{"id":3074,"date":"2014-05-09T10:28:54","date_gmt":"2014-05-09T16:28:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=3074"},"modified":"2014-05-09T10:28:54","modified_gmt":"2014-05-09T16:28:54","slug":"dear-americans-your-hashtags-wont-bringbackourgirls-you-might-actually-be-making-things-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/dear-americans-your-hashtags-wont-bringbackourgirls-you-might-actually-be-making-things-worse\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Americans, Your Hashtags Won\u2019t #BringBackOurGirls. You Might Actually Be Making Things Worse"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Jumoke Balogun, Compare Afrique
\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

Simple question. Are you Nigerian? Do you have constitutional rights accorded to Nigerians to participate in their democratic process? If not, I have news you. You can\u2019t do anything about the girls missing in Nigeria. You can\u2019t. Your insistence on urging American power, specifically American military power, to address this issue will ultimately hurt the people of Nigeria.<\/p>\n

It heartens me that you\u2019ve taken up the mantle of spreading \u201cawareness\u201d about the 200+ girls who were abducted from their school in Chibok; it heartens me that you\u2019ve heard the cries of mothers and fathers who go yet another day without their child. It\u2019s nice that you care.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing though, when you pressure Western powers, particularly the American government to get involved in African affairs \u00a0and when you champion military intervention, you become part of a much larger problem. You become a complicit participant in a military expansionist agenda on the continent of Africa.\u00a0This is not good.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You might not know this, but the United States military loves your hashtags because it gives them legitimacy to encroach and grow their military presence in Africa. AFRICOM (United States Africa Command), the military body that is responsible for overseeing US military operations across Africa, gained much from #KONY2012 and will now gain even more from #BringBackOurGirls.<\/p>\n

Last year, before President Obama visited several countries in Africa, I\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0about how the U.S. military is expanding its role in Africa. In 2013 alone, AFRICOM carried out a total of\u00a0546 \u201cmilitary activities,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0which is an average of one and half military missions a day. While we don\u2019t know much about the purpose of these activities, keep in mind that AFRICOM\u2019s mission is to \u201cadvance U.S. national security interests<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

And advancing they are.\u00a0According to one report<\/a>, in 2013, American troops entered and\u00a0advanced American interests<\/em>\u00a0in Niger, Uganda, Ghana, Malawi, Burundi, Mauritania, South Africa, Chad, Togo, Cameroon, S\u00e3o Tom\u00e9 and Pr\u00edncipe, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Lesotho, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and South Sudan.<\/p>\n

The U.S. military conducted 128 separate \u201cmilitary activities\u201d in 28 African countries between June and December of 2013. These are in conjunction to U.S. led drone operations which are occurring in\u00a0Northern Nigeria<\/a>\u00a0 and\u00a0\u00a0Somalia<\/a>. There are also counter-terrorism outposts in\u00a0Djibouti<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Niger<\/a>\u00a0and covert bases in\u00a0Ethiopia and the Seychelles<\/a>\u00a0which are serving as launching pads for the U.S. military to carry out surveillance and armed drone strikes.<\/p>\n

Although most of these activities are covert, we do know that the U.S. military has had a destabilizing effect in a few countries. For example, a\u00a0New York Times<\/a>\u00a0article confirmed that the man who overthrew the\u00a0elected<\/em>\u00a0Malian government in 2012 was trained and mentored by the United States between 2004 and 2010. Further, a U.S.\u00a0trained<\/a>\u00a0battalion in the Democratic Republic of Congo was denounced by the United Nations for\u00a0committing mass rapes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now the United States is gaining more ground in Africa by sending military advisors and\u00a0more<\/em>\u00a0drones, sorry, I mean\u00a0security personnel and assets to Nigeria<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>to assist the Nigerian military, who by the way,\u00a0have a history of committing mass atrocities against the Nigerian people<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Knowing this, you can understand my apprehension for President Obama\u2019s decision. As the Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole said yesterday, the involvement of the U.S. government and military will only\u00a0lead to more militarism, less oversight, and less democracy.<\/a><\/p>\n

Also, the last time military advisors were sent to Africa, they didn\u2019t do much good. Remember #KONY2012? \u00a0When President Obama sent 100\u00a0combat-equipped troops<\/em><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0to capture or kill Lord\u2019s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony in Central Africa?\u00a0 Well, they haven\u2019t found him and\u00a0although they momentarily stopped looking<\/a>,\u00a0President Obama sent more troops in\u00a0March 2014<\/a>\u00a0who now roam Uganda, Central African Republic, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/p>\n

Consequently, your calls for the United States to get involved in this crisis undermines the democratic process in Nigeria and co-opts the growing movement against the inept and kleptocratic Jonathan administration. It was Nigerians who took their good for nothing President to task and challenged him to address the plight of the missing girls. It is in their hands to seek justice for these girls and to ensure that the Nigerian government is held accountable. Your emphasis on U.S. action does more harm to the people you are supposedly trying to help and it only expands and sustain U.S. military might.<\/p>\n

If you must do something, learn more about the amazing activists and journalists like\u00a0this one<\/a>,\u00a0this one<\/a>, andthis one<\/a>\u00a0just to name a few, who have risked arrests and their lives as they challenge the Nigerian government to do better for its people within the democratic process.\u00a0\u00a0If you must tweet, tweet to support and embolden them, don\u2019t direct your calls to action to the United States government who seeks to only embolden American militarism. Don\u2019t join the American government and military in co-opting this movement started and sustained by Nigerians.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jumoke Balogun<\/strong>\u00a0is a Nigerian-American. She is the co-founder and co-editor of compareafrique.com. Seeing\u00a0Nigerians of all tribes and religious affiliation together in her hometown of Oshogbo, in Lagos, Abuja, Kano and elsewhere protesting and controlling the destiny of their nation fuels her to do more and be better. \u00a0She dreams about handing down a\u00a0festival of slaps<\/a>\u00a0to President Goodluck Jonathan and Patience Jonathan.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Jumoke Balogun, Compare Afrique click here for original article Simple question. Are you Nigerian? Do you have constitutional rights accorded to Nigerians to participate in their democratic process? If not, I have news you. You can\u2019t do anything about the girls missing in Nigeria. You can\u2019t. Your insistence on urging American power, specifically American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3074"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3077,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3074\/revisions\/3077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}