U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday informed Congress he is sending up to 300 USA military personnel to Cameroon, the White House said, part of a stepped-up effort by Washington to counter the violent group Boko Haram.
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The troops will “conduct airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations in the region”, Obama said.
U.S. President Barack Obama announced the deployment Wednesday and gave no timeline for the troops’ withdrawal.
The USA military also flies unarmed drones from Niger, but those surveillance aircraft are dedicated to flights over the Sahara to spy on other Islamic extremists in North and West Africa, not Boko Haram.
Information from the drone flights will be shared with Cameroon forces and other partners to help enable them to guard their borders against potential threats.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Boko Haram, which is aligned with the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria, is “guilty of vicious acts of unprovoked violence”.
“Structured attacks by the insurgents have reduced and by the end of the year, we should see the final routing of Boko Haram as an organised fighting force”, the President said. “They won’t be there in a combat role”, he said. The Fulani herdsmen realised she was a Chibok girl and helped her to the Baga military base of the multi-national Joint Task Force, according to Saturday Vanguard.
The U.s. State Department designated Boko Haram as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in November 2013, months after its war on Christians and Westerners began. In January it claimed more than 2,000 people had been killed in a Boko Haram raid on Baga, a town in northeast Nigeria.
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“They are armed but for goal of force protection and their own security”. “Unwittingly, and I dare say unintentionally, the application of the Leahy Law Amendment by the United States government has aided and abetted the Boko Haram terrorists”, Buhari said, referring to a law that prohibits the USA from aiding militaries under human rights review. “They have noticed it is impossible to face our forces, so they are now using young girls or young boys with explosives, who go more undetected, in areas they are told to go”, Mr Bakary said. Hence support from the USA – and France – is crucial at this time.
