I agree. Moses has a point. Life must also go on too.
There would have been no need for former Apartheid mercenaries if Nigeria's politicians and security services did their job.
Please spare a thought for the past, enduring, and possible future victims of the Boko Haram scourge.
oa
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Ugo Nwokeji
Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2015 10:58 PM
To: usaafricadialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Jonathan hires Former Apartheid mercenaries to fight Boko Haram?
Ogugua,
Although I would not blame the unfortunate mercenary branding entirely on the Western media, Moses does have a point. The Western media have pushed this narrative while aware of how the world of military contractors and advisers works. They have been successful in advancing this narrative. I have seen signs of this in various contexts, but when I have corrected the view people seem surprised that they had not thought about it themselves.
The main point I want to make, however, is that for whatever reason a section of the Nigerian media seem to have been even more strident in pushing the mercenary narrative. I think I first saw this characterization on Saharareporters, and it sent a chill down my spine. For me, it was simply a continuation of the unfortunate tendency to belittle our own forces, which began with giving to Cameroonian, Chadian and Nigerien forces all the credit for the military gains against Boko Haram.
Here is a self-identified Nigerian citizen-journalist chiding another Nigerian journalist denying credit to Nigerian solders.
A RIPOSTE TO ISHAQ MODIBBO KAWU'S ESSAY, "DEFEATING BOKO HARAM WITH MERCENARIES"
Posted on March 19, 2015by beegeagle
BEEGEAGLE'S BLOG
19 March, 2015
Lt General KTJ Minimah, Chief of Army Staff
The foregoing embedded weblink refers.
Your article signposted a new low in unethical journalism and was notorious for its deliberate obfuscation of facts, pursuant to your undisguised mission of writing to tarnish reputations. My modest guess is that, as is typical with most skewed narratives emanating at this time, it was written to give a fillip to your political preferences.
Personally, I have followed your work since you undertook a Kano-Lagos train ride for the now-rested "BBC AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE". That was a great report which was aired about fifteen years ago whereas this diatribe appears to have been badly jaundiced by a preference to deploy ethno-regional gimmickry.
Here are the facts:
So of all 42 towns which were liberated in Adamawa, Yobe and Borno, it is now the backwater that is Dikwa which was the nunc dimitis of the war, just because Chad operated there and you were clearly writing to discredit the FG and the Nigerian military?
If President Deby said they spotted Shekau at Dikwa, you think the Nigerian Army deployed faraway at Mafa, Marte and Monguno stopped the Chadians from killing him? That sounds like puerile conjecture. It was just another hollow claim made by a megalomanic President Deby and the Chadians have been caught more than once telling white lies about their role in this war. How many times have Nigerian troops spotted or killed Shekau or one of his doubles? Did that mark the end of the insurgency? So why make it seem like the war would have ended had the Chadians been allowed to slay Shekau? Such incongruent extrapolation is emblematic of the sort of incoherent buccaneering journalism which many compromised Nigerian journalists subscribe to. Who hired you to write that cheap diatribe?
I put it to you, Malam Ishaq Modibbo Kawu, that neither President Deby nor his military spoksman, Colonel Azem, can be described as being 'credible war communicators'. They routinely peddle falsehood to make themselves look better than they really are. PROOF? Here we go…
At the end of January 2015, Chadian troops claimed to have liberated MALAM FATORI.
See
Only a week thereafter, Boko Haram staged their first-ever attacks in Niger and that was when they hit Bosso and Diffa from, wait for it, a supposedly liberated Malam Fatori.
http://www.mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0LA1G520150206?irpc=932
Indeed, Malam Fatori had not been liberated at all for again in March 2015, Malam Fatori was apparently 'liberated' but this time, by a joint force Chadian and Nigerien troops.
So the Chadian military were clearly caught lying about battlefield gains. And they lied yet again. For indeed, they also claimed to have taken the town of DAMASAK in conjunction with Niger's troops.
http://www.nigeriatell.com/news/bharam-chad-niger-troops-liberate-nigerian-towns#.VQp_PxzTWj8
That was another lie which was exposed by Radio France International a few days after when they reported that Damasak was still in Boko Haram hands. And as if to confirm that, the Nigerian Army which you maligned so terribly, stepped in to reclaim Damasak only last weekend, in the face of flailing attempts by JOINT Chadian and Nigerien forces to capture the border town from Boko Haram. There goes your 'valiant' Chadian Army.
It is again emblematic of lazy journalism for you in Nigeria to sit behind your desk and unashamedly quote a decidedly dubious Adam Nossiter of New York Times who writes his fiction from faraway Senegal.
Be that as it may and even as you are a professional journalist whereas I am a humble citizen journalist, I have reached out and sought the perspectives of those you termed 'mercenaries'. If only buccaneering Nigerian journalists would take a cue therefrom instead of quoting the AFP, AP and Al Jazeera all the time.
That is what is going on in Borno at this time. So why make it appear as if the ex-paramilitaries of Namibia's Koevoets it is who have now become the storm troopers in Borno? I put it to you, Ishaq Modibbo Kawu, that the trainers/advisers in Borno are predominantly ex-soldiers drawn from the apartheid-era South African Defence Force and the South African Air Force of that same epoch. Koevoets are a footnote to the story but I am not surprised that you sought to amplify that bit of falsehood way beyond its relevance and factuality, all in a calculated attempt at misinforming Nigerians and smearing the Nigerian military.
Be it known to you that as of Monday 16th March, a total of 42 towns had been liberated in the mission area. Nigerian troops fighting ALONE and without your Chadian mentors, cleared all of Adamawa and Yobe States while the Chadians only took Dikwa and Gamboru. Along the line, a joint Chadian+Nigerien force took Malam Fatori while that joint force probably managed to take Damasak following an intervention by Nigerian troops.
http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/military-battles-boko-haram-for-border-town-of-damasak/204150/
The fact is that our Nigerian troops have done more than 90% of the fighting yet you make every minor battle seem like it was the main event.
WHAT is the strategic relevance of DIKWA? Because Chad operated there? Is that historical desert town more strategically important than the garrison towns of BAGA, BAMA and MONGUNO which have been retaken by Nigerian troops? Your contemptible kind of cash-and-carry journalism deserves to be consigned to ignominy. It is not worth anybody's time but you surely needed to be led to the bright light.
In closing, be it known to you that the same BBC which you worked for have sent in a Nigerian youth, Tomi Oladipo, to go see and report from the mission area. Imagine if they had trusted your powers of discernment and hired you to report from Borno? It would have been calamitous for Nigeria, I dare say.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-31902503
I am sure you are constrained to believe your former paymasters or you worked for them in the belief that they are not credible? I doubt that.
FACTS must remain SACRED in the reportage of this war.
On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 1:42 PM, Anunoby, Ogugua <AnunobyO@lincolnu.edu> wrote:
If former Apartheid mercenaries will save Nigerians from the scourge of Boko Haram why not hire them? The victims of the scourge are very unlikely to object to using them if they will do a job that Nigerians have failed to do for themselves for many years now. Ask the Chibok parents/families. They want their daughters and lives back do they not? Nigeria's security forces have had years to end the scourge. They failed to.
If "former" means what one ordinarily knows the word to mean, what is wrong with working with the former Apartheid mercenaries if they get the job done and their contract does not compromise Nigeria's interests. Employing them may work out cheaper I might add. If Mandela worked with them to move his country forward why would not anyone else to make life better if they will do the job more efficiently and effectively? Mandela was a prudent leader. He looked forward more often and longer than he looked backward which is not to say that he was oblivious of the lessons of the past. He was more concerned about getting things done than winning arguments and debates.
Would the "parachuting" of British soldiers have been necessary if Nigerian soldiers successfully completed the Job in Sierra Leone? I am just asking. Who invited British soldiers to help? Why were they invited? Let us not berate the Western media all the time for all Nigerians' failures. Sometimes western media reports are instructive true. You exposed your soft underbelly in a fight and blamed your adversary for lancing it.
What was your adversary expected to do?
oa
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Moses Ebe Ochonu
Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2015 9:27 AM
To: USAAfricaDialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Jonathan hires Former Apartheid mercenaries to fight Boko Haram?
For what it's worth, here is what I posted on my Facebook wall a couple of weeks ago when reports about "mercenaries" started making the rounds.
I sense a very sinister and hypocritical machination on the part of the Western media to use the trope of "mercenaries" to tarnish the accomplishments of Nigerian troops and those of the neighboring countries who are dealing a military blow to Boko Haram. When Nigerian troops went to Sierra Leone and risked life, limb, and treasure to bring calm to that war-ravaged country, a few British troops came in later and took credit for ending the war there. Subsequently the narrative of the end of the war avoided mention of the heroic role and sacrifices of Nigerian soldiers and credited the few British troops who parachuted in when the dust had settled. They were the messianic saviors and the Nigerian troops became mere "peacekeepers." It is an old, tired bromide that is always recycled to diminish the capacity of Africans to solve their own problems, of African institutions to work, and as a way to externalize (Euro-Americanize, really) salvation and problem solving in Africa.
This emerging narrative of white mercenaries helping Nigeria to defeat BH is a continuation of this old discourse. It is simply not true, but truth is never central to dominant media storylines. And it is hypocritical, since there are, as we speak, many Westerners helping Iraqi troops to battle ISIS, Westerners who are not called mercenaries. Media reports refer to them as military advisers, trainers, and military contractors. There are even white Westerners who have gone to Iraq to fight with Kurdish troops against ISIS but they are called volunteers, not mercenaries. But in Nigeria, the name for the white advisers, trainers, and contractors is "mercenaries" because of course mercenaries has a shady connotation to it and would bolster the narrative of Nigerian troops being useless, cowardly bumblers who need white mercenaries to discipline and motivate them. We can have a separate, legitimate debate about the wisdom and cost of engaging the white trainers and contractors, and we should also acknowledge the history of white mercenary atrocities and political destabilization in Africa (in most cases these mercenaries were acting on behalf of European States or on behalf of the old Apartheid regime in SA). However, now is not the time to disparage our soldiers, who are being killed and maimed in defense of their fatherland, who are putting their lives on the line to tame the monsters called BH.
Now is not the time to take away from their sacrifice by attributing the recent military successes to a handful of "mercenaries" who may or may not even have engaged in combat. By all account regional cooperation, better equipment, and better discipline in the army are the factors that produced the military turnaround, not white mercenaries. In any case, one senses some sour grapes here. America refused to sell weapons and equipment to Nigeria on the bogus and hypocritical premise of human rights violation by Nigerian troops, the same America which has trained and equipped multiple militias and troops and continues to train and equip them in Iraq and Afghanistan to fight ISIS and the Taliban respectively. Are Nigerian troops worse abusers of human rights than US trained and equipped forces in these countries? Are insurgencies clean wars that call for a puritanical adherence to notions of human rights? Does a country whose troops perpetrated Abu Ghraib and other notorious war time human rights abuses have the moral right to sermonize to Nigeria about human rights abuses in war? It is sour grapes on the part of the Americans and their allies who refused to sell vital military equipment to Nigeria and now see how Nigeria has acquired these resources from other sources and is now winning the war against BH.
These countries are now trying through hegemonic media narratives to shift the focus from improved equipment and other resources--obtained from non-Western sources-- and from factors internal to Nigeria and the region, to an exaggerated narrative of mercenaries purportedly playing a decisive role, a false narrative of an outsourced war, which they hope would minimize their embarrassment and preempt a discussion of Nigeria's success DESPITE the Western countries' refusal to sell requested equipment to Nigeria.
On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 8:54 AM, Okey Iheduru <okeyiheduru@gmail.com> wrote:
One of the first things Mandela did upon his release from jail was to have tea with Mrs. Verwood, the widow of the apartheid prime minister that put him away for 27 years. He hired, De Klerk, the president of former apartheid South Africa as his Deputy President. His personal secretary until he died was a white female beneficiary of apartheid evils. War criminals and mercenaries with hands dripping with the blood of thousands of southern Africans were absorbed and formed the nucleus of the new South African National Defense Force. Former SA mercenaries are in the vanguard of high-tech security firms that were awarded millions of security contracts by the White House immediately following 9/11. South Africans make Riovaak, the fastest attack helicopters in the world--and they're selling faster than Girl Scout cookies. Former SA mercenaries have been allowed to grab huge swathes of farmland in Adamawa and Bauchi states of Nigeria and they make fruit juice sold in many Nigerian hotels. So, why do we always cry louder than the bereaved?
I'm comfortable with President Jonathan hiring Satan and his A-Teams to help train Nigerian soldiers on how to use newly acquired equipment. I'd be happy to contribute to a fund to buy napkins for anyone who wants to cry that Nigeria is finally killing and pushing out Boko Haram from Nigerian territory.
Peace as always!
On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 6:04 AM, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@mail.ccsu.edu> wrote:
Has Jonathan hired former apartheid mercenaries to fight Boko Haram?
So said National Public Radio a few hours ago.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department
CCSU. New Britain. CT 06050
africahistory.net
vimeo.com/user5946750/videos
Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries on
Africa and the African Diaspora
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