from sliding into chaos; for foreign audiences, such as those watching RT, the aim is to confuse them and introduce "alternative" interpretations of events  to the point that they merely do not know who or what to believe- and hence will question their governments' criticism of Russian actions (the prime example of this is their coverage of the MH17 crash).

The latter is not all that dissimilar from what goes on in Nigeria, although there it might not be deliberate. It would have been perfectly possible for me to craft a story, for example, citing (seemingly) credible local news outlets, that more or less stated that the Nigerian tropes in Baga fiercely resisted the Boko Haram assault for hours, until being forced to retreat due to the lack of Nigerien and Chadian support, which would have turned the tide; after taking the town Boko Haram merely killed 100 people while forcing only exactly 1,636 people to flee (all of whom were safe in government IDP centres), and that Niger and Chad were still cooperating with the Nigerian military, which was mounting a counter-offensive as I type. Who can know for certain?

[Simfan34]

What we do know is this:

The AP reports Amnesty International as saying that this was likely the deadliest attack ever committed by Boko Haram, as evidence mounts that the reports of a death toll in the thousands is in fact accurate:

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Several American officials and analysts, speaking to NBC News, believe that the "over 2,000" estimate is a reasonable figure and that the Nigerian government has a history of downplaying attacks:

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The methods used by Boko Haram to carry out the massacre were also described in greater detail, painting a picture of systematic and deliberate killings:

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The government still has not commented on the massacre, while the opposition campaign has condemned it in statements:

According to the Guardian, up to 1.5 million IDPs may not be able to vote in the election, the North, of course, favouring the Muslim opposition candidate Buhari:

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Cameroonian President Paul Biya, Reuters reported, called for a "global response" to Boko Haram following the massacre, saying that not enough was being done:

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All of this comes as Boko Haram has launched an assault on Damaturu, capital of Yobe state, as confirmed by AFP, following a prior raid in December. The Daily Trust of Abuja reports that:

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[Adam Griffin]

I think the lack of response more or less comes down to the fact that Goodluck Johnathan is merely an attention whore who is completely incompetent at his job. Take for instance that it took the better part of a year for his government to release funds allocated for lead poisoning of children in Zamfara/Bagega (and only happened once the public outcry genuinely reached levels that couldn't be ignored), or the fact that he is in no shape or form any better with respect to corruption than most contemporary African leaders (let alone the ones he is claiming his administration is winning the war against).

Furthermore...and I really don't care nor think it's cultural or racial insensitivity (given the fact that it's not a common denominator throughout the rest of the continent)...but a leader of the world's seventh-largest country insisting on constantly dressing in no way different than an African-American pimp and posing for Vogue says all that needs to be said about the general debate of style over substance (and the whole attention whore label mentioned earlier).

[swl]

He just has to wait one month, and then if the things go too far he can ask foreigners to do the job for him.

The sad thing is that when you see the number of people ready to support someone like Assad, we can expect Jonathan to get away with it.

[Cory]

Furthermore...and I really don't care nor think it's cultural or racial insensitivity (given the fact that it's not a common denominator throughout the rest of the continent)...but a leader of the world's seventh-largest country insisting on constantly dressing in no way different than an African-American pimp and posing for Vogue says all that needs to be said about the general debate of style over substance (and the whole attention whore label mentioned earlier).

This.

He's always been a walking joke. From his name to the way he carries himself.

[swl]

Now Boko Haram is sending 10 years old girls as suicide bombers... Worse than ISIS?

[Famous Mortimer]

Boko Haram are basically just RUF-style amoral psychopaths with an Islamist veneer.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Right, they're like a Muslim version of the Lord's Resistance Army in that sense.

[swl]

Fighters linked to Boko Haram crossed the border between Nigeria and Cameroon and attacked a military base there (10 kilometers away from the border).
According to cameroonian authorities, 200 or 300 Boko Haram fighters and 1 cameroonian soliders were killed. As usual, these figures are very dubious.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2015/01/boko-haram-attacks-cameroon-military-base-2015112133225785766.html

[Simfan34]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/01/14/did-boko-haram-attack-leave-150-dead-or-2000-satellite-imagery-sheds-new-light/

[Tender Branson]

Horrible stuff.

Boko Haram is the Nigerian version of Central Europe's Catholic and Protestant hordes of mercenaries and lunatics, who destroyed whole villages and raped and killed its inhabitants between 1600 and 1650 during the 30 Years War.

Some things just never change ...