Protecting Nigeria’s Christians: Trump’s Strike Against ISIS
Finally — yes, finally.
On Christmas night, the U.S. delivered a long-called for and long-hoped for present to Nigeria’s Christians. More than a dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles, fired from a U.S. Navy destroyer off the coast of Nigeria in the Gulf of Guinea, struck ISIS terrorist bases in the Sokoto state in northern Nigeria, a region increasingly dominated by ISIS. According to U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), a significant number of terrorists were killed, and operational support facilities destroyed. Nigerian authorities confirmed that the strikes were coordinated with the Nigerian government.
Yet ignoring the Fulani militias means ignoring the true source of the current problem.
There’s a great deal to unpack here, but before delving into the details or considering what this means for the future of Nigeria’s Christian communities, here is the bottom line up front: Donald Trump told Nigeria’s terrorists over a month ago to “stop killing Christians” or there would be “hell to pay.” They ignored his warning and, according to intelligence reports, were even planning to carry out multiple and massive attacks on or around Christmas. Lest they ignore the message, the President’s announcement carried the warning that there would be many more dead terrorists if “their slaughter of Christians continues.”
On behalf of those who’ve watched the deteriorating situation of Nigeria’s Christian communities with ever-increasing alarm over the last few years, I can only say, emphatically, “it’s about time.” The slaughter has been going on for over a decade, becoming more brutal and widespread with each passing year. The numbers have been appalling, tens of thousands killed, hundreds of thousands forced from their homes into refugee camps, a litany of brutal murder of the innocent, accompanied all too frequently by rape, torture, and the widespread destruction of Christian churches and Christian livelihoods.
One may quibble over definitions, over the distinction between “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing,” but the horror defies every lawyerly diplomatic response. The situation in Nigeria has long passed the point where pious words suffice. I’ve applauded this administration’s renewed designation of Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” with respect to religious freedom — “redesignation” since the Biden regime lifted Trump’s original 2019 designation. This has opened the door to various types of pressure, not just upon the Nigerian government, but also upon those countries inclined to make excuses for Nigeria’s failure to effectively protect its Christian communities.
Sadly, this has never been enough, nor was it ever likely to be. The Islamist terrorists — Boko Haram, ISIS, and the Fulani militants — were never likely to respond to mere words, nor were their friends in the Nigerian government. The great benefit of the administration’s missile strikes is that it shows to all concerned that the U.S. now means business — deadly kinetic business — when it comes to stopping the genocide.
So where do we go from here? It’s significant that the Christmas strikes were conducted with the approval of the Nigeria government. On the one hand, this is a positive development, after years of denial and inaction on its part — one suspect’s that this only happened as a result of some very heavy pressure from Washington. On the other hand, the very nature of the strikes indicates the limits of trying to work with the Nigerian authorities.
Although weak-willed and sporadic, the Nigerians have made some effort to deal with Boko Haram and ISIS, particularly in the aftermath of various high profile events that gained international attention. The notorious kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls, mostly Christian and a handful Muslim, back in 2024 provoked sufficient international outrage to compel the Nigerian government to act, albeit feebly.
It has always been easier for the central government to view Boko Haram and ISIS as hostile elements, since they pose a direct threat to the government’s authority, and it has been easier to invoke outside support, since these are transnational entities with ties across Africa and the Middle East.
But the Islamist Fulani tribes pose a different and much more insidious threat. The Fulani militias are loosely networked, offering fewer obvious targets for a cruise missile strike. They operate with AK-47s and RPGs, using motorcycles and pickup trucks for mobility. This suffices to slaughter unarmed Christians, but is operationally concealable. They only become tactically visible when they assemble to carry out an attack.
Yet ignoring the Fulani militias means ignoring the true source of the current problem. As my friend Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute observes, the Fulani are the deadliest force against the Christians, and have been for some time. While they are very loosely aligned with the larger community of jihadists, this very looseness also makes them easier to ignore, or minimize.
Thus, the insistence by the Nigerian government, by the U.S. State Department during the Biden regime, and by the various European countries that this is not religiously-motivated genocide, but simply a conflict between Fulani herders and Christian farmers, no different that the “range wars” of the 19th Century American West. This, of course, is nonsense. It’s utterly removed from The Virginian or Shane, or any of a dozen other cowboy movies — no one was shouting “Allahu Akbar” as they raped women or murdered children, no one was engaged in wholesale slaughter with automatic weapons.
It’s also nonsensical that this is somehow a conflict over scarce resources driven by climate change, a convenient fiction that, regrettably, has even found favor with the Vatican. Why, then, has this become the default position? The simple answer is that no one seems willing to grasp the nettle and seek solutions that would punish the Fulanis and protect the Christians, probably because it just seems too hard.
Trying to target the Fulanis from long range with Tomahawks expends valuable military resources for minimal gain — they simply don’t offer the right kind of targets. A middle ground might come with deploying armed drones on an “around the clock” basis, positioned overhead to strike whenever a marauding band assembles its pickup trucks and motorcycles for yet another raid. There’s something compelling about subjecting these monsters to “death from above.”
Still, achieving this would require something more than the occasional overflight from a distant base. It would require the sustained cooperation of the Nigerian government, something far different than the permission afforded to the Christmas strike. More, in order to maintain “round-the-clock” coverage,” it would likely require an operational base within Nigeria. This, in turn, would require ground security, since, frankly, while the Nigerian authorities might be forced to accept such a base, they simply cannot be trusted to provide it with effective perimeter protection.
Thus, the perennial nightmare — U.S. “boots on the ground.” An American base, with American troops guarding the perimeter becomes an attractive terrorist target. A truck bomb at the gate, mortars fired from a distance, in the end an American soldier, or several soldiers, dead in a far away country. We’ve seen this movie before — quite literally for those who’ve watched Black Hawk Down.
The Mogadishu deployment began as another humanitarian mission, arising from the recognition that starving Somalis would only receive the food being shipped in from abroad if the shipments and their distribution could be protected from armed gangs. In the end, the Clinton administration refused to resource the mission properly and, when disaster struck, the rescue operation lacked the armored heft necessary to push through rapidly to the trapped aviators, Rangers, and Delta Force operators.
What is true of trying to maintain a forward base for drone operations is even more true for the other necessary solution, namely providing direct protection to the Christian communities while training and arming them to defend themselves. I shudder at the thought of relying on UN peacekeepers, which raises the specter of yet another Srebrenica massacre. It’s the most classic of classical special forces missions, but such missions inevitably expose our troops to attack.
So while I applaud the Trump administration’s Christmas missile strike, and while I would applaud inflicting more similar punishment on the Muslim terrorists in Nigeria, I struggle with a solution that cuts to the heart of the problem. I’ve been thinking about this and writing about it for two and a half years, and, in the end, I come back to the same regretful conclusion. If the Fulani are going to continue massacring Christians on an industrial scale, and if the Nigerian government continues to do nothing meaningful to stop it, then the genocide will continue.
No pious pronouncements from Pope Leo or Cardinal Parolin, no UN resolutions, no designation of Nigeria as a “country of particular concern,” none of these things will stop the slaughter. Only brute force, resolutely and decisively delivered, will save Nigeria’s Christian farmers. The lucky ones will become refugees, the unlucky yet another death statistic.
Ironically, these black lives have been totally ignored by those who’ve wrapped themselves in the “black lives matter” mantra. Indeed, some silly commentary has condemned Trump’s Christmas strike as “racially-motivated violence,” calling it “another opportunity for this administration to engage in violence in a Brown country in order to flex their power.” The fundamental fact that these strikes were meant to inhibit and deter violence against a suffering black community renders such comments nothing less than idiotic.
Still, this speaks to the larger problem. If Trump does it, half the U.S. and likely more than half of our trans-Atlantic so-called “partners” will condemn it. If taking the next step results in even one American casualty, then the Democrats will immediately trumpet a false equation with Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal. And many people of good will, ordinary Americans, will quite reasonably wonder why our sons and daughters must pay the price to stop this horror — why is it always us, why can’t someone else take up the task?
There’s a genuine national, nay international, conversation that needs to take place going forward. The starting point might simply be consideration of the meaning of “never again” in the context of 21st century geopolitical realities. The larger conversation is the one just begun regarding the civilizational conflict between radical Islam and our own Western, once Judeo-Christian, now feebly secular societies. Are we prepared to do what it takes to defend ourselves, whether at Bataclan, or Bondi Beach, or any of dozens of other names now written in infamy?
It’s a question that needs answering, and ending the ongoing wholesale slaughter of Nigeria’s Christians represents an important part — but only a part — of the discussion that needs to take place and the actions that should follow from that discussion. “Actions” is the necessarily operative word, and Trump’s actions on Christmas night, at the very least, have opened that part of the discussion.
For now, let us give President Trump his due. After years in which the murderers have been allowed to act with impunity, now, at the very least, some of them have received their just punishment. If they refuse to draw the proper lesson, then let there be, in the president’s words, “hell to pay.”
They’ve richly earned their place in hell.
READ MORE from James H. McGee:
It’s Not About the Guns: The Wrong Lesson From the Bondi Beach Attack
Donald Trump’s Civilizational Defense Strategy
James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. He’s just published his new novel, The Zebras from Minsk, the sequel to his well-received 2022 thriller, Letter of Reprisal. The Zebras from Minsk finds the Reprisal Team fighting against an alliance of Chinese and Russian backed terrorists, brutal child traffickers, and a corrupt anti-American billionaire, racing against time to take down a conspiracy that ranges from the hills of West Virginia to the forests of Belarus. You can find The Zebras from Minsk (and Letter of Reprisal) on Amazon in Kindle and paperback editions.