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Chad, Niger whip Boko, Nigeria looks foolish...

Saturday March 14 2015

After the Boko Haram militants had humiliated the army of mighty Nigeria for nearly a year and, emboldened, started attacks on neighbouring countries likes Cameroon and Niger, they lost patience.

In recent weeks, the battle-hardened Chad army, joined by Niger, has led a big pushback against Boko Haram, inflicting a string of defeats on the militants.

The Nigerian army, partly embarrassed that its smaller and poor neighbours are able to give Boko Haram a fight it couldn’t, has now become courageous too.

Analysts say Chad and Niger are not just being the good neighbours the Bible speaks of. They are motivated to help Nigeria out of self-interest — Chad and Niger depend on Nigerian ports for their import and export trade. And the northern areas of Nigeria where Boko Haram has been rampaging are next to their borders.

For that reason, they have felt the pain more than Cameroon, which, though affected by Boko Haram attacks, has a coastline.

Chad and Niger, therefore, have thrown more troops in the anti-Boko campaign than Cameroon.

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The point here is that self-interest provides the clearest of reasons, and justifications, for why countries should meddle in what would otherwise be the international affairs of others.

And the Chad and Niger add another aspect; if you are landlocked, you have a greater moral right to interfere in your coastal neighbour’s affairs and also a greater duty to help them when they are crisis.

In the East African context, then, if we were to accept this doctrine, Uganda would be justified to have sent troops to South Sudan in December when the country went up in flames. Kenya will be forgiven for invading southern Somalia in 2012. Rwanda, too, would have every right to go into eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to hunt down the FDLR rebels.

Of course, Tanzania did the right thing to send its army into Uganda in retaliation for attacks on its territory, and to oust military dictator Idi Amin from power in 1979.

Then it gets trickier. If the passage of Ugandan and Rwandan goods through Kenya and Tanzania are critical to these countries’ survival, should Kampala and Kigali just sit by and watch voters in these countries elect a madman who could disrupt their trade?

Maybe not. If that is the case, then if Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni should pour money into Tanzanian and Kenyan elections to help elect a candidate who will safeguard their nations’ interests.

Many people, indeed the majority, hate interference. Some Kenyans have never forgiven Museveni for his perceived support of Mwai Kibaki in the post-election violence in Kenya of early 2008. It gets particularly vexing if the helper is little Uganda bailing out Kenya, and it would touch raw nerves if Rwanda had to save Tanzania.

Perhaps then the EAC should adopt this approach as an element of its common defence policy, in order to normalise it: That East Africans shall as a duty act militarily jointly to stop political sociopaths from taking power in the region, and to defeat violent extremist organisations.

This is a rare moment in Africa: For once, Chad has done something worth emulating.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is editor of Mail & Guardian Africa (mgafrica.com) Twitter: @cobbo3

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