The State Department is financing a new 24-hour satellite television channel in the turbulent northern region of Nigeria that U.S. officials say is crucial to countering the extremism of radical groups such as Boko Haram. The move signals a ramping up of U.S. counterinsurgency efforts to directly challenge the terrorist group, which abducted nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls in April..
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The new television channel, to be called Arewa24 – arewa means north in the Hausa language – is financed by the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism, and it is expected to cost about $6-million (U.S.)
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Access to electricity is limited in many rural areas of northern Nigeria, and few people own TVs. While some people might be able to view the programs on cellphones, a U.S. Agency for International Development official recently told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Boko Haram has been targeting cellphone towers to reduce access to communication services in the region.
Jacob Zenn, an Africa analyst at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington, said other issues could also limit the effectiveness of the satellite channel. Most members of Boko Haram speak Kanuri, a language also spoken in Niger and Cameroon, although the channel’s programming will be in Hausa.
"The death is unimaginable. We have lost between 400 and 500 people in the attacks in which men and male children were not spared," said the local leader, who asked not to be named for security reasons.
"The gunmen pursued on motorcycle people who fled into the bush in a bid to escape and shot them dead.
"Even nursing mothers had their male infants snatched from their backs and shot dead before their eyes," the local leader said. The insurgents destroyed mobile phone towers in the region, so news of attacks is usually slow to emerge and verification of death tolls difficult to obtain.
As in they completely disabled the cell phone system. Not that this should surprise anyone.
But hey, lets spends $6 million that has zero chance of doing any good, because then we can claim we did something.
Anyone who thought that maybe our incompetence in Iraq and Afghanistan was an aberration was delusional .
0 Replies
hawkeye10
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Reply
Sat 7 Jun, 2014 12:32 am
@hawkeye10,
I am not an Ivy League grad so I am sure that I must be too stupid to understand why if you are going to do anti Boko Haram PR you dont do it in the language that is used where they are operating.
EDIT: the 400-500 killed in the last few days was in Borneo.
What language would that be Hawk? Are you advocating pulling our troops out of Afghanastan and putting them into Nigeria? Are you heavily invested in stocks that make military equipment?
I am advocating for better systems in government, so that we dont see bureaucrats spending our money with almost zero chance to get a return on our investment,
How about this system? Open your living room window, throw all your cash and checkbooks, and credit cards out of the window, than close it and forget about it. Thats what we are doing when we spend money on fighting foreign wars.
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