29 May 2014
In the movie The
Magnificent Seven, a collection of hired American gunslingers defend a poor
Mexican village from the predation of a gang of Banditos, led by Calvera, who was portrayed by actor Eli Wallach.
The Mexican bandits had no interest in governing the
village. They were not interested in
providing peace, order, and justice to the village. They only wanted to take: food and money,
primarily. In other words, they taxed
but provided nothing in return.
If he had to justify what he did to the villagers, Calvera
vaguely referred to an ongoing Mexican revolution and of the need for his gang
to survive for the revolution to continue.
Clavera thinks of himself as the father to the gang, who has to provide
food and other things for his men. To
him, the products of the village are his own crop to reap.
The Nigerian group Boko Haram operates a lot like Calvera’s
gang of bandits. They take from the
peaceable people around them for the benefit of the gang, and the taking is
done in the name of some higher purpose.
In no instance is Boko Haram offering a government to the people it
terrorizes, nor would it be competent to run a civil government with law,
order, and justice should it attempt to do so.
Its leadership is competent to run a gang but not a government.
Boko Haram is in the news of late because it abducted 276
Nigerian school girls and is in the process of selling them off as wives to
Muslim tribesmen, or holding them for ransom.
Perhaps some of the girls were married off to gang members. The strategic end served by the abduction of
these girls was the prosperity of the gang.
A lot has been made recently of the connection between Boko
Haram and other al Qaeda-linked terrorist groups. The ostensible political aim of Boko Haram is
the imposition of an Islamic Caliphate in Nigeria, the imposition of Sharia
law, and the elimination of western education from that country. They seem to share a common ideology with al
Qaeda, which is linked further to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in the United
States.
But the other thing Boko Haram has in common with al Qaeda
is the need to survive. Both groups need
money, and in addition to money Boko Haram needs food, weapons, and ammunition. Its men, who live in the African bush, need
women. Consequently, a lot of criminal
activity takes place in the name of religion by al Qaeda and Boko Haram. Without this criminal activity, Boko Haram
could not survive. Its men would have to
find sustenance elsewhere should gang activity not provide it for them.
The imposition of the kind of rule advocated by the Boko
Haram is opposed even by other Muslims in Nigeria. And given that Nigeria is fairly evenly
divided between Christian and Muslim, the likelihood of a happy and successful
political regime in Nigeria of a kind advocated by Boko Haram is remote. The political program advocated by Boko Harem
is not serious. The alleged political
aims of Boko Haram have no place in a serious discussion of what to do about
the gang.
The purpose of Boko Haram is to fulfill the psychopathic
needs of its leadership. The men of the
gang find gratification of their own personal wants and needs in the gang’s
activities. Opportunities for killing,
raping, adventure, a sense of belonging and purpose, as well as food and pay
are positive motivators for gang membership and retention. What political program is advocated serves to
quell any pangs of conscience that might arise in the course of violence.
Because of its strength and organization, the methods of
normal law enforcement will not prevail against the gang. Stronger measures, the methods of war, are
called for. This situation creates a
problem for those addicted to positive law because positive law was developed
in and for the framework of civil peace, and positive law devotees are
constitutionally unable to admit the boundaries of their doctrine. They reject the old Roman legal maxim, Silent enim leges inter arma (The laws
are silent in time of war).
Like what happened to Calvera and his men, Boko Haram needs
to be hunted down and slain in a military operation. Its members are not protected by the laws of
war. They are, and ought to be declared,
outlaws in the purest sense of that
term: the protection of the civil law does not apply to them.
The moral analogy between the movie and the actual situation
in Nigeria can be extended further. At the end of the movie, a dying
Calvera asks Chris, the leader of the Magnificent Seven, “Why?”
Indeed, a kind of equilibrium had been established between
Calvera and the villages he raided for supplies, and the Magnificent Seven
broke that up, at great cost to themselves.
Ugly as it is, Boko Haram’s preying upon the people around
them represents ongoing life in the African bush. If something is going to be done about the
predations of Boko Haram, if somebody is going to play the part of the
Magnificent Seven, then the question “why” might need to be answered. If
it can be answered satisfactorily, then the military solution is also the only
one that is permanently availing. Those who seek something other
than the military solution, such as a paying ransom or applying political
pressure in order to get the girls back, are deluding themselves about the
longer term.
But, if we cannot give a good answer to the question “Why?”
then we are quite justified in holding that ‘such is life, luckily not my life’
and move on.
Will a Magnificent Seven undertake the operation?
-30-
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