News breaks that hundreds have been extracted from Boko Haram’s mountain redoubt. A triumph for Nigerian forces? Perhaps.
A strategic masterstroke? Unlikely. We have seen this before: the flurry of press releases, the triumphant generals, the grateful hostages.
But a closer look at this ‘major rescue’ reveals the usual pattern: one head of the hydra is severed; two more grow in its place. The fortress is taken. The jungle remains.
The West applauds. The insurgents melt into the bush, only to reappear in a new valley with new AK-47s. This is not the Fall of the Bastille.
It is the endless cycle of a grinding insurgency, a reminder that Boko Haram is not a fortress to be stormed but a disease that has infected the body politic. We treat the symptoms. We ignore the conditions: abject poverty, corrupt governance, a generation with no future but a jihadist rallying cry.
The rescue is a good day, but it does nothing to cure the rot. Rome did not fall in a day. It rotted from within.
Read the headlines. Then read between them.
