Boko Haram Attack Kills At Least 90 in Northeast Nigeria

Following a recent campaign of bombing raids by the Nigerian Military, members of the Boko Haram militia group attacked the village of Izghe in Northeast Nigeria near the border with Cameroon this past Saturday. Boko Haram is a militia group that seeks to carve out a state that is ruled by Islamic law in the Northeast, which has the highest population of Muslims in the country. Though this group claims to have Islamic goals, their extremism has not put them past targeting Muslims with the same frequency as Christians in their murderous campaigns. A brief overview of the Boko Haram and this most recent attack appears in an article from Al Jazeera, in which the author describes the difficulties that the Nigerian military has faced when dealing with this group. Nigeria's president Goodluck Jonathan has done his best to qwell the Boko Haram by dispatching troops to wherever they appear to be most active, which has historically been the Northeast region of Nigeria. This has proven difficult to manage as the region in which they are fighting is made up of dense forest and the militants have time and again simply retreated into these forests when they feel threatened and are not then pursued as ferociously. A regional complexity is added to this when it is mentioned that Mohammed Dole, a Nigerian military spokesperson claims that a recent attack which occurred in a fishing village is actually under the jurisdiction of a "multinational task force" composed of troops from Nigeria, Niger, and Chad. It is clear that from this mention of a multinational task force that Nigeria is beginning to feel overwhelmed by the Boko Haram, turning them into a more regional concern. Given the elusiveness and violent nature of the Boko Haram it seems like a step in the right direction to have other nations get on board before the violence becomes too much for one nation to handle like that of the Central African Republic.