Terrorist Activity

Floor Speech

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Mr. Gohmert, thank you for your trip there and your concern, which has been throughout your entire career for human rights in general, but also for religious freedom.

This is a serious assault on religious freedom, forced Islamization. Again, those Muslims who do not agree with the extremism are also targeted, but Christians by and large.

At yesterday's hearing, Mr. Ogebe said that, of the 60 churches that have been destroyed, three mosques have been destroyed during that same time period. This is an attack on the Christian faith and it is a slaughter of Christians.

I want to thank you for your leadership on this.

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Again, the great urgent needs for the Nigerian military are actionable intelligence and the capacity to know what is going on where, when, in real-time, and training. There needs to be a reevaluation of the vetting process, the Leahy amendment which I absolutely agree with; but when good troops and good soldiers and, especially, good officers are unnecessarily excluded because of a taint that may be ascribed to their unit rather than their individual performance, that needs to be relooked at so that we can train. There is a battalion that is being trained by the U.S., but there needs to be far more training in counterinsurgency.

I would say to my friend, I remember a trip to Darfur. The Nigeria military has been very robust in their peacekeeping. I remember I met with Major Ajumbo in Darfur who had also been deployed to Sarajevo. I was very active in the terrible Balkan war. I went several times to places, including with Frank Wolf, to Vukovar and other places that were under siege. When the peacekeepers got there, among them were the Nigerians. So peacekeeping is something they had been very generous in deploying their troops to try to help other countries deal with civil wars or wars of aggression and, of course, terrorist activity as we have seen in Darfur, but now that kind of training is not applicable to a counterinsurgency effort. That takes a very specialized type of skill set, and that needs to be ramped up exponentially if this horrific threat is to be mitigated and then eventually done away with.

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There are so many very excellent points from my friend from Texas.

They don't want boots on the ground. The Nigerian military, Goodluck Jonathan, the President, what they need is this kind of specialized training, and they need it fast.

As we have seen in Baghdad--and the threat being posed now to Baghdad--and Fallujah, of course, several months ago and now in Mosul, a highly motivated and capable group of terrorists can do extraordinary damage unless you have people facing them down who have the kind of training and motivation that can meet and stop it.

Let me just say, too, Africa is now, you know, the Wahhabi sect and others, extremist elements, are trying to influence Africa to the detriment of moderate Muslims, as you have pointed out, who have gotten along and have been best of friends with the Christian community. Even in Nigeria, there have been bishops and imams who have traveled throughout the country. The country is roughly divided in half. It is the most populous country in all of Africa, about 180 million people, and a very, very important friend and ally of democracy and us. They are at risk because of these extremist elements.

We saw it in Somalia with al-Shabaab and the pain that that terrible organization has inflicted on Somalia. Then as they were being defeated--they are not defeated yet, but as their numbers were lessened, they went over to Nairobi and went into a market and killed large numbers of people and terrorized.

These people eat, sleep, and drink brutality and impose it on innocent people. They blow up children and women and men. As a matter of fact, one of the untold stories is how many of the schoolboys are just being summarily executed, particularly in the three northern states. They kidnap the girls, as you pointed out, sexually abuse them and do horrific things to them and kill some of them, but they just summarily execute the young men.

So there is a reign of terror that is

underappreciated around the world with regard to Boko Haram. You and I and others have been raising this for years.

Our Ambassador Sanders yesterday talked about she was Ambassador in 2007-2010, U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, how she had raised so many issues.

In 2011, the U.N. headquarters in Abuja was firebombed by Boko Haram--in Abuja. There was an American there, and yet the Obama administration refused to designate Boko Haram a foreign terrorist organization.

I asked Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Johnnie Carson at a hearing in 2012 and then again a year later, why. This organization meets the test of a foreign terrorist organization, and why not, especially with the tools that are available through an FTO designation, trying to track the terror money and the means and financing for guns and the procurement of weapons, IEDs and the rest, and they just refused. They named three individuals, but they would not do the FTO for the entire organization. A missed opportunity.

Again, like I said, on the day before my hearing in December, the administration announced Boko Haram as an FTO. We welcomed it. Everybody was glad, but we missed an opportunity for approximately 2 years or more for an FTO designation.

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I would just add, finally, that one of the big takeaways--and this was amplified yesterday by Ambassador Sanders--is that there is a huge psychological toll being imposed upon the victims, and that the PTSD experienced by the families, especially with the Chibok abduction, is enormous. The government of Nigeria, obviously, needs to walk point on trying to ensure that psychological assistance, as well as the faith community, which can provide a tremendous benefit to those suffering trauma and the aftermaths of it, be given.

One of the things that Ambassador Sanders mentioned yesterday that I thought was a very good idea is that President Goodluck Jonathan ought to meet with the families of the Chibok girls. One of the things that George Bush did, and he actually did it in my district as well--not George but his wife, the First Lady, but he did it at the White House and other venues--they met with the survivors of 9/11 and let them know not only that the sympathy and the empathy for their plight was real and the harrowing loss that they endured, but that, as President of the United States, George W. Bush, and his wife, said: We are with you, we have got your back, we care about you.

So, respectfully, I would hope that the President,

Goodluck Jonathan, would open his arms and meet with the Chibok family members, the parents who are in utter agony--who wouldn't be?--at the loss of their daughters. Again, I met with one of those dads who lost two of his daughters to the abduction, doesn't know where they are, like the others, and this man, tears flowing down his face. In his case, he was one of the Muslims. There were a few Muslim girls, we don't know how many, at the school--it was mostly Christians, overwhelmingly Christian--but his two daughters were Muslim.

This trauma is real. We know from the work that the VA has done for years of posttraumatic stress disorder--PTSD--that those impacts are lifelong and they need to be addressed. When I sat, like you sat, across from some of those young victims, the lucky ones who were able to escape, this poor young 18-year-old girl that I met with was clearly broken and hurting beyond words, and yet she kept uttering and saying: But I care about my friends, what happened to my friends, where are my friends now? And tears welled up in her eyes several times.

So again, I do thank you.

There is one other idea to put on the table: The victims compensation fund. Nigeria does have significant oil wealth. While there are still huge numbers of poor people in Nigeria, there is also the idea that there are resources available. Certainly helping some people get their lives back together--when I went to the IDP camp--the internally displaced camp--in Jos last September I was struck by the destitute, the extreme poverty compounded by the exodus, and there are hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced persons, obviously in Nigeria but also in adjacent countries like Cameroon.

So a victims compensation fund would be at least an effort, a gesture, to help out, it would seem to me, those who are suffering from, again, loss of life, abductions, and now no place to live too. It just gets worse and worse and worse.

I also heard harrowing stories of people who leave their homes and hide in the bush at night because Boko Haram at any night can just come knocking on the door, AK-47 in hand, ready to open fire. So the pervasive fear, especially in the three northern states, is bad and getting worse. And again, our former Ambassador yesterday said: This is a long war, and Nigeria needs to understand, and everyone who supports Nigeria, that it is not going to just end with one fell swoop. There needs to be a strategy that takes in a framework to account that this is a long and protracted war, but it has to start now.

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I thank the gentleman for his compassion and for bringing these stories forward and for meeting with those families.

I did, too, hear of the false guilt--nevertheless, guilt--shared by some of the families, but what do you do when you are facedown with an AK-47 and you are holding a stick? That is basically what happened.

I have been to Abuja a number of times. I am the author, as you know, of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, America's landmark law in combating sex and labor trafficking, enacted in 2000.

I have been there a number of times, working with members of parliament--their congressmen and their senators--on trafficking legislation. They have a very, very well-written piece of legislation to combat the scourge of modern-day slavery and human trafficking.

There are many fine members of the House and Senate. Part of the problem has been the corruption in some places--in the military, in some cases--in parts of the government, and we have corruption here; so we know how insidious, as you pointed out, that can be, but when the military units that are deployed lack the skill base and the training to deal with a terrorist organization that is highly adept, coupled with the fact they don't have enough munitions, enough capabilities that any military going to war against this kind of threat need to have, it just so hampers their ability to carry on the fight. So that, too, has to change.

We are told something like $6 billion in defense spending by the government is what is going on. It seems to me--and I said this at yesterday's hearing--perhaps they need an urgent supplemental--the way we would do here--to significantly upgrade their materiel.

That was one of the first things that Ambassador Sanders said yesterday. They have the money to buy this. They need to procure it--and do it yesterday--certainly, today--and not wait any longer--so that these troops are ready, capable and trained.

So I really appreciate your point. They do have a number of fine laws. Their legislature is functioning in many ways very well. There are gaps that particularly need to be addressed. Three northern states have some serious problems. So I do think we need to be a true ally and friend.

As Professor Pham said yesterday, we will keep our footprint very light. Nobody wants U.S. troops on the ground. That is very clear, but we need to help them help themselves, especially since the Nigerians have been so generous in deploying peacekeepers to troubled areas throughout Africa and, like I said, in places like the Balkans, in Bosnia.

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So much good--the family, the faith community. I spent some time with a number of Catholics and evangelicals. They love God. They really want to do His will on Earth, as it is in Heaven, as we are admonished in the Lord's prayer, but they face many crippling challenges. On the sickness side, malaria is endemic. They have made major gains on the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

They have so many issues that they are trying to address and in comes this horrific Boko Haram organization, which has taken brutality to a new low. They are capable--and let's not kid ourselves. This is a gang, but it is a well-trained gang that is bloodthirsty.

We have seen it before. Look what happened in Liberia and Charles Taylor, who brutalized Sierra Leone and Liberia. Thankfully, he got a 50-year prison sentence by the special court of Sierra Leone and now is in prison, but the pain that he unleashed through his terrorism--and he was the President of that country.

Here, you have a situation where a group of thugs, well trained, are unleashing hell upon wonderful people. Again, that is why we can be of help, especially in the area of intelligence and in the area of training--of course, on the humanitarian side, sharing best practices, especially psychological trauma type of interventions.

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Mr. Gohmert, I want to thank you, again, for your leadership and for taking the time to go to Lagos to meet with all the families and to, again, amplify the message that we must do more. There is more that we can do.

I was extraordinarily impressed with our people that are on the ground. They are totally can-do, both our Embassy, as well as our military people. They want to help. We have got to make sure that we are resourcing them sufficiently as well.

The Government of Nigeria and President Goodluck Jonathan need to listen to the international chorus--the U.K. is there, the French are trying to be helpful on the intelligence side as well--but they own the leadership of this. They need to step up to the plate. Again, I can't emphasize enough the specialized training that could really enable their troops to efficaciously combat Boko Haram.

It needs to be done so urgently and so comprehensively. They need a comprehensive strategy.

I thank my good friend.

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Again, I say--and you emphasized it with your lifelong love of the Nigerian people and your knowledge of them--I think most Americans would be very encouraged to know just how strongly faith-filled the Nigerian people are. Whether they be evangelical, Catholic, or Muslim, they take their faith seriously. They are very ethical people, great people, very good business people.

If infrastructure and roads and bridges and the like were to become even more accomplished throughout Nigeria--as Nigeria goes, so goes the rest of Africa, it is often said--they will be a great trading partner. They are already a huge trade partner of the U.S., but that will grow exponentially, going forward.

Again, I have always been impressed with the faith of so many Africans, in general, but the Nigerians' faith in God is extraordinary.

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Before you got here, I think, at least, I raised the issue of Habila Adamu. He was a man whom I met in an IDP camp in Jos in September of last year. He did tell the story about how Boko Haram broke into his house, dragged him outside, with a terrorist holding an AK-47 right to his nose area.

With his wife weeping, pleading with this man not to shoot her husband, he said: You convert or else I will shoot you.

He said: I am ready to meet my Lord.

So the trigger was pulled, and he blew his face away. You can see it on the other side that he has had some reconstructive surgery.

Not only was this man a living martyr because he survived it--they left him for dead because he was bleeding so profusely--but when I met him in Jos, he didn't have a scintilla--the slightest--of malice towards the gunmen. He said he prays for them. I mean, you are talking about Christian love overcoming a terrible hatred, the likes of which we can't even understand. When he testified here--because I invited him to come to Washington to testify before my subcommittee--you could have heard a pin drop. A lot of the press, including the Associated Press, led with his story.

That is transformative, I believe, to see someone who, almost like our Lord from the cross, says: Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.

Here was this man who was a living martyr, and I couldn't have been more moved, inspired.

I saw him again on this most recent trip, and the joy that he radiates--he radiates Christ; you see it in his eyes when he speaks--was just extraordinary and humbling because none of us know and I don't know if I could ever react like that. I hope I never do. He had that peace that surpasses all understanding. He was there, and he could have died right that day.

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