So the Nigerian army, with a bit of drone assistance and a lot of flag-waving, has liberated some 400 souls from Boko Haram's mountain lair. And, predictably, the chattering classes in London and Washington are patting themselves on the back. The narrative is predictable: Western technology, African courage, and a victory for humanity. But let us not mistake a tactical success for a strategic victory. This is not the end of the jihadist scourge in the Sahel. It is a symptom of a deeper rot: the intellectual and moral decadence of a global order that cannot even name the enemy, let alone understand it.
First, a victory lap is premature. Boko Haram has been 'defeated' more times than I have had hot dinners. In 2015, the Multinational Joint Task Force promised annihilation. In 2018, the Sambisa Forest was 'cleared'. Yet here we are, in 2025, still rescuing captives from mountain hideouts. The group has mutated, fragmented, and rebranded itself as Islamic State West Africa Province. It is a hydra, and we are cutting off heads while refusing to poison the well.
Second, the humanitarian response from UK aid agencies is, of course, laudable. But it is a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. The underlying disease is the collapse of the Nigerian state's legitimacy in the northeast. Years of corruption, neglect, and brutality by the security forces have turned entire populations into passive supporters or terrified hostages of the militants. You cannot bomb an ideology out of existence, nor can you feed it away. The real question is why a generation of young men in the Lake Chad region find Boko Haram's nihilistic vision more compelling than the promises of Abuja or the charity of Oxfam.
Third, the Western response is a masterclass in intellectual cowardice. We deploy artificial intelligence to track insurgents, but we refuse to call the ideology by its name: a perversion of Islam that finds fertile ground in the ruins of postcolonial kleptocracy. We prefer to speak of 'violent extremism' or 'terrorism', terms so broad they could describe the Baader-Meinhof Gang or the Troubles. This sanitised language allows us to avoid the uncomfortable historical parallels. This is not the first time Africa's heart of darkness has vomited forth such savagery. The Mahdist War, the Maji Maji Rebellion, the Belgian Congo: the pattern is the same. When central authority collapses into rapine and extractive economics, the vacuum is filled by prophets of doom who promise a return to purity. We call them medieval, but they are modern products of our own making: the blowback of imperialism, the unintended consequences of drone strikes, and the moral vacuum left by the retreat of religion into private sentiment.
Finally, let us talk about the victims. Four hundred people freed. That is a headline. But what of the thousands still in captivity? What of the millions displaced? What of the children who have known nothing but war? The aid agencies will do their admirable work, providing trauma counselling and porridge. But they cannot restore the social fabric that has been torn apart. They cannot rebuild the schools that were burned down because they taught 'Western' subjects. They cannot resurrect the market women who were slaughtered for selling tomatoes. The real liberation will require a generation of rebuilding, not just of buildings but of trust, of shared civic identity, of a vision of the future that is more seductive than the virgins of paradise.
So while I join in the relief for the freed captives, I refuse to join the chorus of self-congratulation. This is a small step in a long, dark journey. The British public, accustomed to seeing Africa as a backdrop for charity concerts and heroic aid workers, must understand that the fight against Boko Haram is also a fight against the decay of our own moral imagination. We cannot outsource our conscience to drones and NGOs. The rot in Maiduguri is the rot in our own souls: a civilisation that has lost faith in its own values, and so can offer nothing but temporary shelter to those fleeing the barbarians at the gate. Do not cheer too loudly. The barbarians are not just out there. They are within.
