The Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, insisted last week he would not negotiate with Boko Haram

By Colin Freeman

May 18,  2014

The Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, insisted last week he would not
negotiate, and he has good reason to want people to take that statement
entirely at face value.

Boko Haram, after all, is one of the most ruthless terrorist organisations
currently in operation on the planet, and it would damage the reputation
of any government to be seen doing deals with such an odious group.

The question, though, is whether Mr Jonathan has any other real option if
he wishes to get the missing schoolgirls back alive.

For all that Britain, America and France have rushed in with offers of spy
planes and intelligence assets, the search operation is far from
guaranteed to find the girls, who are now most likely split up into
smallish groups and scattered over a vast area.

Besides, even if any of those groups can be located, only those who have
read too many Andy McNab novels will think that they can be safely sprung
by a special forces rescue.

Boko Haram's bushfighters may not have the skills of the SAS, but what
they do not lack is ruthlessness.

Diplomats believe that at the first sign of an armed rescue attempt, the
group will slaughter its captives straightaway – just as they did in the
joint British-Nigerian effort to free Chris McManus, the British hostage
shot dead during a rescue attempt in March 2012.

Likewise, if the girls are split up into separate groups – possibly eight
or more – a successful operation to recapture one could lead immediately
to reprisals against the others.

Somali pirates have already pioneered this technique, and it has been
successful in keeping special forces attacks on their hostages to a
minimum.

No foreign government, of course, is anxious to spell out these
difficulties too publicly. But only last week, US officials privately
conceded that a rescue operation was not an option.

That, in other words, leaves two other options, neither admittedly
attractive.

Option one is to simply sit it out, and gamble that Boko Haram might
eventually just hand the girls back. Even jihadist groups have an image to
think about, and it might just calculate that killing the girls or selling
them into slavery might actually discredit them in the eyes of fellow
radicals, making it harder to get outside help when they need it.

But that would also amount to doing nothing, and given that Mr Jonathan
has already been accused of doing just that for the past month, it would
not be politically attractive.

Option two, then is to do a trade, which seems to be what Boko Haram is
pushing for. Already, the group is making public gestures at compromise –
last week, it said it wanted the release of all its prisoners, including
senior militants, but on Sunday, sources close to the group told The
Telegraph that it had reduced that demand to just low-level fighters and
the wives and children of sect members, many of whom have been detained
purely to put pressure on the sect members themselves.

Human rights groups say the Nigerian government should never have detained
wives and children in the first place, and that many of the low-level
prisoners are either ignorant, brainwashed foot soldiers or mere innocents
caught up in Nigerian army sweeps. The Nigerian government, of course,
denies that.

Right now, though, it might want to think again. For it might just give a
fig-leaf of credibility to what in any event will feel like a very dirty
deal.