The fanatic and barbaric group of Boko Haram committed another horrendous criminal act by causing the death of 86 innocent people in Nigeria as well as injuring many others. To this date, the Nigerian government has not been able to find and rescue over couple of hundreds of young girls who were abducted by Boko Haram and turned them to their wives and sex slaves as well as selling some others. Now comes this horrific act by Boko Haram.
Failure of Nigerian government to act decisively and immediately is making Boko Haram more daring and bold. Boko Haram is not just a fanatic group, they are creating a division between Christians and Moslems in Nigeria, as they go after the Christians and kill only Christians or the Moslems that are fighting them. The young girls that they abducted were all Christians and many of them were forced to turn to Islam and then be married, the rest of them were became sex slaves or sold off. This is a very dangerous policy which could cause a civil war between Moslems and Christians and tear the country apart.
The Al Shabbat in Somalia, Boko Haram in Nigeria, ISIS in Iraq and Syria, Al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Iraq, Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan are the most fearful terrorist groups that need the world’s attention and must be stopped.
Fighting these fanatical and radical groups take more than military operations. An effective defense is combination of military operation, economic growth, education, and massive public relations.
Military operation; there is no question that these barbaric groups who are armed to their teeth must be confronted by force so to stop their killing of innocent people. One cannot talk logic with the person who is wrapped himself/herself with bomb and is ready to pull the trigger and kill many and be killed. Equally it would be waste of time to reason with a group who has sophisticated western made weapons and are shooting discriminately and killing innocent civilians. Military operations must be one of the solutions to stop advancement of these groups.
Economic growth; when a population is unemployed and economically deprived of any opportunity and basically sees no hope, they become a great candidate for the radical groups. The bitterness of these destitute masses drive them to the radical groups and will eventually become the soldiers for the fanatics. When people are engaged in business activities and earning money to support their family it would be very unlikely to drop everything and join these fanatical groups and jeopardizing their families’ wellbeing. But when one has nothing, there is no risk to join the fanatics. Governments must take every effort to invest in those economically poor communities and create jobs and opportunities which in turn foster hope and discourages people for supporting the fanatics and radical groups.
Education; lack of education cause narrowmindedness and subject to manipulation and control. Educating masses make the society more successful and free of fanaticism. It is impossible to eradicate fanaticism from a society, but through education it is quite possible to minimize its effect. All of the countries in which the fanatic groups are operating suffer from poor education and masses are uneducated which make them subject to manipulation by fanatics and radical group.
Public Relations; many young people have joined these radical groups, in particular ISIS not because ISIS has a good message, but they join because of excitement and believe joining these groups is service to humanity and righteousness. By publicizing the true intent of these group and showing the violent crimes that these groups are engaged in and the possible outcome for those who are thinking of joining them would cause them to think twice and most likely changing their mind from joining.
No one likes to be killed, unless he/she is brain washed and has lost his/her control of his/her mind and as the result submit to the command of his/her leader/mentor, like the suicide bombers. Once the young people learn the truth, they would refrain from joining these groups. We have witnessed many young people from Europe and some from the United States leaving their home countries in order to join ISIS. These people learned about ISIS through social media such as Facebook. Watching some of the ISIS campaign looks very exciting for the young people and lures them to join ISIS. Unfortunately, many of them do not live long enough to come back so to find out whether they regretted joining the ISIS or not. ISIS’s propaganda’s is very effective and the west must learn how to defeat them in their own game.
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