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Nigerian
Military: “The Real Boko Haram”
By Glen Ford
“The Nigerian military has long been
suspected of manipulating Boko Haram to
its own ends.”
December 24, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "BAR"
- 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
2009 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.
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