Hiding The Smoke from The Smoking Gun
Awhile back, I was trying to come up with some wording to communicate why I have become so passionate about raising awareness of what’s going on in Nigeria.
I drafted this bit and – wanting to make sure I was not exaggerating about it – sent it to a friend of mine, Ambassador Lewis Lucke. The US selects and trains its ambassadors to be very careful with facts and words. And Lewis was a top shelf Ambassador – number one in charge of rebuilding Iraq after the war, and number one in charge of the international response to the Haiti earthquake. He has worked at the highest levels with the biggest aid agencies in the world, all over the world, and personally greeted the first wave of Christian refugees fleeing ISIS. And, he was an ambassador to an African nation. So I figured he’d be good to ask.
Here's what I sent him to review:
Remember ISIS? The sophisticated, well-funded, horrifically-evil outfit that was seeking to establish an Islamic State in Iraq and Syria? Remember their jihadist brothers who toppled many governments in North Africa during the “Arab Spring,” mass murdering Christians and killing our US Ambassador along the way?
We did not kill them, we just ran them off. Where did they go and what are they doing?
They never stopped, just relocated and regrouped – to Nigeria -- and have been working very strategically and just as brutally as before. Yet the world is not paying attention. As a result, they have co-opted numerous indigenous jihadist groups, worked their way into the government, and today are on the verge of taking over a nation that is one of the Top 5 members of OPEC.
If they are successful, they will control the largest economy in Africa, and we will witness genocide unseen since Stalin, Mao or Hitler -- a mass extermination of one of the most dynamic Christian communities on the planet.
His response? "Accurate and if anything a bit understated."
Think about that a bit.
Things have rapidly become very bad there. When I first went to Nigeria in 2010, the nation was proud of its remarkable unity. Sure there were issues with radical Muslims up north, but they kept the jihadis in check, and overall they made it work. The National Cathedral and the National Mosque are right across from each other in downtown Abuja – the nation’s capital and geographic center – and they’re the exact same height. In fact, it was known as the only nation on earth, at the time, where radical Islam was being pushed back.
Most folks don’t realize the nation’s strategic importance. It holds upwards of 20% of the population of the entire continent. It’s Africa’s largest economy and has vast natural resources. Did you know that Nigeria is one of the top five nations of OPEC? And that Nigerian Americans are the wealthiest and most educated group in the US? It’s an amazing place, full of amazing people.
I was in Abuja in 2011 when out of the blue Boko Haram blew up the UN headquarters there, and the activity of this radical terror group grew significantly over the following few years.
Today, the UN estimates that 3.6 million Nigerians, mostly Christian, have been violently run off from their homes and our now living as IDPs – “internally displaced persons” (An IDP has the same international legal status as a refugee, only they’re still in the same nation.) An unknown number of these IDPs are living in crude encampments around the nation, with little or no formal support, cut off from everyone and everything they once knew, and no way to go back.
Of the thousands of people martyred last year for their Christian faith around the world, 90% were in Nigeria. It’s very, very bad.
Were this taking place anywhere but Africa – a continent that has been continually raped and pillaged since the first white man put a sail on a ship and landed there – it would be a source of international outrage, and the global community would take steps to bring about positive change.
It may seem like good news that the USA recently took Nigeria off our formal religious persecution watchlist – where it had been Number One the year before. And the UN now now says there are no IDP camps in Abuja, where just a few years before they published a report about these very camps.
These would be great accomplishments -- if true. But they’re flat-out fabrications, of the worst kind. The situation is much worse there, not better.
I’m coming up on my 13th trip to Nigeria since 2010, where we run schools in the very camps the UN says no longer exist. They exist. There are many thousands of children stuck in them – just in the Abuja area. I will be visiting them in person four days from now.
Over the years I have built close, personal relationships with Nigerians from the very top to the very bottom, and as I’ve dug into this I’ve connected with pretty much every expert in this space. Believe me, if it were better there, I’d know. It’s not.
So what has changed? Why is Nigeria not on our official watchlist anymore? Why does the UN say there’s no more IDP camps in Abuja? Why is the government of Nigeria now actually bulldozing these camps?
Well, what’s changed is the US has a new president, who was VP when our government intentionally and very strategically worked to hand Nigeria over to these radicals. To these people, who gifted Nigeria to ISIS and its ilk, the subsequent widespread massacre and ongoing subjugation of Christians is the smoke of the proverbial smoking gun. So they must hide and deny it at all costs. It is politics most evil.
Don’t believe me? Stay tuned….
Mike Arnold is Founder and President of Africa Arise International. He can be reached at mike@africaariseacademy.com.
