Africa's gathering storm
According to the Global Terrorism Index, Nigeria is now so utterly dominated by terrorist violence that only Afghanistan and Iraq are worse. In fact, the Nigerian Islamist terrorist organization Boko Haram has already killed more people than ISIS did during its entire existence in Iraq and Syria.
Boko Haram started engaging in widespread violence in 2009. In 2011, the group bombed the UN headquarters in the capital, Abuja, killing 23 people and injuring 116 others. By 2014, Boko Haram was the deadliest terrorist group in the world. In April of that year, Boko Haram garnered worldwide attention for kidnapping 276 Christian schoolgirls. The best the rest of the world could muster as a response was a #bringbackourgirls Twitter campaign. Five years later, more than 100 of them are still missing and all but forgotten.
Inspired by Boko Haram’s impunity, Muslim Fulani militants in the northeastern part of Nigeria have undertaken a campaign of mass slaughter against Christians, Shia Muslims, and traditional tribal religious groups. Fulani militant attacks and reprisals are responsible for more than 60,000 deaths since 2001. That, combined with the thousands more killed by Boko Haram, and the tens of thousands of Nigerian women and girls kidnapped and trafficked as sex slaves, and you have a genocide on your hands.
Many believe Nigeria is about to implode, which would destabilize the surrounding countries and send millions of refugees north into Europe and beyond. Nigerians have made up a sizable portion of the refugees rescued from overcrowded boats trying to cross the Mediterranean. Extremists in the country immediately to the North killed four American soldiers in 2017.
As Nigeria goes, so goes Africa.
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/462458-africas-gathering-storm
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