Dear American’s, Your Hashtags Won’t #BringBackOurGirls, You Might Actually
Be Making Things Worse by Rasheed Ali Muhammad
As Salaamu Alaykum All.
Bismillah,
Please take a couple of minutes to read the
following:
Simple question. Are you Nigerian? Do you
have constitutional rights accorded to
Nigerians to participate in their democratic
process? If not, I have news you. You can’t
do anything about the girls missing in
Nigeria. You can’t. Your insistence on urging
American power, specifically American
military power, to address this issue will
ultimately hurt the people of Nigeria.
It heartens me that you’ve taken up the
mantle of spreading “awareness” about the
200+ girls who were abducted from their
school in Chibok; it heartens me that you’ve
heard the cries of mothers and fathers who
go yet another day without their child. It’s
nice that you care.
Here’s the thing though, when you pressure
Western powers, particularly the American
government to get involved in African affairs
and when you champion military intervention,
you become part of a much larger problem.
You become a complicit participant in a
military expansionist agenda on the continent
of Africa. This is not good.
You might not know this, but the United
States military loves your hashtags because
it gives them legitimacy to encroach and
grow their military presence in Africa.
AFRICOM (United States Africa Command),
the military body that is responsible for
overseeing US military operations across
Africa, gained much from #KONY2012 and
will now gain even more from
#BringBackOurGirls.
Last year, before President Obama visited
several countries in Africa, I wrote about how
the U.S. military is expanding its role in
Africa. In 2013 alone, AFRICOM carried out a