[C19fan]

Boko Haram is threatening a city of 2 MM which much have tens of thousands of fighting age men. I don't understand why knowing what these thugs will do these men don't arm themselves and defend their city. The Nigerians need to man up and use some of the oil wealth to hire some Western mercenaries to fight Boko.

[TexasCajun]

[dainbramaged]

Does Nigeria have a military force?

[Noamie]

#BringBackOurAirport

[P-Marlowe]

Do they have an armed citizenry or are they sitting ducks?

[dfwgator]

This is going to make Biafra look like a walk in the park before it’s over.

This could even exceed the scale of what happened in Rwanda in 94.

[Robert DeLong]

Are the arms readily available? I have to wonder the same thing is they are.

[USMCPOP]

Tens of thousands of men with machetes and tools are a formidable force.

[fatnotlazy]

Obama doesn’t care. Neither does the pope.

[Zuben Elgenubi]

It’s like Boko Haram has something like voodoo power over the natives.

[BenLurkin]

[grania]

And the Nigerian gov still can’t find them?

[CodeToad]

Seems a city that large could wipe out BH pretty easily.

[bgill]

And what does the government and citizens do? As usual, nothing.

[Colofornian]

1. Pray for Nigeria
2. I'm coming more to believe that Boko Haram has a few trained Marxists giving them counsel:
"...the insurrection career once entered upon, act with greatest determination, and on the offensive. The defensive is the death of every armed uprising."
--Karl Marx, 1917, in Lenin, "Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? Postscript"

3. BH will only grow with eventual forced conscripts. As Douglas MacArthur remarked to his staff in 1945 re: the Philippine guerrilla group, the Huks:
"They tell me the Huks are socialistic, that they are revolutionaries, but I haven't got the heart to go after them. If I worked in those sugar fields, I'd probably be a Huk myself."

Hence, has been easier for many BH recruits to join with these murdering land pirates than either work their equivalency of a "sugar field" -- or worse, to face the violence of BH's marauders.

Anyway, MacArthur's comment helps to explain why there is no "Old West" type of posse attitude amongts the locals: "I haven't got the heart to go after them."

[AZLiberty]

It’s just a Christian ghetto in a far-away country. What difference does it make? /s

In better times we would have airdropped guns and ammo to the prospective victims so that they could defend themselves. But that would upset the anti-gun sensitivities of our dear leaders.