By: Our correspondent
Kidnapping has become one ATM business in Nigeria and the neighbouring countries are catching on the deal to festoon their financial nest.
The kidnappers who are the biggest beneficiaries of the business unwittingly jumped into the moving gunboat of United States of America, thinking it was business as usual.
The article of their trade was a 27-year-old American, Philip Walton and it never occurred to them that it was a bad market.
Walton, who kept camels, sheep and poultry and grew mangoes near the border with Nigeria, was kidnapped by six men armed with assault rifles who arrived on motorcycles at his home in southern Niger’s Massalata village early on Tuesday.
His wife, young daughter and brother were left behind. The perpetrators demanded money and searched the home before leaving with Walton.
Walton is the son of missionaries. He lives with his wife and young daughter on a farm near Massalata, a small village close to the border with Nigeria.
The New York Times reports that the American and Nigerien officials had said that Walton was seized from his backyard on Monday in front of family members after assailants asked him for money.
He offered them $40 and was then taken away by the armed gunmen on motorbikes. The captors would go on to demand nearly $1 million in ransom for his release.
One American official said the assailants were criminals who intended to sell Walton to terrorist groups in the region.
Niger, like much of West Africa’s Sahel region, faces a deepening security crisis as groups with links to Al-Qaida and the Islamic State carry out attacks on the army and civilians, despite help from French and US forces.
Four US soldiers were killed in an ambush in Niger in 2017, sparking debate about the US role in the sparsely populated West African desert, home to some of the world’s poorest countries.
At least, six foreign hostages are being held by Islamist insurgents in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. Islamists have collected millions of dollars in ransom payments in recent years. The US government has frequently criticized other countries for paying.
US Concerns
Concern grew quickly after the kidnapping that an opportunity to rescue Walton could become much more dangerous if he was taken by or sold to a group of Islamist militants aligned with either al Qaeda or ISIS and American special operations commanders felt they needed to act swiftly before that could occur, said one counter-terrorism official briefed on the hostage recovery operations.
Niger, home to 22 million people and three times the size of California, is one of many Sahel nations plagued by terrorism and instability, but its military has been a close U.S. partner in the fight against regional jihadist groups, including affiliates of both al Qaeda and ISIS.
Last week, a U.N.-backed donor summit raised $1.7 billion to support the region’s governments as Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the humanitarian crisis is at a “breaking point,” with 13.4 million people in need of assistance.
Plans
The operation involved the governments of the U.S., Niger and Nigeria working together to rescue Walton quickly, sources said. The CIA provided intelligence leading to Walton’s whereabouts and Marine Special Operations elements in Africa helped locate him, a former U.S. official said.
The US Forces planned and organised this mission from more than 6,000 kilometres away in the Pentagon.
They deployed drones from their base in Niger to give them constant surveillance and communication hook up to their satellites way up in the Sky, having their aircraft carrier on the gulf of Guinea with Jets ready to be scrambled to give air cover in case the target area gets swamped by tangos.
The forces then flew their star boys all the way from the US military base in Germany onboard the USAF Globemaster from where they parachuted from 25,000ft down to a location less than three miles to the location where they hooked up with local assets who had provided transportation closer to the main location.
Back at the US Drone base in Niger, Delta Force team were on standby with 4 Blackhawks and two gunships waiting for the go.
Their job was to pick up the team and the rescued hostage at a designated pickup point 5 clicks from the target location and if the mission goes wrong act as back up forces to the seal team with the reaper drone coming in hot on any advancing enemy tangos.
The Raid
When the kidnappers caught their prey, they moved from Niger Republic to a border town in Nigeria to bargain for ransom.
US is a different keg of tea in terms of placing high premium on its citizens and so the kidnap gang was unacceptable to the US government.
Unknown to the American abductors, the superpower began an intense firefight with surveillance drones buzzing overhead.
In the early hours of Saturday, October 31, 2020, U.S. Special Operations commandos carried out a predawn raid in northern Nigeria.
The mission was to rescue an American citizen who had been kidnapped from his home in southern Niger Republic and hidden in neighboring Nigeria.
The operation was organized quickly with the assistance of officials in Niger and Nigeria, the official said.
According to U.S. officials, the rescue started just after midnight local time when about 30 Navy commandos parachuted into the remote area where the kidnappers had taken Walton.
Members of the rescue team hiked about three miles until they came upon the captors’ small encampment in a copse of scrubland bushes and trees.
In the brief but intense firefight that ensued and with surveillance drones buzzing overhead, all but one of the half-dozen or so kidnappers were killed. One captor escaped into the night.
Walton was not harmed in the gun battle, and he walked out to a makeshift landing zone, where a U.S. helicopter whisked him to safety.
The operation was carried out by commandos from the Navy’s elite SEAL Team 6.
The Americans were said to have tracked the phones of his attackers to the hide-out where he had been held hostage.
Then the elite SEAL Team Six carried out a “precision” hostage rescue mission and killed all but one of the seven captors, according to officials with direct knowledge about the operation.
“They were all dead before they knew what happened,” another counterterrorism source with knowledge told ABC News.
“U.S. forces conducted a hostage rescue operation during the early hours of Oct 31 in northern Nigeria to recover an American citizen held hostage by a group of armed men,” said Jonathan Hoffman, who is the chief spokesman at the Pentagon.
Hoffman added that the rescued American “is safe and is now in the care of the U.S. Department of State.”
Another U.S official said Walton had been taken to an American air base in Niamey, Niger’s capital, to reunite with his family.
No American military personnel were injured during the operation. Several of the captors were killed in the raid, U.S. officials said.
Elated Trump, Pompeo
U.S President Donald Trump who approved the mission, was visibly elated as he announced the success of the operation during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
“Last night, our country’s brave warriors rescued an American hostage in Nigeria. Our nation salutes the courageous soldiers behind the daring nighttime rescue operation and celebrates the safe return of yet another American citizen!” Trump said.
Trump would further praise the military for what he called a “brilliantly executed” operation.
“Last night our brave special forces rescued an American hostage,” he said as the crowd cheered and chanted “USA.”
“We had a mission set to a far-away land where they kidnapped an American citizen and the kidnappers wished they had never done it,” Trump said, adding that there were zero American casualties. “The other side suffered greatly, I can tell you that,“ he said.
“Big win for our very elite US special forces today,” Donald Trump wrote on Twitter.
The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said: “The United States is committed to the safe return of all US citizens taken captive. We delivered on that commitment late last night in Nigeria … We will never abandon any American taken hostage.”
The difference between Nigeria and US is about human life. While Nigerian government has disdain for human life, US, on the other hand, sees human beings as one of the greatest assets that must not be toyed with in an effort to build a great, respected country.
