Charlie Hebdo casts Boko Haram in focus

The world is awakening to Boko Haram’s bloody campaign in Cameroon and Nigeria in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in France.

This week, the African Union pledged to support a multinational task force to fight the terrorist group while France “utterly” condemned its recent attacks in the Far North.

In the United States, lawmakers urged the White House to expand its military engagement with Nigeria, which is Boko Haram’s stronghold.

International news channels have been broadcasting from Nigeria, putting the crisis is focus again for the first time since the abduction of over 200 girls in April 2014.

The world has watched as Boko Haram grows into one of the deadliest terrorist groups currently operating in the world, according to several recent analysis.

On 3 January its militants sprayed civilians with bullets and razed 16 villages in northeastern Nigeria, killing about 2000 in Baga, in what has been called the worst attack in history.

Days after, it failed to take a Cameroonians military base in Kolofata using heavy artillery after the military gunned and bombed over 130 insurgents.

The groups is believed to have killed more than 13,000 people since 2009, when it first took up arms against, the group claims, Western education.

It has displaced more than 1.5 million people, about 20,000 of whom are camped in northern Cameroon as refugees.

““If we don’t stop it in its tracks, we are destined for this horrible group to not step back but to continue to be in power,” US lawmaker Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas.

International support for the war against the terrorists – except for a few countries that have donated vehicles and equipment to Cameroon – has mostly been limited to advice.

Criticisms of weak international response rose after an unprecedented mobilization of world leaders following the Paris attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in which 17 people in all died.

Cameroon and Nigerian authorities criticized the support they were getting from the rest of the world both privately and openly, we gathered from military and diplomatic sources.

Even though the United States now has an ambassador in Yaounde, it has not taken a forceful role as authorities in Yaounde would have loved, said a military official.

Last week, President Paul Biya warned that in spite of losses the group has suffered in Cameroon recently, it had the ability to rise again forcefully.

“It is clear that the United States needs a comprehensive strategy to address Boko Haram’s growing lethality,” said two US lawmakers Patrick Meehan and Peter King.

France has also come under fire for its aloofness despite holding a regional meeting last year to initiate a coordinated response to the problem.

On Tuesday, France’s foreign affairs office issued a statement expressing solidarity with Cameroon but offering no concrete support.

“France utterly condemns the terrorist attacks in the far north of Cameroon,” the statement said.

“We remain especially concerned about the situation of the civilian populations, who are the main victims of the terrorists.

“We pay tributes to the determination of the Cameroonians authorities and armed forces in the fight against terror and barbarity.

“We express our solidarity with the Cameroonian authorities as well as with the authorities of states in this region in the fight against terrorism, notably the Lake Chad Basin countries.”

On the same day, the AU condemned despicable attacks by the terrorist group and appealed for “the larger international community to renew its unity and support” to the fight against Boko Haram.