ARUSHA, Tanzania — Less than two years
after it blocked a sale of American-made attack helicopters to Nigeria
from Israel because of human rights concerns, the Obama administration
says it is poised to sell up to 12 light attack aircraft to Nigeria as
part of an effort to support the country’s fight against the Boko Haram
militant group.
But the pending sale of the Super Tucano attack
warplanes — which would require congressional approval — is already
coming under criticism from human rights organizations that say
President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria has not yet done enough to stop
the abuses and corruption that flourished in the military under his
predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan.
Officials at the White House, the
State Department and the Pentagon have been bracing for a fight with
congressional Democrats, in particular Senator Patrick J. Leahy of
Vermont, over the sale of the planes.
The proposed sale reflects
the warming of the relationship between the Nigerian and American
militaries, which had frayed under Mr. Jonathan. The Pentagon often
bypassed Nigeria in the fight against Boko Haram, choosing to work
directly with neighboring Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
In addition
to citing corruption and sweeping human rights abuses by Nigerian
soldiers, American officials were hesitant to share intelligence with
the Nigerian military, saying Boko Haram had infiltrated it. That
accusation prompted indignation from Nigeria.
But that was before Mr. Buhari, a former Nigerian Army major general, defeated Mr. Jonathan in an election last year.
Since coming into power, Mr. Buhari has devoted himself to rooting out graft in Africa’s largest economy.
He
has fired a number of Nigerian military officers accused of corruption,
and American military officials say they are now working closely with
some of their counterparts in Nigeria. The Obama administration is also
considering sending dozens of Special Operations advisers to the front
lines of Nigeria’s fight against Boko Haram, an insurgency that has
killed thousands of civilians in the country’s northeast as well as in
Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
Mr. Buhari has also pledged to investigate allegations of human rights abuses and has said he will not tolerate them.
The administration has not made a
formal decision to send a notification to Congress, but a senior
administration official said he expected one soon. President Obama is
considering a trip to Nigeria in July.
But already aides to
Mr. Leahy, a sponsor of a human rights law that prohibits the State
Department and Pentagon from providing military assistance to foreign
militaries with poor human rights records, have expressed concern.
“We
don’t have confidence in the Nigerians’ ability to use them in a manner
that complies with the laws of war and doesn’t end up
disproportionately harming civilians, nor in the capability of the U.S.
government to monitor their use,” said Tim Rieser, a top Leahy aide.
“The
United States is committed to working with Nigeria and its neighbors
against Boko Haram,” said David McKeeby, a spokesman for the State
Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. “The Nigerian
security forces and regional forces from Cameroon, Chad and Niger have
made important progress in pushing Boko Haram out of many towns and
villages of northeast Nigeria and the broader Lake Chad basin region.”
Gen.
Mark A. Milley, the Army chief of staff, is attending a meeting of top
African military officials, including from Nigeria, here in Arusha this
week. Aboard his flight on Saturday, General Milley declined to comment
on whether Nigeria’s human rights record had improved enough to warrant
the sale, but said one of the reasons he was attending the meeting was
to learn more about the African militaries with which the Pentagon is
working.
Consideration of selling the attack aircraft to Nigeria
is a sharp turnabout from two years ago, when the United States blocked
the sale of American-made Cobra attack helicopters to Nigeria from
Israel, amid concerns about Nigeria’s protection of civilians when
conducting military operations. That infuriated the Nigerian government,
and Nigeria’s ambassador to the United States responded sharply,
accusing Washington of hampering the effort against Boko Haram.
“Let’s
say we give certain kinds of equipment to the Nigerian military that is
then used in a way that affects the human situation,” James F.
Entwistle, the American ambassador to Nigeria, told reporters in October
in explaining the decision to block the helicopter sale. “If I approve
that, I’m responsible for that. We take that responsibility very
seriously.”
Under Mr. Jonathan, the former president, the
Nigerian military was accused by human rights groups of detaining and
killing thousands of innocent civilians in sweeps of the militant group,
a practice that Amnesty International said was continuing. This year
the military rounded up several hundred men and boys in arrests that
Amnesty, in a report it released last week, called “arbitrary, the
hazardous profiling based on sex and age of the individual rather than
on evidence of crime.”
The report said 149 people had died this
year in detention in the Nigerian military’s Giwa barracks in Maiduguri,
a city that has been a staging ground for the fight against Boko Haram.
Among the victims were 11 children under age 6, including four infants,
Amnesty said. The prisoners most likely died of disease, starvation,
dehydration or gunshot wounds, the report said.
In a news
release, the Nigerian military called the report “completely baseless,
unfounded and source-less with the intent of denting the image of the
Nigerian Armed Forces.”
Sarah Margon, the Washington director at Human Rights Watch, disagreed.
“Indications
that the U.S. is going to sell attack aircrafts to Nigeria is
concerning given the absence of meaningful reform within Nigeria’s
security sector,” Ms. Margon said. “The U.S. must make clear that if the
sale is to occur, critical steps, not just rhetorical commitments, on
core human rights concerns must be an integral component for approving
the sale.”
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