US hesitant to share Boko Haram intel with Nigerian government

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
United States military officials said on Tuesday that the Pentagon is not “at this point” sharing intelligence on the Boko Haram militant group with the Nigerian government. Last month, members of the armed group, which campaigns for an Islamist state in predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria, abducted at least 200 teenage girls from a boarding school in Chibok, a primarily Christian village located in the northeast of the country. Since then, the group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, has threatened to kill or sell the girls as slaves unless the government of Nigeria releases Boko Haram prisoners. In the past week, the US has become directly involved in the search for the missing girls. On Monday, the US Department of Defense deployed fixed-wing aircraft on a variety of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions concentrating on Boko Haram strongholds in the northeast of the country, near Nigeria’s border with Cameroon. Meanwhile, 30 American advisers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Defense Intelligence Agency, and Department of State, are already in Nigerian capital Abuja, assisting in the search for the kidnap victims. American media has reported that the US Department of State is now sharing commercial satellite imagery with the Nigerian government in the context of the search. However, the Pentagon said that it is not “at this point […] sharing raw intelligence data” on Boko Haram with the Nigerian government. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Army Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for the US Department of Defense, refused to discuss the precise reasons why the Pentagon is withholding intelligence data from the Nigerian military. There is speculation, however, that the decision may be related to fears in Washington that the notoriously corrupt Nigerian military may have been infiltrated by Boko Haram members and sympathizers. Read more of this post