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Boko Haram makes ruthless push in Nigeria

Rifts between US, Nigeria impeding fight against terror group

WASHINGTON — Relations between US military trainers and specialists advising the Nigerian military in the fight against Boko Haram are so strained that the Pentagon often bypasses the Nigerians altogether, choosing to work instead with security officials in the neighboring countries of Chad, Cameroon, and Niger, according to defense officials and diplomats.

Major rifts like these between the Nigerian and US militaries have been hampering the fight against Boko Haram militants as they charge through northern Nigeria, razing villages, abducting children, and forcing tens of thousands of people to flee.

Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to travel to Nigeria on Sunday to meet with the candidates in Nigeria’s presidential elections, and the Pentagon says the Nigerian army is still an important ally in the region — vital to checking Boko Haram before it transforms into a larger, and possibly more transnational, threat.

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“In some respects, they look like ISIL two years ago,” Michael G. Vickers, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, told the Atlantic Council last week, using another name for the militant group known as the Islamic State. “How fast their trajectory can go up is something we’re paying a lot of attention to. But certainly in their area, they’re wreaking a lot of destruction.”

But US officials are wary of the Nigerian military as well, citing corruption and sweeping human rights abuses by its soldiers. US officials are hesitant to share intelligence with the Nigerian military because they contend it has been infiltrated by Boko Haram, an accusation that has prompted indignation from Nigeria.

“We don’t have a foundation for what I would call a good partnership right now,” said a senior military official with the US Africa Command, or AFRICOM, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. “We want a relationship based on trust, but you have to be able to see yourself. And they’re in denial.”

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The United States was so concerned about Boko Haram infiltration that US officials have not included raw data in intelligence they have provided Nigeria, worried that their sources would be compromised.

In retaliation, Nigeria in December canceled the last stage of US training of a newly created Nigerian army battalion. There has been no resumption of the training since then.

Some Nigerian officials expressed dismay that relations between the two militaries have frayed to this point.

“For a small country like Chad, or Cameroon, to come to assist” the Americans, “that is disappointing,” said Ahmed Zanna, a senator from Nigeria’s north. “You have a very good and reliable ally, and you are running away from them,” he said, faulting the Nigerian government. “It is terrible. I pray for a change of government.”

The tensions have been mounting for years. In their battle against Boko Haram, Nigerian troops have rounded up and killed young men in northern cities indiscriminately, rampaged through neighborhoods, and, according to witnesses and local officials, killed scores of civilians in a retaliatory massacre in a village in 2013.

All the while, Boko Haram has continued its ruthless push through Nigeria, bombing schools and markets, torching thousands of buildings and homes, and kidnapping hundreds of people.