STATEMENT BY CSI PRESIDENT DR. JOHN EIBNER
The new White House Counterterrorism Strategy for 2026 reiterates President Trump’s pledge “to protect Christians.” “We will not permit terrorist groups operating on the [African] continent to massacre Christians with impunity,” it reads.
The White House repeated President Trump’s Christmas Day, 2025, promise: If “Terrorists… did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay”. On that day, half a year ago, the U.S. military acted. “Multiple ISIS terrorists were killed,” by an American airstrike in a remote part of Sokoto State, northern Nigeria, U.S. Africa Command announced. Since then, the pace of the killing and kidnapping of Christians in Nigeria has spiked.
Nigeria’s Islamist terrorist militias appear not to take President Trump’s threats seriously. Yesterday, May 9, I received news from Ado Abubakar Musa of Daily Trust about a fresh terrorist attack. “No fewer than 13 persons were killed,” and “many others were injured,” when gunmen attacked Ngbra Zongo, Plateau State, less than 24 hours ago, he reported. Three pregnant women were among the dead.
Only a few weeks beforehand, the Rev. Ayuba Choji, his wife and two children were murdered in a similar terrorist attack in the same region. Such killings of Christians in central and northern Nigeria are commonplace. Moreover, as the White House acknowledges, anti-Christian terror reigns throughout “West Africa, the Sahel region, the Lake Chad Basis, Mozambique, Sudan, and of course Somalia.”
Response to violence “rhetorical or symbolic”
News of the targeted killing of Christians in sub-Saharan Africa reaches my desk every few days. Yet this wave of anti-Christian terror rarely evokes more than a rhetorical or symbolic military response ftom Washington, from other centers of international power, or from the Nigerian government. Despite the tough, robust language, the White House Counterterrorism Strategy shifts primary responsibility to others.
The excuse for inaction begins: “We are set on bringing home our troops and downsizing our global footprint.” The White House Counterterrorism Strategy does not go beyond the sharing of intelligence and the creation of commercial opportunities in conjunction with sub-Saharan regimes, complemented occasionally by a few bombs dropped in the bush.
U.S. support for states persecuting Christians
Many of the regimes the White House is counting on appear to have no interest in protecting Christians from slaughter, or ability to do so. Some of these regimes even include accomplices of the anti-Christian terrorists.
We have seen a pattern elsewhere of the United States supporting jihadist militias or extremist states that violently persecute Christians. Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Azerbaijan come immediately to mind. It cannot be excluded that this is happening today too in Africa.
If the White House does have a coherent and credible counterterrorism strategy aimed at protecting persecuted Christians in sub-Saharan Africa, we should be able to witness it on the ground in places like Nigeria. So far, the millions of Christians threatened with slaughter in this vast region have seen little more than political gestures. The perpetrators continue to slaughter with impunity.
Are American Christians satisfied with this? Christian Solidarity International is not.
