Why does the US State Department resist calls to say what is obvious to so many and name Boko Haram a terrorist organization? That is the question the following Barnabas Aid article asks. According to the article, ” … calls earlier this year from the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and more than 20 American scholars for Boko Haram to be labelled a terrorist outfit largely fell on deaf ears in the US State Department, which in June named only three of the group’s leaders as foreign terrorists.”
At the same time, the terrorist attacks on Christians in Nigerian continue unabated. The bloodshed leads one to wonder just how many Nigerian Christians have to die before the organized attacks on them can be called terrorism?
The Barnabas Aid article reads in part:
As an international groundswell builds against the deadly activities of Islamist militants Boko Haram in Nigeria, why do the Nigerian government and the US State Department remain resistant to labelling the group a Foreign Terrorist Organisation?
Calls for the State Department to designate Boko Haram an FTO are intensifying as brutal attacks against Christians in the North show no signs of relenting. In the latest act of savagery, a group of suspected Boko Haram attackers went from house to house in the predominantly Christian part of the village of Chibok, Borno state, late on Saturday night (1 December). They set people’s houses on fire before slitting the throats of their victims, holding them upside down as when animals are slaughered; ten Christians were killed.
Later that night, gunmen killed five policemen as they attacked churches and government buildings in Gamboru Ngala, near the border with Cameroon. (Read more here.)
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In