U.S. soldiers help Nigerians build wall against Boko Haram

U.S. soldiers help Nigerians build wall against Boko Haram

PanARMENIAN.Net - Despite years of intimidation by the violent extremist group Boko Haram, the people of southeastern Niger's Diffa region had never held a summit to confront the threat - perhaps with good reason, Reuters reports.

"One person could come here and kill us all!" Diffa's prefect, Inoussa Saouna, told 75 village leaders assembled along with politicians and military commanders in the city's pale blue-walled cultural center.

The Diffa meeting was a modest success not just for its mutually suspicious tribes but for a small team of fewer than 20 U.S. Special Operations Forces conducting an experiment that is part of President Barack Obama's new counter-terrorism strategy, Reuters says.

The soldiers, who encouraged the meeting and helped provide a ring of security, do not go into combat, or even wear uniforms. They are quietly trying to help Niger build a wall against Boko Haram's incursions and its recruitment of Diffa's youth.

In Chad, Nigeria, Niger and elsewhere, they are executing Obama's relatively low-risk strategy of countering Islamic extremists by finding local partners willing to fight rather than deploying combat troops by the thousands.

The new approach, which Obama announced in May 2014, is far from being a silver bullet for the United States in its global battle against Islamic militancy. The indirect strategy appears to be faltering in the Middle East, where the United States has found few reliable allies on the battlefield in Syria. In Iraq, U.S.-trained and -equipped forces evaporated last year in the face of Islamic State's offensive.

In Niger, there are signs of success against Boko Haram, although progress will likely be slow in a years-long effort, U.S., European and African officials say.

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