Boko Haram just made their international debut

[Cain]

"Remember, war, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism: all the same thing.  All definitely best handled by soldiers, and especially by non-specialized infantry units with air support".

Tanks, too.  You have to have tanks, or the bad guys won't shit their pance in fear.

Funnily enough, I was going to add tanks to the quote, but then I thought "nah, even the Nigerians probably aren't that stupid".

Boy was I wrong http://www.vanguardngr.com/2011/07/boko-haram-why-were-winning-the-battle-by-army-chief/

[Cain]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/08/nigerian-taliban-us-boko-haram?newsfeed=true

The US army provided counter-insurgency training to Nigerian troops battling a rise in attacks by Islamist militants, the Nigerian military has revealed.

More than 100 people have been killed in recent days by the radical Muslim sect Boko Haram, dubbed the "Nigerian Taliban", in Nigeria's north-east. One rights activist described it as "a state of armed Islamist insurgency" likely to spread.

Nigeria has sought to crush the group with military force but faces criticism from human rights activists for alleged extra-judicial killings.

The military said some battalions had received training in the US. "The army is in the process of setting up a division that is effectively looking at warfare tactics," a spokesman said. "Various battalions were in the United States earlier this year for training to that end."

It is though these include specialist units such as bomb disposal.

US officials confirmed it has a longstanding deal with Nigeria with soldiers travelling to America for training. It could not comment on whether the exercises was aimed at combating Boko Haram.

The US embassy in Abuja said: "We have had a mil-mil relationship with the Nigerians for decades, principally supporting their peacekeeping efforts in Africa (Liberia, Sierra Leone, Darfur) and around the globe. In recent years, and at their request, we have also worked with them on their nascent counter-force. We do not know if any of these elements have been deployed in the north."

Boko Haram has overtaken militants in the oil-rich Niger delta as the country's main security problem. Loosely modelled on the Taliban in Afghanistan, it became active in 2003 and is focused mainly in the impoverished northern states of Yobe, Kano, Bauchi and Borno.

This is the exact same sort of thing they did that ended up causing most of the clusterfucks in the Middle-East, isn't it?

Yes.  And South America, though they somehow mostly managed to sort themselves out.  Probably because the US was so focused on the Middle East...