Skal man benytte dialog som gulerod eller den store stok og sætte hårdt mod hårdt mod de ekstreme islamister, der har dræbt over 1.000 siden 2010 og brændt adskillige kirker ned til grunden i en nation med stort set lige mange kristne og muslimer.
MAIDUGURI, 16 July 2012 (IRIN): How to deal with Boko Haram violence splits Nigeria: in the north, the centre of bombings and shootings by the Islamist extremists, there is an almost universal demand for dialogue, while in the south the prevailing attitude is that there can be no negotiation with “terrorists” until they end the insurrection that has killed more than 1.000 people since 2010.
President Goodluck Jonathan has repeatedly said he is open to talks, but not with a “faceless” Boko Haram. “You must have a face. You must tell us the reason why you are doing what you are doing,” he said in an interview in June.
The government has also invested in the stick. But the unprecedented defence and security vote of 6 billion US dollar for 2012, collaboration with Western security forces, and the closure of Nigeria’s borders with its northern neighbours, is yet to blunt (lægge en dæmper på) the Salafists.
The security forces’ Joint Task Force (JTF) has also failed to win the wholehearted support of those they are deployed to protect.
“It is just collective punishment for everybody,” a doctor in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, where Boko Haram began in 2002, told IRIN, adding:
“Whenever there is an incident [the soldiers] cordon (lukker af) the area and start beating people… With time it will be the whole society against the military.”
A frustrated state prosecutor added: “Even if you flash your identity card at JTF you are told, `You lawyers, you are the brains behind our problems’. Colleagues have been made to do frog-jumps; there is so much intimidation and disrespect.”
The Christian community welcomes the JTF as a small comfort.
But among some Muslims, the majority of the population in the north, it is common to hear the conspiracy theories that the security services are making a fortune out of the chaos and do not want it to end, and may even have a direct hand in the violence.
In June, President Jonathan sacked his National Security Adviser (NSA), Gen Andrew Azizi, the man most closely associated with the Boko Haram policy.
He was the first southerner to hold the post, from the same state as the president, but he had become a political liability, according to Innocent Chukwuma, director of the Cleen Foundation, a justice sector reform NGO.
Azizi’s replacement, Col Sambo Dasuki, a member of the Sokoto royal family – the heart of the northern establishment – made it a priority to visit the northeastern home of Boko Haram, and publicly enlist the help of traditional leaders in promoting dialogue.
“I think it signals perhaps a different strategy in responding to Boko Haram, maybe moving away from the more hawkish approach”, said Chukwuma, adding:
“I also see [Dasuki’s] appointment as an admission they needed someone with a northern identity to better understand Boko Haram.”
A dialogue divide
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http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95874/Analysis-Carrot-or-stick-Nigerians-divided-over-Boko-Haram
