80 U.S. troops in Chad will aid search for abducted Nigerian girls

[MEANDWARF]

World going crazy. Hope the military get the girls back to their families and capture that nut job Boko.

 

Praying for Nigeria.

 

 

 

 

CNN) -- The United States deployed 80 members of its armed forces to Chad to help in the search for the kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls, the White House said Wednesday.

"These personnel will support the operation of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft for missions over northern Nigeria and the surrounding area," it said in a letter.

"The force will remain in Chad until its support in resolving the kidnapping situation is no longer required."

President Barack Obama informed the House speaker and the president of the Senate of the move.

The forces will be involved in maintaining aircraft and analyzing data, but because they are armed, the President is required by law to inform the speaker of the House, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said.

"These are not combat infantry troops that we put into Chad," Kirby told CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper" on Wednesday. "These are folks that are there to support the reconnaissance mission."

Boko Haram abducted more than 200 girls last month from a school in northern Nigeria. Officials have speculated that the militants may have transported them to neighboring Chad or Cameroon, but it's not clear where the girls are or whether they've left Nigeria.

So why are troops deploying to Chad?

"Just geographically, Chad's a great location to do this from," Kirby said, adding that the United States has a good relationship with its government.

Reconnaissance flights will be searching an area roughly the size of West Virginia, he said, that includes parts of Nigeria and other countries.

The deployment is not based on any new intelligence leads, a senior administration official said.

"The truth is, we don't know exactly where they are," Kirby said. "We still believe that they've broken up into small groups and dispersed."

A U.S. Predator drone will now be aiding in the search for the girls, a Pentagon official told CNN. Half of the new group of U.S. troops will be operating the launch and recovery of the unarmed drone on its missions, and half of them will be providing security on the ground in Chad.

[Vilandil Tasardur]

This pleases me. I was weary of the US government putting boots on the ground, but I wanted us to do something. This seems like the appropriate compromise.

 

The terrain in that part of the world, combined with the sheer lawlessness of the enemy, makes it damn near impossible for us to effectively "wage war" on the enemy. But I'm glad to see us helping. 

[Slateman]

Good thing we're risking American lives so the President can get some good PR from the world.

[twa]

Helping would have been allowing them to be addressed earlier.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2012/0518/US-mulls-Nigeria-s-Boko-Haram-for-terror-watch-list

 

I hope the search works out.

[CurseReversed]

Finally an invasion we can all get behind. 

 

Seriously though, I think this is one of those cases when we should get involved especially if its in cooperation with local government. 

 

We might be able to deploy some capabilies rather easily that would make a huge impact on success.

[RichmondRedskin88]

Good thing we're risking American lives so the President can get some good PR from the world.

 

this is a load of crap and you know it......Nigeria doesn't have the resources for a real search.

[Zguy28]

Boko Haram is a real threat to the entire region. They attack and raze entire Christian villages and kidnap folks all the time. They even murder aid workers who are not Muslim.

 

I just received word via email this morning that two girls escaped:

 

Two sisters, Kamka, 19, and Naya, 16, were sleeping when radical Muslims invaded their home. The armed terrorists entered their brother's room and shot him in the hand before demanding to know where the girls' father was. When they realized the two sisters were not married and their father was not home, they took the girls by force.

The Boko Haram terrorist group has declared war on Christians in Nigeria, frequently attacking Christian villages, burning Christians' houses and murdering indiscriminately. They also kidnap teenage girls and force them to convert and marry Boko Haram members.

After forcing Kamka and Naya to walk through the woods at gunpoint, the terrorists immediately put them to work fetching water and cooking. A few days later, the girls were told that both of them were to be married. “We're too young,” Naya protested. But the leader then showed them his daughter, a girl of 7 or 8, who was already married.

“If we refused to cooperate, we would be killed,” Naya told a VOM worker. “The man whom I was forced to marry took me. He picked up his gun and a knife and threatened to murder me if I continued to resist.”

The sisters cried and prayed together, unsure of what would become of them. But after two weeks, a Muslim woman took pity on them. While fetching water with the girls, she showed them an escape route and told them to run away.

The girls escaped under cover of darkness. They knocked on the door of the first house they came to, praying the owner would be friendly. Although he was Muslim, the man took pity on the girls. He allowed them to bathe and eat, and then had his sister take them to a nearby Christian village.

The girls were traumatized by their experience but are now doing reasonably well. Since it is unsafe for them to return to their home, VOM is providing care for them at a safe house through one of our project partners.

“I thank God that He has saved us from the hands of these bad people,” Naya said. “Everything is now behind me and I'm not afraid anymore. I only want to look forward now.”
 

 

 

[mcsluggo]

Good thing we're risking American lives so the President can get some good PR from the world.

 

does EVERYTHING related (even minutely) to Obama have to be a pile of poop from you?

 

 

its really tedious.

[ABQCOWBOY]

I have no direct knowledge of this situation but I would be a good deal of money that SFs are involved in any plan to combat this situation.  

[Slateman]

this is a load of crap and you know it......Nigeria doesn't have the resources for a real search.

And how is this a problem for the United States? Are we going to step in and do this every time there's a kidnapping? This has been going on a long time. Is this now American policy? Everytime there's a mass kidnapping, will the US be sending troops to help?

 

does EVERYTHING related (even minutely) to Obama have to be a pile of poop from you?

 

 

its really tedious.

I would be saying the exact same thing if it were someone else in office. There is no American interest here. There is nothing worth American lives.

[ABQCOWBOY]

And how is this a problem for the United States? Are we

 

I would be saying the exact same thing if it were someone else in office. There is no American interest here. There is nothing worth American lives.

going to step in and do this every time there's a kidnapping?

 

I'm not sure I agree with this.   This area of the world is very closely linked to Terrorism and has been since the 80s.

[Slateman]

I'm not sure I agree with this.   This area of the world is very closely linked to Terrorism and has been since the 80s.

Ooooohhhhh . . . so now we're going to fight terrorism? I thought we were doing it to save 200 girls? Which one is it?

[RVAbrendan]

It's hard for me to look at this in terms of politics. A **** ton of children are being held captive by an extremist organization. At some point, you have to put politics aside and decide whether or not to be decent human beings.

 

Not to say this won't have political aftershock...

[ABQCOWBOY]

Ooooohhhhh . . . so now we're going to fight terrorism? I thought we were doing it to save 200 girls? Which one is it?

 

 

No, the truth of the matter is that we would never go to the expense and risk that would be associated with saving 200 girls if it were just about the girls.   It's never just about any one thing in situations like this.   If we did something like this, there would almost certainly be more involved then just the girls. 

 

I was just setting the record straight on your earlier statement claiming that there are no other interests there, which is what I understood you to say.   There are other interests there and have been for a very long time. 

 

You can argue the value of doing this for those other interests and that's acceptable and even encouraged.   That should always happen.

 

I'll leave it to you to decide which one it actually is.

[RVAbrendan]

 There is no American interest here. There is nothing worth American lives.

 

A human is a human. Life is life. A flag doesn't (well, shouldn't) change that. I'm sure many will disagree, but I find that quite depressing.

[Slateman]

It's hard for me to look at this in terms of politics. A **** ton of children are being held captive by an extremist organization. At some point, you have to put politics aside and decide whether or not to be decent human beings.

 

Not to say this won't have political aftershock...

And it's those aftershocks that are what politicians get paid to do. Anyone can sit there and say, "why yes, we should totally save those girls." It's the politicians who are supposed to be looking at 3rd and 4th orders of magnitude. Of the distance consequences down the road.

 

No, the truth of the matter is that we would never go to the expense and risk that would be associated with saving 200 girls if it were just about the girls.   It's never just about any one thing in situations like this.   If we did something like this, there would almost certainly be more involved then just the girls. 

 

I was just setting the record straight on your earlier statement claiming that there are no other interests there, which is what I understood you to say.   There are other interests there and have been for a very long time. 

 

You can argue the value of doing this for those other interests and that's acceptable and even encouraged.   That should always happen.

 

I'll leave it to you to decide which one it actually is.

There is no value in this other than a feel good story that takes away from the US's spying on the rest of the world.

A human is a human. Life is life. A flag doesn't (well, shouldn't) change that. I'm sure many will disagree, but I find that quite depressing.

All of North Korea is being oppressed right now, should we invade? How about China? Ukraine? The entire continent of Africa?

 

The US military exists to protect US interests and defend US citizens. As the rest of the world has been shoving in our face for the last ten years, we are not the world's police. It is not our responsibility to bring peace and democracy to everyone.

 

This is a PR stunt by the administration. Nothing more.

[visionary]

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/21/boko-haram-attacksmorevillagesinnigeria.html

BOKO HARAM BURNS VILLAGES, KILLS DOZENS IN NIGERIA

 

Boko Haram attacked three villages in Nigeria and killed 48 people, residents said Wednesday, as rescue workers in the central city of Jos searched for the missing a day after two car bombs killed more than 100.

 

One of the villages that were attacked between Tuesday night and early Wednesday lies near the town of Chibok, where about 300 schoolgirls were kidnapped last month.

 

The reports came from residents and were confirmed by a state intelligence agent who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to give information to reporters.

 

Apagu Maidaga of Alagarno village said residents hid in the forest and watched while Boko Haram — an armed group that wants to transform northeastern Nigeria into an Islamic state ruled by its version of Sharia law — burned the villagers’ thatch-roofed mud huts.

 

"We saw our village up in flames as we hid in the bush waiting for the dawn; we lost everything," he told The Associated Press.

 

In Jos, where 118 people were killed Tuesday in twin car bomb attacks on a bustling bus terminal and a market, rescue workers armed with body bags on Wednesday dug into the rubble of destroyed buildings.

 

Most victims were women and children vendors, said Mohammed Abdulsalam of the National Emergency Management Agency.

 

"We expect to find more bodies in the rubble," Abdulsalam said.

 

Mark Lipdo of the Stefanos Foundation, a Christian charity based in Jos, described the smell of burning human flesh to Reuters: "It's horrifying, terrible."

 

Jos is tense with fears the attack could inflame religious rivalry. The city in central Nigeria sits on a volatile fault line dividing the country's mainly Muslim north from the predominantly Christian south, and has been a flashpoint in the past for deadly conflict between adherents of the two religions. About half the country's 170 million inhabitants are Christian.

 

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/22/us-nigeria-violence-idUSBREA4L0WB20140522

Nigeria's Boko Haram kills 29 in village attack: sources

 

Suspected Boko Haram gunmen have shot dead 29 farm workers as they tilled their fields in a village in the remote northeast, a police source said on Thursday.

 

The source at police headquarters for Borno state, in the heart of the insurgency, said around 10 more people had been wounded in Wednesday's attack on Chukku Nguddoa, in which most of the village, including its grain store, were razed.

 

In the past two months, Boko Haram militants have stepped up their five-year-old campaign to carve an Islamic state out of religiously mixed Nigeria. They have relentlessly targeted civilians, especially in the northeast, whom the military seems helpless to protect.

 

Bomb attacks are growing more sophisticated, including two on the capital Abuja last month, and massacres of villagers in the area where Boko Haram is based are an almost daily occurrence.

 

 

Nasty guys.  I hope we're ready though if this ends up bringing heat back on us in Africa for getting involved.

At least we aren't the only ones getting involved.

France and Britain have been pretty vocal about their support (though I don't recall what they're actually doing physically to help)

 

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/17/world/africa/nigeria-abducted-girls/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

'War on Boko Haram': African, Western nations unify in hunt for Nigerian girls

 

Nigeria and four neighboring countries will share intelligence and border surveillance in the hunt for more than 200 Nigerian girls still held by Boko Haram, and Western nations will provide technical expertise and training to the new regional African effort against the extreme Islamists.

 

The plan was announced Saturday at the conclusion of a security summit in Paris hosted by French President François Hollande.

 

Hollande described Boko Haram as now a bigger terror threat than first portrayed -- beyond Nigeria and even Africa.

 

"Boko Haram is an organization that is linked to terrorism in Africa and whose will is to destabilize the north of Nigeria, certainly, and all the neighboring countries of Nigeria and beyond that region," he said.

 

Cameroon President Paul Biya was more forceful in describing how partnering countries will "take stronger measures to eradicate" the extremist Islamist group.

"We're here to declare war on Boko Haram," Biya said.

 

As the summit took place Saturday, reports emerged about the latest apparent Boko Haram attack, this one in Cameroon.

 

Hollande said one Cameroonian soldier was killed in the Friday night attack against Chinese nationals in northern Cameroon, which is known as a stronghold for the Islamic extremists.

 

 

[RVAbrendan]

I don't disagree with any of what you responded with Slateman - however, referring to the value of American lives > the entire planet, I can't swallow.That's what I was responding to.

 

If I were a politician, my answer would be different.

[ABQCOWBOY]

 

 

There is no value in this other than a feel good story that takes away from the US's spying on the rest of the world.

 

 

 

I don't agree.

[Larry]

It's hard for me to look at this in terms of politics.

Oh, that others were so limited as yourself.

[Elessar78]

Clearly looking in the wrong areas . . .

[KuNiT21]

does EVERYTHING related (even minutely) to Obama have to be a pile of poop from you?

 

 

its really tedious.

 

We have no business getting involved in stuff like this anymore.  Billions of aid go to these countries.  Where is China, Russia, Japan, Germany in the aid?  Besides the UK, everyone hates America because we are "bullies of the world", but by all means when you need our military the arms go wide open.  I'm 50/50 on this issue because it is sad, but both sides of the argument make complete sense.

[Zguy28]

The U.N. Security Council officially declared Boko Haram a terrorist group linked to al-Qaida on Thursday and imposed sanctions against the Islamist extremists who have carried out a wave of deadly attacks and the recent abduction of nearly 300 schoolgirls in Nigeria.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/us-says-un-approves-sanctions-on-boko-haram/2014/05/22/10ee8690-e213-11e3-9442-54189bf1a809_story.html

[visionary]

http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/131816

Kerry: U.S. Alone in Helping Nigeria Find Kidnapped Girls

 

The United States is alone in helping Nigeria locate more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by Islamists, Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday, despite help on the ground from Britain, France and Israel.

 

With 80 military personnel sent to neighboring Chad for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, the United States is the biggest foreign participant in the effort against the militant group Boko Haram.

 

Washington has also deployed surveillance drones, spy planes and about 30 civilian and military specialists to support Nigeria's security forces.

 

"Boko Haram, Nigeria, only the United States is there offering the assistance to help find those young women," Kerry said during a dinner at the State Department. 

 

"Other countries, not only aren't they invited, but they did not even offer."

 

Kerry spoke during a dinner at the State Department on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the U.S. diplomatic corps.

 

However the United States is joined in Nigeria by Britain, France and Israel, which have sent their own experts. China, which saw 10 citizens likely abducted by Boko Haram in a region bordering Cameroon, has also proposed to help.

[DaGoonie55]

I hope we find the girls with as little human loss and as fast as possible.

 

I'm all for smashing a terrorist organization, but I don't think America is ready to back a prolonged engagement again so soon.

 

Prayers and thoughts to the children, their families, and all deployed persons and their families.