UNITED STATE ready for anti-Boko Haram operations in Nigeria

The White House has been at pains to stress that personnel
would not take part in combat operations and would be
armed only for self-defense.
Nigeria greeted that announcement as a “welcome
development.”
President Muhammadu Buhari took office in May vowing to
end the violence that has killed scores and spooked much-
needed international investors.
But US efforts to give him military assistance have been
hampered by concerns about human rights abuses carried
out by the country’s military.
And until now Washington has largely shied away from
engaging its vast military assets to combat Boko Haram, with
policymakers wary of fueling militant recruitment or fusing
the group’s ties with Middle Eastern Islamists.
The group’s leaders have allied themselves with the Islamic
State group, but experts doubt the scale and scope of
collaboration.
The US moves come as Boko Haram steadily expands
operations beyond its traditional base in the Northeast,
conducting attacks in Cameroon and Chad that have killed
dozens.
An uptick in violence is expected in the coming weeks with
the end of the rainy season and amid growing resistance to
a nascent multi-national joint task force bringing together
countries in the region to fight Boko Haram.
On Thursday and Friday, suicide bombers from the terror
sect slew dozens of people in attacks on Maiduguri ,Borno
State. The insurgency has claimed at least 17,000 lives since
2009.
Cameroon, Chad and Niger, which all have borders with
Nigeria in the Lake Chad region, have formed a military
alliance with Nigeria and the Republic of Benin to battle the
extremists, who this year declared allegiance to the Islamic
State.
Nigeria’s neighbours have each been hit by bombers, often
women or adolescent girls, who detonate their devices in
crowded places such as open markets. Bans on concealing
clothes, searches and close scrutiny have prevented some
attacks, but others come without warning.
National intelligence services are historically best known for
monitoring the activities of the domestic opposition, rather
than tackling threats from the likes of Boko Haram, whose
violence has uprooted about 2.5 million people.
Heads of state in the Lake Chad region have several times
pleaded for international assistance to the multinational
task force created this year to take the war to the enemy.
France already provides some forms of intelligence. Paris
has deployed a strong military presence on the ground,
including Operation Barkhane, with its headquarters in the
Chadian capital N’Djamena, set up to fight jihadists in the
Sahel.
Last year, Washington provided Nigeria with intelligence,
surveillance and reconnaissance expertise in the hunt for
more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram from
their school.
Analysts have seen alleged military abuses such as arbitrary
detention of Boko Haram suspects in both Nigeria and
Cameroon as having hit their ability to gather on-the-ground
intelligence from civilians.
The US military is also active in Niger, where it uses drones
to watch over the broad strip of Sahel territory on the
southern side of the Sahara. The pilotless aircraft will now
also be monitoring Boko Haram.
The first 90 men out of 300 US soldiers arrived on Monday in
Cameroon, where they will be stationed at the northern
town of Garoua, which is already a base for the
Cameroonian air force to fly sorties to bomb Boko Haram
infiltrators.