WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER
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This is a new week already loaded with concerns for the country; particularly the concern and rhetoric about the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan. Because of our wrong perception and interpretation of the status of the Taliban over the decades, many are already bothered that the political victory of the Talibans in Afghanistan would in so many ways embolden terror groups in other climes, and we should be expecting increased movements and disturbances from terror groups, especially in our clime.
This is the reality of Afghanistan with regard to the re-emergence of the Taliban; a country they had ruled in the past until the United States government and its other Western allies militarily overthrew the Taliban and handed over power to a new government after the gory 9/11 attack on the America soil. The unanswered question, then, was, was the Taliban, a terrorist group? Of course not, the West, especially America, in perpetrating its “almightiness”, as part of its desire to get Osama Bin Laden, decided that the Taliban must go down for not doing enough to aid its objective with regard to its ‘war on terror.’ The Taliban, an Islamic group, which was not different from the American-installed successor in religious ideologies, was sold to the world as a sympathiser of terrorism and terrorist organisation; but the truth as known by the West and the global community, is that the Taliban is not a terrorist group and is not different from the Islamised ideologies of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and other Muslim-majority societies that govern their nations based on their religious precepts and worldview.
The events as they unfold in Afghanistan in the last weeks is an eye-opener, particularly to the African continent, Nigeria not exempted, of what the West is capable of doing and the extent they would be willing to go to achieve their goal in any country. It is time we stopped being receptive to lies thrown at us by the West and learned to divorce the entire episodes of insecurity in our land from religion. A terrorist is a terrorist, religion is a secondary consideration; by virtue of the reality that we all belong to some religious camp, every criminal and deviant would also be a Muslim or a Christian. So, for the conveniences of achieving political- or religious-driven ambitions, or both in most cases, we prefer to uncritically attach the label of Islamic terrorism or terrorists. Whereas, a worthy, noble, goal should be the full understanding of the conditions that predisposes our systems to terrorism and the antidotes to the surging acts of terrorism globally and in our immediate communities.
The act of some persons in Nigeria such as the non-performing politicians or more precisely, some failed governors who have become so fixated on insecurity as a sole excuse for covering up their ineptness and non-performance, who did not waste time to create associate the Taliban, which they considered a terror group with the APC-led Federal Government of Nigeria, is totally unwanted and undesirable for the country at this moment or at any other time.
On a general note, whether we like it or not, terrorism has become a tragedic global phenomenon; a global “business of sort “ and one that the global system may not be able to wash in the foreseeable future. The reality of events in the past decades and an insightful lesson for that matter, is that what we must develop full capacity for, is how to limit the operation of terror in our communities and nation. The power of the United State of America combined with the European best have expended billions of dollars and military powers since 9/11 but could only suppress the operation of the feared terrors across the globe.
As a country, we have recorded huge gains in our responses to terrorism in the country since the consolidated and sincere onslaught against Boko Haram from 2015 when the Administration of President Muhammadu Buhari came on board and we must continue to clip their wings, continuously decimate their ranks, and consciously create socio-economic environment that dissuade any growth of terrors in the country. We are all witnesses of Boko Haram’s free movement and operation in the years before 2015; how the entire Nigeria was enveloped in fear of where the next attack would be. We are all witnesses of how Boko Haram controlled 27 LGAs across the states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa hoisting their flag in captured villages and towns, and even renamed several settlements; we can also recollect how the boldness of the terror group then resulted in the attacks on critical structures in the Nigerian capital of Abuja and its environs.
That was the time when we experienced attacks on the Nigeria Police Headquarters, the United Nations’ building, markets and religious houses; when Abuja became unsafe and government official functions were carried out with fear of attacks. Today, the terror group has been successfully boxed to a fractional corner of the Sambisa forest and are being smoked out and neutralised on a daily basis by the superior forces of the Nigeria military.
Yet, upon all this, the rhetoric of disgruntled politicians who prefer to opine that we are not winning the war against Boko Haram because the sect is still carrying out random clandestine attacks is not based on obvious reality and should be jettisoned. While we all work together as Nigerians, to defeat Boko Haram, we must also recognise that our measure of victory would be a measure of the extent to which we are able to significantly and continuously limit the operations of the sect – or any other terror-brewing entity for that matter.
Secondly, the lesson we would have to take from the Afghanistan event is that nobody would successfully be able to aid us in fighting the terror that is domicile on our land. In 2001, the United States military occupied Afghanistan to fight the then emerged terror group, Al-Qaeda, fishing out Osama Bin Laden and assisting the Afghan government to overcome the
