Armed drones - explain from the White House - will patrol northern Nigeria, in the area where it is presumed there may be members of the Boko Haram terrorist group and the girls seized since last April.
For a week now, the US military has been carrying out reconnaissance flights with unmanned drones taken off from Italy. Despite the efforts, however, there is still no certainty about the location of the young women seized by the terrorists.
It now seems obvious that the girls were divided into groups to facilitate movement and make their identification more difficult in the dense forests of north-eastern Nigeria.
Now, however, the United States has armed platforms in Chad, at an air base long used by the French special forces, near the capital N'Djamena. The attack unit will remain in Chad - they continue in the note from the White House - until we find the girls.
Meanwhile, other details emerge on the deployment of troops (official and otherwise).
The US Army Africa announced that it had sent more personnel, in addition to the one already deployed by the US Department of Defense. This staff is defined as "belonging to special departments".
It is the first official confirmation after our rumors of recent days. But the note gets even more interesting at the end.
The US special forces - the law said - will have the task of forming a Nigerian ranger battalion capable of carrying out combat operations.
Washington, therefore, has officially authorized the use of the "multipliers" as they are defined in jargon. A technique used for example in Vietnam (but the story is full of it). To try to bridge the numerical gap, green caps (experts in this) will begin to train local people to form a militia. In reality, in a hypothetical confrontation with Boko Haram, these forces (to which ultimately merit will go as well as the good old political-military strategy) will have a marginal and "containment" task.
The first clash will be conducted by American Tier 1 and other combat groups in countries that have sworn to eradicate this "cancer" from Nigeria. It should be noted that foreign training will still be "low level" to prevent the training of those who could one day turn into an enemy.
The Nigerian army - according to Amnesty International - carried out mass executions and committed other abuses against the population in the hunt for Boko Haram.
Boko Haram, meanwhile, continues to ring enemies. A little less than a week ago, terrorists kidnapped ten Chinese workers near a site near Waza city, at 12 miles from the Nigerian border and near the Sambisa forest, a terrorist stronghold.
Beijing, the news has not yet been confirmed, it would have already sent an assault group to Cameroon to protect its interests in the Region.
Moscow has not yet announced any move, but Africa is a well-known terrain for Spetsnaz and there is a Russian battle group in the area.
Franco Iacch
(photo: DoD USA)
