West African leaders on Saturday agreed to work together to wage “total war” on Boko Haram saying the Nigerian terrorist group had become a regional al Qaeda that threatened all of them.
Nigeria’s neighbours Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Benin, and Western officials, met in Paris to flesh out a plan enabling them for the first time to share intelligence, coordinate action and monitor borders.
Although Boko Haram has been fighting for five years, carrying out bombings and attacks on civilians and the security forces, the kidnapping last month of more than 200 girls from a school in the northeast has focused world attention on them.
“Boko Haram is no longer a local terrorist group, it is operating clearly as an al Qaeda operation, it is an al Qaeda of West Africa,” President Goodluck Jonathan told a news conference in Paris following the meeting.
“We have shown our commitment for a regional approach. Without West African countries coming together we will not be able to crush these terrorists,” he said.
Outrage over the mass abduction has prompted President Jonathan – criticized at home and abroad for his government’s slow response – to accept U.S., British and French intelligence help in the hunt for the girls.
British Foreign Minister William Hague, speaking before the start of a meeting, said the Nigerian military was not organized in a way to deal effectively with the group, and offered military advisers to help structure them.
“There is determination to tackle this situation head on … to launch a war, a total war on Boko Haram,” Chad’s President Idriss Deby said.
The countries agreed to launch coordinated patrols and rescue operations, share intelligence, put in place a mechanism to prevent weapons’ smuggling and monitor borders.
Intelligence services and army heads would also meet soon to come up with a region-wide strategy to fight terrorism.
“The threat is serious and dangerous for the region, Africa and Europe,” French President Francois Hollande said, although no concrete operational measures were announced.
With 6,000 French troops operating in either Mali to the northwest or the Central African Republic to the east, Paris has an interest in preventing a deterioration in Nigeria’s security.
Like its Western allies, Paris has ruled out any military operation saying it was primarily for Nigeria to take the lead, although Hollande said Rafale fighter jets based in the Chadian capital N’Djamena – just 60 km from the Nigerian border – would be used for reconnaissance missions.
Paris fears Boko Haram could spread north into the Sahel and beyond Cameroon into the Central African Republic. Boko Haram has already targeted French interests in Nigeria, kidnapping a French family in northern Cameroon last year.
Suspected Boko Haram rebels also attacked a Chinese work site in northern Cameroon on Friday, killing at least one Cameroonian soldier, and at least 10 people are believed to have been kidnapped, the regional governor said.
“We have affirmed our solidarity and determination to vigorously fight Boko Haram,” Cameroon President Paul Biya said. “They have committed one more attack, attacked businessmen and this comes after the French hostages were kidnapped. As we speak we are searching for an Italian priest and a Canadian nun. The problem has become regional, if not a Western problem.”
The group has killed more than 3,000 people in its war to establish an Islamic state in mostly Muslim northeast Nigeria.
Biya said he would send more means and troops to the north, but that Boko Haram had been picking soft targets and outnumbering his troops.
Nigeria has complained the far north of Cameroon is being used by Boko Haram militants to shelter from a Nigerian military offensive and to transport weapons, and has urged Cameroon to tighten border security.
Jonathan said there was a “misconception” in the relation between the two countries over crossing each others borders and that this would now be ironed out.
“The main outcome is that the region is now aware of a problem that for a long time was considered an internal Nigerian problem. Abuja has accepted to go beyond its borders,” a Western diplomatic source said.
Highlighting that, the source said Nigeria, which sits on the 15-member U.N. Security Council, had agreed in principle to ask for Boko Haram and its key members to be placed on a U.N. sanctions list, as has been the case with other militant groups such as al Qaeda.
“The world is aware of these young school girls who were abducted, but quite frankly Boko Haram has been creating havoc for sometime,” U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman told Reuters.
“We are all coordinated, we are all focused, this doesn’t stop at borders, terrorism does not know borders and so we’re going to work in a collective manner to get the job done.”
According to the communique issued at the end of the parley, Nigeria and its neighbours will build response/analysis capabilities to enhance security of all populations.
They committed to accelerating the implementation of international sanctions against Boko Haram, Ansaru and their leaders with the United Nations framework.
All the participants also reaffirmed commitment to human rights and protection of girls who are victims of violence.
Nigeria and its neighbours resolved to embark un-coordinated patrols with the aim of combating Boko Haram and locating the Chibok girls.
They are also to establish a system to pool intelligence in order to support this operation, establish mechanisms for information exchange on trafficking of weapons and bolster measures to secure weapons stockpiles while also establishing mechanism for border surveillance.
Countries are also expected to establish an intelligence pooling unit, create a dedicated team to identify means of implementation and draw up, during a second phase, a regional counter-terrorism strategy in the framework of the Lake Chad Basin Commission.
The United States, United Kingdom, France and the European Union will coordinate their support for the regional cooperation through technical expertise, training programmes and support for the border area management programmes.
France, US, Britain and the EU pledged to mobilise donors in support of programmes fostering social economic development of the regions concerned with particular emphasis on gender equality and the rights of women and girls.
The participants agreed that the UK would host a follow up meeting next month at ministerial level to review progress on this action plan.
Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh and the National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd.), were invited into the meeting about one hour after its commencement.
Before going for the summit, Jonathan had also meet with former British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, in his hotel room.
The Nigerian Ambassador to France, Hakeem Sulaimon, told journalists that the Paris summit was a necessary strategic forum to deal with “a very vicious terrorist group” by building regional bridge.
Sulaimon described Boko Haram as a cross-border phenomenon requiring sub-regional consensus on how to effectively tackle it.
“Given the fact the fact that these terrorists resort to using safe havens by hitting and disappearing, it is important to be able to get cooperation so that specific strategic measures can be put in place including capacity to undertake hit pursuit across border lines.
“We need to be able to forge joint patrol cooperation, consolidate on joint monitoring to be able to strengthen intelligence gathering and sharing is that all countries involved will in a position to actually face the same course in addressing the problem of these plotters.”
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