On September 15, 2021 at 8:57 AM Roger Kulp <leucovorinsaves@...> wrote:

I would argue the DSA is the wrong place to establish sports teams, and music groups, because at its core, the DSA is not a Marxist, or revolutionary, organization. 

Player/activists like Colin Kaepernick will never succeed in the NFL, NBA, or MLB, because of the structure of team ownership in the US. They are basically well paid indentured servants, or slaves, to the franchise owners, who call all the shots. For all their fame and fortune, the players have no more rights than a minimum wage fry cook at Mc Donalds. Perhaps someone who knows this history better than I do could tell me why has there never been a real movement for players to form unions, or to turn teams into player owned cooperatves.

From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW <h-review@...>
Date: September 15, 2021 at 11:20:38 AM EDT
To: h-review@...
Cc: H-Net Staff <revhelp@...>
Subject: H-Net Review [H-Africa]:  Cserkits on Comolli, 'Boko Haram: Nigeria's Islamist Insurgency'
Reply-To: h-review@...

Virginia Comolli.  Boko Haram: Nigeria's Islamist Insurgency.  London
Hurst &amp; Company, 2018.  Maps. 208 pp.  $19.50 (paper), ISBN
978-1-84904-661-9.

Reviewed by Michael Cserkits (University of Vienna)
Published on H-Africa (September, 2021)
Commissioned by Dawne Y. Curry

In her current work about the genesis and development of Boko Haram,
Virginia Comolli presents a comprehensive look at a complex problem
aimed to design lasting ramifications and solutions. Unfortunately,
the book does not provide the latter. The author makes two
assumptions regarding the context: First, and most striking, she
looks at the problem from a designated (but unspoken) securitization
perspective. Second, she assumes a security-development nexus in
Nigeria, with Boko Haram viewed more as a symptom rather than a
cause, which perfectly fits most postcolonial (and neo-imperial)
discourses. She takes her presuppositions for granted. But Comolli
also presents a clear statement regarding her caveats in dealing with
a terroristic group, especially the sensitivity of the topic and the
connected area of anonymity of her informants, at the expense that in
most parts of the book the reader simply has to believe her authority
with no chance to reproduce her conclusions.

Following the introduction, the author turns to the "Just War" aspect
in the struggle against Boko Haram, a fact that would--if stringently
declined--alter the whole setting of securitization. Unfortunately,
the "Just War" aspect is mentioned only once in the book and
therefore irritates the reader more than serves as an alternative
approach in dealing with Boko Haram. Further, in her overview of
Islamic movements in her discussion of western Africa, some of her
conclusions are too simple, like the statement that more radical
elements had been introduced in the area by the Wahhabi influence
from El Hadji Jibril bin Umar. Critique on this explanation was
already issued by Robert Launey in 1992 but was not incorporated by
Comolli, a setback, as Launey's source can be considered valuable for
her research.[1] More obvious is the misinterpretation of a possible
comparison of Sufism and Wahhabism, which are according to
contemporary Islamic theology studies (like Rüdiger Lohlker's _Die
Salafisten: Der Aufstand der Frommen, Saudi-Arabien und der Islam_
[2017]), totally incomparable. On the other hand, the representation
and argumentation line regarding the other, mostly political, roots
and relationships as well as dependencies of Islam in Nigeria are
solid and easy to understand. The first third of the book is
inconsistent in terms of quality. Especially in the political and
historical analyses, thoroughly researched and well-written parts
will capture the reader, alone by the way this information is
presented. But then some swift changes in Comolli's argumentation
lose the essence of the chapters, leaving the "what now?" question
unanswered.

The author--throughout the whole book--misuses the terms
"operational" and "tactical" level, or at least offers the reader no
reasonable explanation of her understanding of the terms. Within the
military, the "operational level" is clearly defined as the level
above the tactical level that organizes and coordinates different
services (land, air, sea, special forces, space, and cyber) and is in
constant cooperation/collaboration with the military-strategic and
tactical level. How far Boko Haram posseses such a level is not
comprehensible. Most of her argumentation comes from two to three
academic sources, with Roman Loimeier, who published an article about
this topic in 2012, being the most often cited on several pages.[2]
This is, in my opinion, the weakest part of the book, as it feels
more like a content summary than original work.

The author does offer a good description of the origins of Boko Haram
but unfortunately leaves us with no meta-theory (for example,
alternative societal models or semi-state-building approaches) and
stays on a pure descriptive level without delving into theoretical
analysis. Therefore, her solid description of the initial drive of
Boko Haram as a semi-social organization and an alternative source of
stability is left untackled. Her statements about suicide bombers as
the method par excellence of an asymmetric thread are not
comprehensibly explained. Suicide bombing is but just one of the many
tools asymmetric warfare has to deal with, beside the fact that on an
abstract level all wars are more or less asymmetric (as the word just
states that one side has significantly less or more power than the
other). The author has fallen into the "asymmetric trap" that most
scholars not familiar with the military and its terminology do. Her
misuse of military terms is clearly seen on page 106 when she labels
RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) as sophisticated weapons, which they
are not, as their use needs no proper training or knowledge. Such
minor setbacks may not be significant for the academic scholar, but
they make the informed military reader--or those with a background to
judge Comolli's facts in a more proper manner--uncomfortable when
going over well-researched parts of the book and then stumble over
exaggerations that could have been prevented with a little more
digging into the matter.

My overall impression of the book is that it is responsibly
researched and written but the target audience is not the academic
scholar who is looking for new approaches or results but rather the
interested policymaker or non-academic reader who is looking for a
condensed and compressed work about Boko Haram. Her initial stated
goal, to design lasting and comprehensive solutions, is not reached.
She often mentions but does not explain cultural, ethnic, and
religious ties between Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria in terms of
Boko Haram's abuses in these given contexts. Her conclusion, that the
military per se is not a good tool to work among civilians, is not
understandable either, as experiences from counterinsurgencies, their
failures, backlashes, and restructuring have been available since the
2004 invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. To sum up, Comolli has done
thorough research on the policy level and in certain aspects in the
historical field, but her book leaves us with no clear answer or new
approaches in how to deal with Boko Haram. A more specific discussion
with a detailed focus on Nigeria can be found in Edlyne Anugwom's
work, _The Boko Harm Insurgence in Nigeria: Perspectives from Within_
(2019).

Notes

[1]. Robert Launey, _Beyond the Stream: Islam and Society in a West
African Town_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 82.

[2]. Roman Loimeier,"Boko Haram: The Development of a Militant
Religious Movement in Nigeria," _Afrika Spectrum_ 47, nos. 2-3
(2012): 137-56.__

Citation: Michael Cserkits. Review of Comolli, Virginia, _Boko Haram:
Nigeria's Islamist Insurgency_. H-Africa, H-Net Reviews. September,
2021.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=56689

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
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