So British special forces have been quietly whispering intelligence into Nigerian ears, and lo and behold, hundreds of captives have been plucked from Boko Haram's grasp. Cue the triumphalist headlines, the back-slapping, the smug tweets. But let's pause the victory lap, shall we? Because every liberation in this benighted region comes with a footnote the size of the Sahara.
First, the facts. Yesterday, Nigerian soldiers, with a nudge from our boys in beige, stormed a camp in the Sambisa Forest—that notorious stronghold of jihadist misery—and freed some 200 women and children. The press releases are already dripping with phrases like "precision operation" and "minimal casualties." All very impressive. All very necessary. But here's the rub: Boko Haram, like a hydra, simply grows new heads. You free 200 today, they kidnap 300 tomorrow. The cycle is not broken; it is merely paused.
This is the tragedy of our age: we celebrate tactical victories while losing the strategic war. Britain's role, let's be honest, is surgical and deniable. We provide the ears, the eyes, the satellite imagery. The Nigerians provide the boots on the ground and the body bags. It's a neat arrangement, one that allows Westminster to claim moral credit while avoiding the messy business of nation-building. But does anyone genuinely believe that a few clandestine whispers will alter the trajectory of the Sahel's collapse? Look at the map. The region is a domino chain of failed states: Mali, Niger, Chad, Nigeria. Each kidnapping, each rescue, is a symptom of a deeper rot—the failure of governance, the collapse of education, the hatred that festers when young men have no jobs and no hope.
And yet, we persist in the fantasy that military hardware and elite commandos can fix this. We have learned nothing from Vietnam, nothing from Afghanistan, nothing from Iraq. Each intervention is a fresh coat of paint on a condemned building. The Boko Haram insurgency is now in its second decade. It has mutated, split, and formed alliances with ISIS. It is not a problem to be solved but a condition to be managed. And managing it requires more than a raid, more than a few freed hostages.
Consider what is not being said. Where are the outcries about the Nigerian army's own record of human rights abuses? Where is the discussion of the corruption that fuels the arms trade, that keeps soldiers unpaid and unmotivated? Where is the analysis of the ideological war that is being lost in classrooms and mosques across the north? None of that fits the narrative. The narrative demands a hero, a villain, and a happy ending. So here is your hero: the silent British operative. Here is your villain: the faceless jihadist. And here is your happy ending: 200 souls returned to their families.
But I am a contrarian. I see a different story. I see a Western security state that uses Africa as a laboratory for its counter-insurgency experiments. I see a Nigerian elite that profits from chaos. I see a world that will move on to the next crisis by Friday, leaving these freed prisoners to rebuild their lives in a country that barely functions. The real victory would be a Nigeria that can protect its own citizens without foreign help. The real victory would be a region where Boko Haram cannot recruit. That victory is nowhere in sight.
So yes, let us be glad that children are no longer in chains. But let us not mistake a moment of relief for a turning of the tide. The fall of Rome took centuries, but it was hastened by a thousand small defeats dressed up as victories. We are living through our own slow-motion collapse, and operations like this are the bread and circuses that distract us from the rot. The British lion may have roared, but the jungle is still burning.
