Chad gets US help in crushing Boko Haram

27 February 2015 - 02:41 By Reuters
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HOW TO DODGE A BULLET: A Spanish soldier trains Mauritanian special forces during Flintlock 2015, a US-led military exercise, in Chad last week
HOW TO DODGE A BULLET: A Spanish soldier trains Mauritanian special forces during Flintlock 2015, a US-led military exercise, in Chad last week
Image: EMMANUEL BRAUN/REUTERS

Under the glare of the Saharan sun a US special forces trainer corrects the aim of a Chadian soldier as he fires at a target with his AK47.

Chad is sending hundreds of troops to fight Boko Haram in neighbouring Nigeria as part of a regional offensive against the Islamist terrorists, who killed about 10000 people last year in their campaign to carve out an Islamic emirate in the north of Africa's biggest oil producer.

The annual Flintlock counter-terrorism exercises are a decade-old US-sponsored initiative to bolster African nations' ability to fight militant groups operating in the vast ungoverned spaces of the Sahara.

"Even before the conflict with Boko Haram we were preparing to face a group like them," said the commander of the Chadian troops, Captain Zakaria Magada, whose Special Anti-Terrorist Group is equipped and trained by the US.

"Boko Haram is just a militia of civilians. We are an organised army. They cannot stand up to us."

Chad's armed forces are among the most respected in the region - a reputation forged during decades of war and rebellions, and honed in a 2013 fight against al-Qaeda-linked Islamists in the deserts of northern Mali.

But many of its troops are still raw. In the first days of Flintlock, trainers from the US Army's 10th Special Forces Group walked them through basics such as adjusting the sights of their weapons and cleaning them.

The trainers say there is a limit to what can be taught in three weeks but the objective of the exercise - which this year groups 1300 troops from 28 countries - is building relationships among Africans and Western partners.

Efforts to construct a regional African task force to tackle Boko Haram have been hampered by lack of co-operation between neighbouring countries. With that in mind, planners built into this year's Flintlock a cross-border scenario.

"It is all about African nations finding African solutions to their problems," said Major-General James Linder, head of US Special Operations Command: Africa.

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