From last editions
In 2015, Boko Haram’s leader Shekau reportedly pledged allegiance to Islamic State, rebranding the organization IS West African Province (ISWAP). A Congressional Research Service report notes that ISWAP “has surpassed Boko Haram in size and capacity, and now ranks among IS’s most active affiliates.”
It’s not as if strategists don’t understand that violence doesn’t work. They understand that violence escalates violence which can then be used as pretexts for more violence. A U.S. Council on Foreign Relations article from 2020 notes: “the last two years have been deadlier than any other period for Nigerian soldiers since the Boko Haram insurgency began.”
As the war against Boko Haram waged on, Niger Delta gangs in the south threatened to resume attacks on oil infrastructure. U.S. “aid” expanded to include training the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) across the country. In November 2016, 66 officers graduated from the Fingerprint Analysis and Forensics training program, an initiative run by the U.S. Embassy in collaboration with the Office of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement and Atlanta Police Department.
In March 2017, 28 Nigerian officers graduated from courses offered by the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs division, led by U.S. police from Prince William County, Virginia. The program also provided “equipment, training, mentoring, and capacity-building support to various Nigerian law enforcement and justice sector institutions.”
Expanding AFRICOM’s role
In what the U.S. State Department calls a “whole of government” approach, military operations continued as police training expanded. In early-2018, 12 U.S. Army soldiers, led by Captain Stephen Gouthro, trained 200 Nigerians at the Nigerian Army’s School of Infantry. Facilitated by the U.S. Army Africa, eight Security Assistance and Training Management Organization soldiers and four 1st Brigade Combat Team soldiers shared “ground-combat tactics” with the Nigerian Army’s 26th Infantry Battalion.
In July this year, U.S. Army Special Forces trained 25 officers of the Nigerian Navy Special Boat Service as part of JCET: a five-week Joint Combined Exchange Training program. The Acting U.S. Consulate Political and Economic Chief, Merrica Heaton, says that the training is designed to help the Nigerian military stop crime in the Gulf of Guinea and “counter violent extremists in the Northeast and enforce the rule of law throughout the region.”
As observers seemingly spotted the top-secret U.S. stealth drone—Northrop Grumman’s RQ-180—over the Philippines, the Department of Defense sold nearly $500 million-worth of propeller planes to Nigeria, marking what the U.S. Embassy and Consulate describes as “an historic level of cooperation… between the U.S. and Nigerian militaries.” AFRICOM recently confirmed that the inauguration of twelve A-29 Super Tucanos into the Nigerian Air Force will serve a “critical role in furthering regional security and stability.”
The Pentagon allocated $36.1 million to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to renovated Kainji Air Base, which will host the Super Tucanos. In addition to training simulator and small arms storage units, the Base includes “aircraft sunshades, a new airfield hot cargo pad, perimeter and security fencing, airfield lights, and various airfield apron, parking, hangar, and entry control point enhancements.”
“Gray zone” warfare against China
Having left operations to Special Forces, AFRICOM is now tasked with overseeing an expanding footprint in Nigeria. But in addition to preventing oil supply disruptions, the U.S. seeks to counter Russian but particularly Chinese involvement. According to the U.S. state-run outlet, Voice of America (VOA), the China National Offshore Oil Corporation began investing in Nigeria’s state oil sector in 2005.
A 2007 U.S. Army War College thesis expressed concern that, following “donations” of Chinese military equipment to Nigeria, China had helped the government to drill hundreds of boreholes in a goodwill gesture to provide clean drinking water. The U.S. acted to tarnish China’s image. As part of what is now called the “whole of government” approach, the U.S. 96th Civil Affairs Battalion, U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command, networked with Nigerian civilians, private industry, and aid agencies. The U.S. Army War College implies that this was to psychologically counter China’s influence.
Nigeria signed a Memorandum of Understanding with China in 2018 to integrate into China’s global infrastructure and investment project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). More recently, the VOA has said that China took advantage of Nigeria’s crime- and terror-related oil instability, investing billions of dollars in oil to stabilize supply lines.
From the U.S. military perspective, this so-called “political warfare” creates what they famously call a “gray zone” of conflict in which areas traditionally thought of as economic and civilian are weaponized. Analyst Kaley Scholl of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisitions writes that in one war game, the 91st Civil Affairs Battalion coordinated with the 3rd Special Forces Group to uncover “a Chinese conglomerate active in Nigeria who announced a deep-water port being constructed in one month as part of China’s BRI.” In the war game, U.S. PSYOPs beat back the Chinese.
Scholl claims that “Chinese gray zone operations are eroding the U.S.’s legitimacy and challenging the liberal rules-based world order.” In reality, U.S. imperial aggression and wars by proxy erode whatever legitimacy Pentagon planners think they have.
But such analysts seem to forget that both the U.S. and China are armed with nuclear weapons and possess the intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of delivering them. The Pentagon might consider Nigeria to be just another pawn in the new cold war chess game. However, any escalation of tensions in flashpoints, like Taiwan, could unintentionally trigger nuclear catastrophe. This appears to be a risk the Pentagon is willing to take to enforce “full spectrum dominance.”
Concluded