Dozens of emaciated-looking Boko Haram members begging for food have surrendered in northeast Nigeria, the military and a civilian self-defense fighter said Wednesday.
Seventy-six people including children and women gave themselves up to soldiers last Saturday in Gwoza, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Maiduguri, according to a senior officer.
All are being detained at military headquarters in Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram and currently the command center of the war against the Islamic extremists, according to the officer. He insisted on anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to journalists. The detainees said many more fighters want to surrender, a self-defense civilian fighter who helped escort them to Maiduguri told The Associated Press.
On the face of it, positive news. Would be interested in seeing follow-up information on the "rehabilitated" fighters. Not trying to drop unpleasant waste matter into the punchbowl, but follow-up numbers over the next couple of years will show if this program is working.
http://angloboerwarmuseum.c...
Image: Boer Commandos, ("slightly" cleaned up) ca. 1901
One tactic for insurgent groups when hunger and exhaustion threaten military effectiveness is to turn themselves in...fatten up... and go back in the bush. Sometimes leave their non-combatants in the hands of the enemy, where the fighters don't have to provide for them "in the bush..." The men would come in and "surrender" long enough to fatten up and regain their health. This tactic used by peoples as diverse as the Apaches to the Viet Cong.
The Boer War, once it had moved from the conventional phase to the guerrilla drove the British bonkers. They rounded up the families of Boers "on commando" and put them in "concentration" camps (where the term originated...) By doing so, they made the logistical problems of the Boer guerrillas easier (though lack of experience, overcrowding, and slowness of response) led to unintentional high death rate from disease in the camps.
The British had a "catch and release" problem with too many of the "surrendering" Boers. They could shoot those who violated their surrender terms... but at last the British started to grasp that the problem was political... not military.
The U.S. Army sent the most troublesome Apaches to Florida. The British eventually quit simply paroling them and sent newly surrendered Boer fighters to St. Helena in the middle of the South Atlantic (where Napoleon ended his days...) The "game" was over and Boer combatant morale plunged...opening the way for some of their most able military leaders to have backing from their men to negotiate an end to the hostilities.
I don't know what the Nigerian military has in mind (if anything) to deal with this possibility if too many fighters return to the bush. Shoot new prisoners? Shoot their families? Put them all behind barbed wire? Send them to a region far from the "sharp end"?
If we can get some honest follow-up numbers down the road we will have a better idea.
-Yankee Papa-