generalspeaking

 Tomorrow's Problem Today

"They started shooting, shooting, shooting. They took our livestock."
"They took everything and they left."
Matte Bama, Amchide, Cameroon

"They need food. They need to eat. They're stealing everything."
Midjiyawa Bakari, governor, Far North region, Cameroon

"Their supply routes are blocked. They're hungry. They have nowhere to go."
Brigadier General Rabe Abubakar, Nigerian military spokesman

"We're looking at a large-scale crisis in very remote areas."
"This is not a today problem. This is a tomorrow problem and a next year problem unless it's contained, and I don't see it coming to a halt soon."
Denise Brown, West and Central Africa regional director, World Food Program

Boko Harm's terror raids have succeeded in helping to turn the Sahel region in north Africa into a deserted wasteland; where crops and livestock once existed, none do now. The villages are emptied of their residents, burned out and in ruin. Temperatures are rising, there is little rainfall and hunger at this time of year visits grimly as a threat to subsistence farmers and herdsmen traditionally.

They have fled, though, thanks to the predations of Boko Haram, and whatever they had been able to produce is no longer possible, leading to the threat of widespread starvation.

That condition has touched Boko Haram as well. So successful in terrorizing the villagers that 70 percent of the local farmers have left, the land abandoned, and nothing being grown, no food in prospect for anyone, much less members of Boko Haram. Representing enough of an incentive for starving members of Boko Haram to turn themselves in to authorities in complete surrender to their condition, hoping to be fed.

Other Boko Haram gangs storm the depleted villagers to kill, and to pillage whatever is left.

Their five-year regional rampage has resulted in over two million people forced to leave homes and farms. Farmers have left fallow fields, herdsmen taken their cattle on drives avoiding the terrorist violence. A series of ghost towns with few people left represent all that can be plundered, and that is very little. Northeastern Nigeria has seen trade falter and halt, with tens of thousands of people facing famine, according to the United Nations. There are no markets since no one has anything to sell.

The crowds of people that used to attend markets no longer do, not only because the markets have disappeared, but because even if they hadn't the favoured tactic of Boko Haram to send suicide bombers into crowded venues like markets would keep people away in any event. Hunger has pushed Boko Haram deeper into Cameroon, resulting in a multitude of attacks. The military campaign led by Nigeria and joined by its neighbours pushed the terrorists from onc-controlled villages.

Boko Haram militants scrounge for food in the Sambisa Forest where they had taken hundreds of abducted schoolgirls, or they venture out for raids. Emaciated fighters for Boko Haram surrendered to military officials, no longer capable of carrying on. From raids thousands of heads of cattle have been stolen by Boko Haram in Cameroon. They secure sheep and goats, and then abduct people to help lead the animals back to Nigeria. Hostages are forced to raid cattle from other villages.

Suicide belts, weapons and equipment for making mines have been collected through joint operations conducted by the Cameroonian and Nigerian militaries while capturing and killing Boko Haram fighters. The move is intended to push the fighters from both sides of the border leaving them nowhere to turn to. Chad and Niger, with the U.S. military advising, fight alongside Cameroon's and Nigeria's forces to squeeze out Boko Haram.

Left without food supplies there is an estimated 1.4 million people displaced and facing starvation. Drinking water is in short supply particularly at refugee camps where new arrivals converge on a daily basis. Cameroon is burdened by the presence of thousands of refugees seeking refuge from the religious war in nearby Central African Republic.

Africa is imploding, joining parts of the Middle East in total dysfunction, looking to the world at large for rescue. So much for Islam, the religion of peace. The deadly confluence of tribalism and Islam wreak their inhumane malice.

Labels: Atrocities, Boko Haram, Conflict, Islamism, North Africa, Starvation

posted by Pieface @ Monday, March 14, 2016