 |
United States House of Representatives Seal (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey |
Congress
is stepping up pressure on the Obama administration to formally
designate the Nigerian militant group Boko Haram, which has alleged al
Qaeda links, as a "foreign terrorist organization."
Scott Brown, a Republican
senator from Massachusetts, wrote Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
late last week urging her to designate the group, an Islamist sect that
has been linked to 700 killings in Nigeria over the last 18 months, as a
terrorist organization under U.S. law.
Then,
on Sunday, U.S. Representatives Peter King and Patrick Meehan, chairmen
of the House Homeland Security Committee and its counterterrorism
subcommittee, respectively, released a letter they sent to Clinton on
Friday suggesting that the administration was moving too slowly on the
issue.
King and Meehan cited a
Reuters' report last week about how the Justice Department earlier this
year had urged the State Department to apply the "foreign terrorist"
designation to Boko Haram. The congressmen suggested that by not doing
so, the department was "denying the United States intelligence and law
enforcement communities the tools they need to combat an al
Qaeda-affiliated terrorist organization.
"Ten
years after 9/11, we cannot allow bureaucratic stovepipes and
interagency turf battles to prevent us from protecting the U.S. homeland
and U.S. global interests," the congressmen complained.
The
letters detail a litany of violence Boko Haram, which means "western
education is sinful," has allegedly perpetrated in recent years,
including a December 2010 bombing that killed 80 and an August 2011
bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria's capital,
in which 23 people died.
The
Justice Department's letter to Clinton warned that the United States
should not "underestimate the potential threat Boko Haram poses to U.S.
interests abroad and the homeland," noting that it has "forged links"
with other militant groups which have threatened Western interests.
A
senior State Department official told Reuters last week the department
was obliged to undertake extensive analysis before adding organizations
to the list and said the department was "not stalling or dragging our
feet" on Boko Haram.
A U.S.
national security official said on Monday that although most official
reporting indicated that Boko Haram was "focused inwardly" in terms of
their current attack targets, there was growing evidence that "they
don't like Kenya" and that their violent activities were growing.
A
congressional source said that as of last week, State Department
representatives had lobbied Congress to try to stop legislation that
would force the administration to act against the group or explain why
it had not done so.
Further legislative moves may occur later this week, another congressional source said.
Rueters.