Things fall apart

28 January 2012

Last week, the Islamist group Boko Haram launched a horrific attack, bombing five Nigerian police stations and killing 186 in one day. What started as a campaign targeting Christians in the north has now grown into a crisis that threatens to overwhelm the Nigerian government — and the church leaders who appealed for foreign assistance have had little response. When Nigeria’s president said he is now facing a crisis as grave as the civil war of 1967, in which a million died, his words were barely reported by the foreign press. This former British colony, which we controlled until 1960, has slipped off our political radar.

Just as the Foreign Office missed the emergence of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, it is having difficulty recognising the new evil of religious cleansing. It takes different forms in different countries, from pastors being randomly assassinated in the Philippines to the massacres of congregations in Iraq, whose ancient Christian community is now midway through an exodus of Biblical proportions. Behind it all lies a virulent strain of radical Sunni Islam, enlisting young men in a new war where the enemy lies not over a border but in the church, synagogue or temple.

Boko Haram is not part of a global jihad, though it imitates al-Qa’eda with its suicide bombs and internet videos. It is a Nigerian campaign perpetrated mainly against the English-speaking Igbo Christians, whom British missionaries helped convert in the 19th century. The ensuing cultural tension was the subject of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Its protagonist, Okonkwo, resented what he regards as Christianity’s effete emphasis on humility, forgiveness and turning the other cheek: his was a world of warriors, valour and (if needed) human sacrifice. Nigeria’s latest insurgency reads like a 21st-century Islamist postscript.

Boko Haram, which translates as ‘Western education is sinful’, regards Christianity (the faith of half of Nigerians) as a foreign contagion. It has moved on from drive-by shootings and petrol bombs and its declared aim is now the full-scale cleansing of Christians from Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north. A fortnight ago it ordered all Christians to leave the north, and when confronted by the Nigerian government it gave its reply in last week’s attack. The inept response of its president, Goodluck Jonathan, has only encouraged Boko Haram further. The vast majority of Nigerian Muslims are appalled, and Christian leaders are urging the Igbo not to retaliate. It may not take much to escalate this into a religious version of the old tribal wars.

It makes no sense for Nigeria, a country with such rich potential, to descend into a religious war. But the same could be said about the former Yugoslavia. Bosnians, Croats and Serbs speak the same language and are ethnically indistinguishable, but they succumbed to a confected idea of ethnicity. Greeks and Turks lived as neighbours in Cyprus just a few decades ago: the island is still divided between the two segregated communities. In Rwanda, the labels ‘Tutsi’ and ‘Hutu’ were applied randomly by Belgian colonialists. But even these concocted divisions can be enough to start a war.

Conflict prevention is rightly at the centre of the British government’s foreign policy. But the Foreign Office is obsessed about wars between countries, when the greatest risk to life may be wars within countries. The 1990s were, statistically, a decade with very few conventional wars: western governments quickly drew down their arms. Yet in that decade, a million died in Sudan’s civil war, 500,000 died in a three-month killing spree in Rwanda — not to mention the 100,000 killed in the battle between Afghanistan’s warlords. Atrocities from the Rwandan genocide to the Srebrenica massacre could have been prevented, had the West cared enough to work out what was going on.

The Foreign Office has, so far, had an abysmal record in even keeping track of emerging religious tensions. This must end. For a variety of reasons, religious persecution is back — its victims including the Baha’is in Iran; the Shia Muslims in Kabul; the pre-Christian Mandaeans in Baghdad. The journey to sectarian warfare is slow, but it begins by turning a blind eye to religious persecution.

Britain must keep its eyes open. Overseas aid donations should not be made to regimes which tolerate the repression of minority faiths. David Cameron might even use the phrase ‘religious cleansing’ as Nicolas Sarkozy has done.
The Conservative party’s own Human Rights Commission has for years called for the Foreign Office to strengthen its focus on religious freedom. It has proposed that a special envoy for international freedom of religion is appointed, and that an advisory committee on the subject is set up. It would be a gesture, but it would let the rest of the world know where our priorities lie. It is odd that a Conservative-led government has ignored this advice.

The conflicts of the 21st century are likely to be within civilisations. With the right intervention, such clashes can be prevented, whether by sending intelligence officers to Nigeria to help target the insurgent leaders (which British military is doing with great success in Afghanistan) or offering advice. But the first step to helping solve a problem is to recognise its existence. The failure to accept what was happening in the former Yugoslavia, and to act to prevent it, still stands as one of the most shameful foreign policy failures of the last Tory government. David Cameron should learn from his party’s past mistakes.

Daniel

January 26th, 2012 9:53pm Report this comment

The UN is too buys worrying about 1000 apartments being built in Jerusalem. If thousands of Africans die, nobody cares

Lee Butcher

February 1st, 2012 11:02am Report this comment

Boko Haram's action are unjustifiable and security needs to be established.

What the author however misses in this article is the background of ethnic tensions, corruption and mismanagement endemic in Nigeria. The northern ethnic groups have long felt excluded from the political process and the rewards of the country's wealth; despite being oil rich poverty is rife across the country, but it is particularly marked in the north. Literacy rates and life expectancy is much lower in the north compared to the south.

Nothing can justify the murder of civilians, but the internal political and social problems of the country can go some way to explain way this group has emerged. It isn't simply a case of 'bad Muslims' against 'victimised Christians', it is a corrupt and inefficient state that is failing its people, and as a result an insurgency has emerged.

Until the Nigerian government fixes the underlying problems of political exclusion of certian ethnic (and religious) groups, and under-development, this horrific conflict will be difficult to stop.

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