London, 3 Sep - (ANA) - Chatham House, the London-based policy institute on international affairs, has said that the only sustainable way to combat Nigeria's militant group, Boko Haram, is to protect civilians. In a paper by Associate Fellow Marc-Antoine Perous de Montclso, the insttitute said without a reordering of priorities and visible efforts to regain the trust of communities, 'Nigeria’s military will be caught fighting an interminable insurgency.'  The institute said ahead of Nigeria’s general elections in 2015, it will become more difficult to distinguish between ideologically or grievance-driven Boko Haram attacks, politically manipulated attacks and violent political militias that may or may not claim to be Boko Haram affiliates. Boko Haram has been evolving over more than a decade, Chatham House said,  as opportunities to check its descent into extremist violence were missed. It said responses to Boko Haram have suffered for the dearth of credible information about the movement and the triumph of vested interests in Nigeria’s opaque political environment. The instituted noted that the movement seems to have entered a new transitional phase this year, pointing out that the inability of Nigeria’s armed forces to obstruct its onslaught together with a greater international profile have lent Boko Haram a confidence and ambition that appear to have prompted increasingly strategic behaviour, alongside continued indiscriminate and widespread attacks against civilian and state targets. Since the military repression of the Boko Haram uprising in July 2009, massacres, extra-judicial killings and arrests without trial have widened the gap between communities and the armed forces. Chatham House said the lack of facts, competing political interests, state institutional weaknesses, multiplying local grievances and under-resourced yet enmeshed armed forces – at whose hands civilians have also suffered- have provided Boko Haram with the motivation and opportunity to grow and further entrench itself in its northeastern stronghold. Nigeria’s international partners, the institute said,  are best placed to support negotiations between the government and the movement, the development of witness protection programmes, the provision of humanitarian relief and shelter for displaced civilians, as well as providing institutional support towards inter-agency cooperation. (ANA)

FA/ANA/3 September 2014----------