Final military operation in Sambisa

The Nigerian Armed Forces last week said it has
deployed ground and aerial personnel deep inside
Sambisa forest in Northeast Nigeria in a final
onslaught against the Boko Haram, to clear the
remnants of the terrorists’ enclave and rescue all
hostages, including the Chibok girls who were
abducted from their school two years ago. Chief
of Defence Staff (CDS) Gen. Abayomi Olonishakin
announced the operation at the Military Command
and Control Centre (MCCC) in Maiduguri, Borno
State last week.
According to him, this new onslaught codenamed
Operation Crackdown is aimed at smoking out
Boko Haram terrorists and destroying their hiding
places within the forest as well as rescuing
hostages in it. Already, displaced persons in
camps have commenced returning to liberated
communities. Major challenges being encountered
by the troops in the area are landmines and
Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) deployed by
Boko Haram. Happily, the Army said it has
counter-IEDs equipment and other ingenious
solutions that have been put in place to ensure
that the operation goes ahead as planned.
This latest operation to clear out Sambisa forest,
the terrorists’ main enclave, is a welcome
development and we hope the challenges being
encountered by troops would be addressed so
that the momentum of the operation could be
sustained. The scale of operation by the Army is
a sobering indication of its resilience and
determination to flush out insurgent groups that
thrive on fear and greed. But defeating them
cannot be achieved by military might alone unless
their governance is weakened and underlying
issues that have allowed Boko Haram to thrive
are tackled.
It is instructive to note that the Army now has an
ambitious plan to do just that, coupled with the
troops’ high morale and being conscious of their
set objective, they are unrelenting in their
determination to defeat the Boko Haram
terrorists. The problem isn’t just the military’s
fighting performance. Distrust of the army played
a significant initial role in Boko Haram’s
entrenchment in the region. Only recently, military
personnel were accused of committing human
rights abuses in the region, hence the need to
earn back the public’s trust.
The only way to defeat an insurgency, one with
various elements and motivations, is to drain it of
this support. It involves denying insurgents space
and support by providing reliable security and
winning the confidence of local people. The battle
then becomes primarily political rather than
military. Here, economic development is also key
and Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno state
has spoken of the need for a ‘Marshall Plan’ for
the area to bolster education and employment
opportunities.
The rescue operation is necessary to pave the
way for the presidential initiative on the
rehabilitation of the North-east to take off and
President Buhari must further strengthen the
military and the cash-strapped government must
struggle to fund policies that would boost
development programs. For Nigeria to turn things
around in Sambisa and to win this war and defeat
Boko Haram, the scale of the recent attack should
ensure a successful counter-insurgency that must
create favourable political dividing lines between
government forces and the insurgents.
The government has the opportunity to portray
itself as a champion of security and development;
therefore it should avoid potential pitfalls and
continue adopting a zero tolerance policy that
would deny the insurgents military and political
space. If we are determined to wipe out terrorists
from our land and from the Sambisa axis, the
recent tactics, through revolution in strategy and
capabilities, coupled with a combination of
creative techniques, should be entirely productive
in order to deliver the needed vital political
victory. Even with the recent suicide bombings,
the number one focus of the recent counter-
insurgency effort should be to protect the
population from any terrorist acts that will
prevent the people from marking and