TERRITORY OF CHAOS AND DEATH

During the first week of the new year, close to two thousand people were killed by the terrorist group Boko Haram, which is active in northern Nigeria. This massacre was confirmed by local authorities, journalists and international rights organizations. Amnesty International says on its website that the attacks on the small city of Baga and surrounding villages on the shores of Lake Chad amounted to "the most massive terrorist act in the history of this radical group". Militants carried out both punitive operations against the civilian population and the seizure of a small government base. The attack was accompanied by shocking cruelty - the terrorists fired indiscriminately from their machine guns and burned people alive in their homes. Most of the victims were women, children and the elderly who were unable to escape. In addition to those killed, thousands of people were forced out of their homes, seeking refuge in neighbouring Cameroon and Chad. Also, on 10 January an explosion went off in a busy market in the city of Maiduguri in north-eastern Nigeria, killing at least 12 people and wounding more than 20 others. Worst of all, however, is the fact that the bomb was detonated by a 10-year-old suicide bomber.

Boko Haram has operated freely in Nigeria since 2009 (although it has been around since 2002), especially in three states in the country's north, and it is responsible for a multitude of terrorist attacks, abductions, assassinations, attacks on police stations, government offices, Christian churches and entire villages. According to official figures alone, more than 13,000 people have been killed by the militants in the past five years, while approximately 1.5m people have become refugees or internally displaced persons. In areas falling under Boko Haram's "responsibility", the humanitarian situation is dire and almost impossible to monitor, as journalists and representatives of international organizations avoid making trips to the very epicentre of the events out of fear of being abducted.

The official name of the group is "People Committed to the Prophet's Teachings for Propagation and Jihad", but residents of the city of Maiduguri gave them the name "Boko Haram", which in the Hausa language means "Western education is forbidden". The ban on Western education is only one element of the terrorists' "philosophy", which hopes to establish Sharia law throughout Nigeria, a country roughly divided between the Muslim north (about 30 per cent of the population) and the Christian south (more than 60 per cent of the population). Meanwhile, members of Boko Haram are hardly so-called "classical Islamists" as they adhere to a version of Islam that is generously mixed with local beliefs - fetishism, totemism, ancestor worship, etc. There is evidence that members of Boko Haram execute Christian preachers and Muslim clerics alike. That is why Islamist groups of the more traditional sort, which are spread across North Africa, though related, are in no hurry to associate and openly cooperate with their Nigerian "brothers".

One year ago, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in several northern states, but with little effect, seeing as how in the last months of 2014, the group managed to seize new territory surrounding Maiduguri, the capital of Borno, although local authorities maintain control of the city. According to various reports, Boko Haram currently commands about 3,000 militants, although some observers argue that there are many more. The problem is that in a country where the majority of the population is illiterate and lives on about a dollar and a half per day, the radicals have an excellent resource base.

And apparently, the local authorities can do little to oppose the militants' advance.

It was once believed that the Nigerian Armed Forces (about 100,000 strong) were among the best in sub-Saharan Africa in terms of equipment, preparedness and battle readiness. It was often mentioned that its officers trained abroad in military educational institutions in the US, UK, Canada and India. The Nigerian army was praised for its peacekeeping operations in the conflicts in Liberia and Sierra Leone. But now they are showing a strange helplessness fighting armed criminals in their own country. The army's leadership has been accused of being corrupt, misallocating resources, being poorly equipped, having low morale, and sometimes treating civilians in a manner which is no better than what the terrorists are accused of. In December last year, a military court sentenced 54 soldiers to death on charges of cowardice and treason because they refused to fight Boko Haram militants. The soldiers are essentially not protecting the population in the country's northeast, guarding only the transportation routes that link to the oil-producing southern regions. It seems that the armed forces of neighbouring Cameroon and Chad, who fear the spread of the infection of Boko Haram across their borders, are offering greater resistance to the terrorists. Photos regularly appear on the Internet showing military equipment with the distinctive emblems of these states. Recently, several dozen terrorists were killed by Cameroonian soldiers during an assault on the city of Kolofata, after which the leader of Boko Haram Abubakar Shekau posted a video on YouTube threatening Cameroon President Paul Biya.

It would seem that given Nigeria's situation, there should be an urgent need for the intervention of UN or NATO forces, the establishment of no-fly zones to protect civilians and prevent what is essentially genocide, the convening of an international conference to coordinate further action, or at least involve the African Union in which so many have placed their hope. But no one is thinking of doing anything like this. US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that "all those involved in the recruitment of terrorists must be severely punished", but she did not explain how this might be done. Notwithstanding the fact that the authorities could lose control of the situation at any moment and that the terrorists could get their hands on the oil fields in southern Nigeria. Ultimately, it may very well be the interests of transnational corporations that are affected - Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, Conoco Phillips, Eni and Total - all of whom are involved in the extraction of Nigerian hydrocarbons.

The fact that Nigerians should not count on receiving outside help was made ever so clear when more than 200 Nigerian school girls were kidnapped in April of last year, but despite international efforts (special forces were deployed to the area by the US, Canada, France, Israel and the UK) they could not be rescued. Only a handful of the hostages managed to escape; the rest were given up for "use" by the militants or died from disease or beatings.

According to one of the most influential African priests in Africa, Archbishop of Jos Ignatius Kaigama, it is no surprise that Western countries are ignoring the Nigerian tragedy. "The international community has always expressed solidarity, but they do not offer real help," said Kaigama. It is hard to disagree with him seeing as how the massacre of the inhabitants of the town of Baga and its surrounding villages took place at the same time as the attack on the offices of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo. And while all the international news agencies and TV channels were filled with reports about the peace march in Paris in memory of the 12 slain cartoonists and policemen, few in the media gave due attention to the hundreds of butchered Nigerian women and children. Cameroon President Paul Biya called on Western countries to support the fight against terrorism, warning that there is a real danger that if Boko Haram is not stopped, it will spread across the continent, and even threaten Europe.

At the same time, it is important to consider to what extent the Nigerian authorities themselves are to blame for the crisis. Soon, on 14 February, Nigeria will hold presidential and parliamentary elections. Incumbent Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, a 57-year-old Christian from the south, is running for a second term in order to complete his mission of "transforming the country". It is not exactly clear what Jonathan is talking about, especially given the sharp drop in oil prices. Nigeria is ranked seventh in the world in exports of "black gold", and much of its budget revenues come from oil wells. It is also not entirely clear how voting will be held in those areas controlled by the terrorists and whose residents have already fled to neighbouring countries.

Present-day Nigeria is a typical post-colonial state whose borders were demarcated by its former Western masters without any consideration for the ethnic and religious background of the local population. Nigeria is plagued by almost all the ills found on the African continent - terrible infrastructure, disparities in development between different parts of the country (in this case south and north), utter lack of sanitation, deeply-rooted corruption, poverty, ethnic and religious conflicts, a life expectancy that barely reaches 50 years, the prevalence of HIV and other viruses, a prison situation that resembles Nazi concentration camps. The Nigerian army and police themselves have been accused of abductions, torture, extrajudicial killings and assassinations. Perth-based Stephen Davis, who has a PhD in political geography and advised two previous presidents of Nigeria and tried to rescue the kidnapped schoolgirls, believes that Nigerian politicians are among the sources of terrorist financing, writes abc.net.au. According to the BBC, in 2007 Nigerian businessman Alhaji Bello Damagum, owner of the newspaper Daily Trust, was prosecuted on charges of transferring at least 300,000 dollars to Boko Haram. In 2011, a senator from the Nigerian state of Borno, Ali Ndume, was arrested on similar charges.

In the eyes of the entire international community, Nigeria is rapidly changing from the country of promise, the "giant of Africa" with a population of 170 million people and, most importantly, having all the resources necessary for a comfortable life, into the territory of chaos and death.