The Campaign Behind Trump’s Nigeria Strikes

How and why certain places capture President Trump’s imagination and prompt him to take aggressive action can sometimes seem mysterious. (See: his fixation on Greenland.) His surprise decision to bomb Nigeria on Christmas Day in the name of stopping what he called a “Christian genocide” certainly fit that pattern.

But several of my colleagues have spent the past several weeks digging into what led up to those strikes. They found a concerted campaign to shape the administration’s view of Nigeria that continues to have repercussions.

Who pushed Trump to strike Nigeria?

No one disputes that Nigeria has a security crisis.

Thousands of people are killed every year, in battles over land, in kidnappings, and as a result of sectarian violence or terrorism from groups like Boko Haram and the Islamic State. Among those killed are both Christians and Muslims.

But for years, Christian activists lobbying for U.S. intervention in Nigeria have been trying to persuade Washington to view a complex situation through a single lens: the persecution of Christians. And in the Trump administration, these activists saw an opening.

My colleagues have done some fascinating new reporting on how these activists joined forces with Republican lawmakers and even with American celebrities to persuade Trump to do something about what they called a “Christian genocide.” You can read the full story here.

The push eventually culminated in a Christmas Day airstrike on what Trump called the “terrorist scum” who he said were responsible for killing Nigerian Christians.

The narrative of a Christian genocide is continuing to shape U.S. policy toward Nigeria. It’s affecting the criteria for U.S. aid to the country, for instance. Nigeria also faces potential sanctions. There could even be more bombings.

Nigerian officials as recently as last fall were pushing back on the Trump administration’s story of Christian persecution. But for the moment, with all this hanging over them, they’ve given up arguing about it.

‘Christian genocide’

My colleagues Dionne Searcey, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Ruth Maclean and Eric Schmitt have been reporting on this story from Washington, D.C., and Abuja, the Nigerian capital. Dionne also went to Sokoto State, the predominantly Muslim region struck by the U.S. last December, and Ruth went to Nigeria’s Middle Belt, where the mostly Muslim north meets the mostly Christian south.

It was in the Middle Belt, in the state of Benue, where gunmen last June overran the largely Christian community of Yelwata, hacking, shooting and burning residents in a horrific, bloody massacre. In all, about 200 civilians were killed. It was one of Nigeria’s worst outbreaks of violence in years.

Religious groups on Capitol Hill circulated articles about the Yelwata attack to get lawmakers’ attention. A prominent bishop from Benue was invited to testify before Congress. It worked. In July, a Republican congressman from West Virginia introduced a House resolution condemning the persecution of Christians in Muslim-majority countries, citing the attacks. By the fall, Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, was calling for sanctions against Nigeria.

The Yelwata attack was a breakthrough moment for those pushing to have violence against Christians in Nigeria taken seriously. Concern soon spread beyond Capitol Hill: The rapper Nicki Minaj posted about it on social media. Current and retired N.F.L. players signed an open letter calling on Trump to do something about “religious persecution in Nigeria.”

But similarly brutal attacks are also perpetrated against Muslims, Matthew Page, a former diplomat and a Nigeria expert, told my colleagues. The victims are often herders, who are nomadic. The difference is that these groups don’t have political representation. “The extent to which they are victims is just never revealed,” he said.

Not everyone in the Trump administration saw the Yelwata massacre as proof of genocide. After a meeting with Nigeria’s president, Trump’s Africa adviser, Massad Boulos, said Islamist groups were killing more Muslims than Christians. The Trump administration, he said, understood the complexity of the violence plaguing Africa’s most populous country.

Trump, for his part, told The New York Times last month that “Muslims are being killed also in Nigeria, but it’s mostly Christians.”

Rolling with the Trump narrative

What is Nigeria to do? It’s in a vulnerable position. The country has been redesignated a Country of Particular Concern, a category reserved for nations where religious freedom is threatened, making it vulnerable to U.S. sanctions. A law firm that said it was representing the Nigerian government has since signed a contract with a Washington lobbying group for help “communicating its actions to protect Nigerian’s Christian communities” and countering jihadist groups.

I spoke to my colleague Dionne, our former West Africa bureau chief. She told me that there were both economic and security reasons for the Nigerian government to stay in America’s good books — and that means rolling with the Trump narrative, rather than fighting it.

“Nigeria has struggled to gain control of a spiraling security crisis,” she told me. “Officials see the potential for help from the U.S. military.”

When Trump first started talking about a Christian genocide, Nigeria’s foreign minister, Yusuf Tuggar, sounded angry. He implied that America’s true motivation was to destabilize Nigeria, take its resources and turn the African nation into a failed state.

But in the aftermath of the Christmas Day strike, Tuggar has changed his tune: “We are not going to get bogged down on narratives,” he told my colleagues in an interview. “We’re more concerned about results, and that’s what we’re focusing on.”

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