adezt08:
DAMASAK, Nigeria — Boko Haram’s black flag is everywhere in the town of Damasak, deep in Islamist-held territory in northern Nigeria: It is painted on former administrative buildings and schools, and on the side of abandoned gas stations.

The other unmistakable sign of the Islamist militants’ recent presence is that practically none of the residents are left in a once-thriving town of 200,000. They have either fled to the state capital, Maiduguri, or been killed by Boko Haram. Every looted and battered storefront yawns open to the dusty roadside.

Mostly, the only sound in the hot, still air is from military vehicles, carrying soldiers from the neighboring countries of Chad and Niger as they make their way through the wreckage of the deadly five-month Islamist occupation of this Nigerian town. From time to time, the Chadian soldiers ululate to celebrate their victory against the militants in a fierce firefight that stretched into this week.

The Chadians ushered a small group of journalists around for a brief look at their handiwork this week, offering a rare glimpse into the group’s northern Nigerian stronghold, and into the dimensions, and difficulties, of a cross-border, four-nation fight against the Islamists.


Chadian soldiers in Damasak on Wednesday, only days after the town was liberated from Boko Haram militants. Credit Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Rather than a display of important regional cooperation in the battle against Boko Haram, the visit instead pointed out some of the confusion and resentment that are creating tension among neighbors. The soldiers from Chad and Niger had succeeded here, but there was not a single Nigerian soldier to be found. The force members were bewildered to find themselves as foreign liberators without any help from the Nigerians.

Even as the Nigerian government, with a national election looming, insists that its forces have chased Boko Haram fighters out of much of their northern territory, the deserted streets and all-foreign force here paint a different picture. Hundreds of thousands of Nigerians still cannot return home to towns that have been, nominally at least, freed from Boko Haram.

But the foreign soldiers here said they do not want to occupy somebody else’s country, and worry that the Islamist fighters will simply return if they leave and the Nigerians have not arrived to take over.

Hundreds of miles away in N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, officials are expressing anger at the near-total absence of cooperation from the Nigerians in a crucial regional battle, even as Nigerian officials are discounting the extent of Chad’s role.

The disquiet of the Chadian officials was echoed in the words of the front-line Chadian soldiers here who wonder why they, and not the Nigerians, are holding towns like Damasak, several days after the last Boko Haram fighter has fled or been killed.

“We asked them to come, to receive this town from us, but they have not come,” said Second Lt. Mohammed Hassan, resting in the shade of the armored vehicle he had manned with his company.

“It is because they are afraid,” Lieutenant Hassan added, spitting out the words, his face half-hiddenagainst the 107-degree heat in a black turban.

Around him hundreds of soldiers from Chad and Niger were camped out under the broiling sun. The senior Chadian officers tried to shoo away a handful of journalists, but a few of the soldiers, like the lieutenant, still wanted to talk about the battle.

“We fought on the night of the 14th, and the last attack was on the 15th,” Lieutenant Hassan said. As for the Nigerians, “we called them on the 16th” — after the fight for Damasak had ended — “and told them to come; they didn’t believe we were here,” Lieutenant Hassan said.

More politely, his country’s foreign minister, Moussa Faki Mahamat, two hours away by military transport plane and helicopter in N’Djamena, offered a similar appraisal in an interview Thursday.

Soldiers from Chad played cards in Damasak. The force members were bewildered at having become foreign liberators without any help from the Nigerians. Credit Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
“The Nigerian Army has not succeeded in facing up to Boko Haram,” Mr. Mahamat said.

“The occupation of these towns, this is up to Nigeria,” he added. “My fondest wish is that they assume their responsibilities.”

The soldiers around Lieutenant Hassan, savoring their victory over Boko Haram, displayed a pile of battered rifles captured from the Islamists, some with Arabic exhortations on the stocks. The men said they had thoroughly searched the looted town and its parched savanna surroundings in the past two days, and there was not a single Boko Haram fighter to be found.

The fight was definitely over, several of the men said with satisfaction, noting with wonder the strange fighting habits and beliefs of their opponents.

“You would say that these are people ready to die, to commit suicide,” Lieutenant Hassan said.


He recounted how, after the battle, a Boko Haram prisoner seemed terrified by the Chadians’ superior matériel — Chad has perhaps the region’s best-equipped army after decades of war, civil and external. The captured fighter insisted that the lieutenant’s armored personnel carrier was self-driving and ate its opponents.

As a convoy of military vehicles rumbled down the deserted main street, a solitary older couple could be glimpsed at the back of a mud-walled compound. The woman raised clenched fists to the sky, despairingly, as the trucks passed. The soldiers said that the handful of people left in Damasak were simply too feeble to move.

Boko Haram captured the town late in November, according to Nigerian news accounts. The fighters infiltrated Damasak’s extensive market — on the border with Niger, and close to Cameroon, it was until recently a major regional trading hub — and killed merchants there to sow terror in the population, its customary method. Another group of fighters was waiting at the town’s edge and overran government buildings as the remaining soldiers were occupied at the market.

Since then, Damasak had become a regional headquarters for Boko Haram, officials in Maiduguri said. “Damasak is where they were doing their planning and operational business,” said an official close to the governor of Borno State, of which Maiduguri is the capital.

The number of substantial buildings bearing the Boko Haram insignia was testimony to the town’s strategic role for the group. “They were coordinating and doing all their training there,” the official said.

Now Damasak, like much of northeastern Nigeria, is in a vacuum. Boko Haram has been chased away for now, but it is not clear that the Nigerian Army is ready to occupy and hold this and other towns.

“It is up to them to hold the town. Not us. Our role is offensive. Our mission is to chase the terrorists,” Lieutenant Hassan said. “But they are afraid,” he repeated angrily.

“Our biggest wish is that the Nigerian Army pulls itself together — that it takes responsibility in the towns,” said Mr. Mahamat, the Chadian foreign minister. “We are ready to disengage, right away.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/21/world/africa/nigerian-army-noticeably-absent-in-town-taken-from-boko-haram.html

So how did oyibo get into this city full of Boko Haram and was able to roam freely, then came home safely to write this report?

My pipul, una dey see wetin I dey see?

GenBuhari:
Get real.

I could go on tv and claim I have been calling for Nigerians to return home.

Do you expect an army involved in deceptive break up of Nigeria will not pretend to be asking displaced Nigerians to return. So what is stopping them returning.

Do we have nobody who can interview the idps?

I suggest you take your own advise. And yes, IDPs in camps in Plateau were asked same question, and their answer was simply "not yet". Reason: fear of the unknown (possible BH reprisal attacks).

Defcon1:

Please show me where it was reported that Nigeria had to BEG a foreign army to collect back the territories they liberated in northern Nigeria.

Help me ask the clown oh.

I have done my own research and have supporting evidence.

What research made u conclude what

Iam saying is fake hysteria?

Who interview IDPs in Plateau BBC? CNN? France 24?

Do u expect news media of imperialists countries behind the break up not to give out misleading information?

ocelot2006:


I suggest you take your own advise. And yes, IDPs in camps in Plateau were asked same question, and their answer was simply "not yet". Reason: fear of the unknown (possible BH reprisal attacks).

GenBuhari:
If it doesn't make sense it is because we are being deceived.

Boko Haram = Chadian troops

Nigerian corrupt government is in collusion with Chad and Boko Haram.

Why do you think that towns that are being captured by Chad are not being handed over to Nigeria?

Why do you think the residents of those towns are not being allowed to return.

Nigerians please wake up, Nigeria is being broken up and those territories under Chadian control will eventually be annex

Honestly, you are quite daft!
No wonder the few likes and shares you were able to garner.

I'm humming. I recon I've the making of a catchy tune....

....the words are beginning to come to me but right now there are bits missing, words too disjointed to form a song i might call Nigeria doing the Mocking around.

Here are some of the words:



Nigeria is not serious right now so let us continue the game, yeah, yeah, yeaaah

Nigeria is penny pinching -ooo-ooo-ooo

in this world were only special people go to the ball what has Nigeria got -da,da, da,naaaaa!

America got the skins oooo; Ethiopia got the thin noes and lips that the skiins respect-waaaaa, South Africa got the skinns-wooo, Egypt got the skinns -yeh,yeah,yeha

So how dare Nigeria try to be special when you're only got the Africaaaaaaans You say you got the military - but we're going to rubbish em; you say you got the entrepreneurs- we're going to call em corrupt; you say you're number one economy -we're going to bankrupt you dana-na-na; you say you got democracy because we lied we cared, but we don't give no Bleep about democracy pretensions in your part of the world, we're gonna Bleep you upppppppp

If you ain got nothing to boast about, you're gonna know you ain special no more, you ain gonna aim for the stars, you ain gonma act as if you can do without the skiins, which mean you're gonna be what we want you to be, you're gonna think of yourselves as little as we think of you, then you can be Africannnnnns yeah,yeah,yeah

chorus:

You may ask who are WE
Wouldn't you like to know?
You wonno know who WE is?
All you should know is that WE are the ones who got the skinnnnnnnnnns and the skinns rule the world


Nigeria is not serious right now so let us continue the game, yeah, yeah, yeaaah
Nigeria is penny pinching -ooo-ooo-ooo
You cant create a Nation the people deserve by scrimping and acting as if things ain changed
You're penny pinchers thinking you can cheat your way to number one economy without paying the price of the big boys -don'tcha, dontcha
If you're not penny pinching,what are Chadians soldiers doing in Nigeriaaaaa?

If Nigeria wonno be serious, Nigeria got to spend the bucks of the big boys
you got ta:
control the borders
kick out foreign troops
recruit more army
recruit more police
think beyond African mediocrity
have giant missiles capable of obliterating capitals for miles around -that will make em think twice in their plans to turn us into CENTRAL AFRICAAAAAAA yeah,yeah,yeahh
And you gotta:
Build more schools,
Hospitals
manufacturing
rebuild the North East - woo, woo, wooo

Respect don't come cheap.
Evolving to the big boys club don't come cheap
Defeating the skiinnns means you gotta be strong, brave and spend the bucks -yeah, yeah,yeahhh

I cry inside of me!
What a pity!!

Oh!
The irony

VirginFinder:


Honestly, you are quite daft!

Nigeria please wake up to what is happening.

God will punish all of you that are trying to down play the effort of our gallant soldier...while thunder will strike all those America journalists working to see our fight against Boko-haram is a joke. And for those Chadians running their mouth like tap, una papa! God bless the effort of our gallant soldiers.

Are you Nigeria? You're looking Central Africa every passing day; you're looking good to Skinnn eyes every passing day , yeah,yeah




Somehow,someday you Nigerians got to take folks like those in the picture above and shove right up French ass.
You can start by defeating bokoharm, securing the borders, controlling economic life in the region, teach the slavish people of French West Africa to grow some balls and kick out the dictators. If America isnt interested, it does not mean we shouldnt be either.

Parallel government now!

freshdude99:

Another propaganda article from America to discredit our armed forces. But we already know their tricks and have refused to fall for them gimmicks. The agreement that gave birth to the alliance we don't know den y r dey popnosing ??

Naaa the armed forces are just the incidental target , the main target is GEJ, regime change by influencing public perception of the incumbent.They will fail like they did with the Israelis .

Investigative journalism with guts!!! This foreign journalist can find alternative angles to stories o!!! Can you imagine? After all the we've been capturing territories news, there're still loop holes!!! See chadian soldiers! Saying Nigerian soldiers are afraid!!! NA WA OOoo!

The implication of saying that you are being deceived is that you shouldn't believe what was written in the article.
So why ask your question.

Our government is in full collusion with the genocide being committed against innocent Nigerians.

Read signature below:

Rhozabeth:

Are u for real? Did u read the article at all?