Boko Haram (3 page)

Because the oil has brought riches, there has been little incentive to develop other sectors of the economy. It would be wrong to say that Nigeria's mostly Christian south, where the oil is located, has done well for itself in these circumstances, but it is certainly true that it has fared better than the north. It is better educated, has more industry and jobs and less poverty. Oil-producing states are handed a significantly bigger chunk of government revenue. Despite that, the region has in no way been immune to violence. The deeply poor Niger Delta, badly polluted by years of oil spills, has seen militants and gangsters take up arms, carry out attacks on the petroleum industry and kidnap foreigners. Some of the worst
of this violence occurred under the name the Movement for the Emancipation for the Niger Delta and continued until a 2009 amnesty deal drastically reduced the unrest.

The neglect of other aspects of the economy particularly hit Nigeria's north, which relies heavily on agriculture, despite northern leaders having run the country for much of its post-independence history. Its culture is vastly different from that of the south, with Islam having migrated along with trade across the Sahara and into the region's savannah lands around the Middle Ages. Much of present-day northern Nigeria, long ruled by Hausa kings, eventually fell under a caliphate in the early nineteenth century following an armed jihad led by a Fulani Islamic cleric, Usman Dan Fodio. Even today, Dan Fodio remains revered, but it is difficult to locate his reformist legacy in the region, where corrupt elites siphon off revenue at will and a huge population of young people roam with nothing much to do. Boko Haram figures may have occasionally paid lip service to Dan Fodio's caliphate, but the extremists' blood-thirsty slaughtering of innocents and lack of any practical plans for how to improve the lives of Nigerians reveal the insurgency to be far different.

As some have pointed out, many in northern Nigeria have come to see democracy as a system that keeps them poor and enriches undeserving, corrupt leaders. In Maiduguri, located near the borders of the neighbouring nations of Niger, Chad and Cameroon, the wealthy take up residence in heavily secured mansions while the poor fetch water from wells, and signs at roundabouts are written in Arabic, proclaiming ‘Allah is the Provider'. It was amidst this atmosphere that Mohammed Yusuf began to lead his followers.

Boko Haram's re-emergence more than a year after the 2009 uprising and Yusuf's death began mysteriously, with men on motorcycles and armed with AK-47s carrying out drive-by shootings targeting community leaders and security forces. It was unclear at first whether these killings were indeed being committed by the same group, but whisperings of its return eventually grew
louder, and attacks became more deadly. Police stations were once again bombed and burnt, and roadside explosions began to occur regularly. If Nigeria's southern president was willing to simply ignore it as long as this remained restricted to Nigeria's remote north-east, he would not be allowed to do so for long. Attacks would eventually spread into other parts of the north, then central Nigeria, then the capital itself.

An attack in June 2011 would signal what was soon to come. A man believed to be a suicide bomber in a car sought to penetrate national police headquarters in the capital Abuja, blowing himself up outside. While the death toll was relatively low, it was considered Boko Haram's first suicide attack. There would be more.

On the morning of 26 August 2011, a man driving a Honda Accord made his way through the streets of Abuja, his destination the United Nations headquarters for Nigeria. He managed to barrel his way through the exit side of the front gate, guards unable to stop him. He crashed into the front lobby and set off the explosives inside the car, the blast ripping into the building and gutting much of the inside. The attack killed 23 people and wounded dozens more.

It would only get worse, with churches later targeted, including on Christmas Day near the capital, and an office of one of the country's most prominent newspapers was hit. A British and an Italian hostage were killed in north-western Nigeria by what may or may not have been Ansaru, considered a splinter faction of Boko Haram and which would also be blamed for other kidnappings. Boko Haram members would overrun remote areas of north-eastern Nigeria and raise their own flags, part of the reason the president would eventually decide to declare a state of emergency. Seven members of a French family, including four children, would also be abducted in an incident claimed by Shekau, while dozens of students would be massacred in attacks on schools. Reports began to emerge in 2013 of girls being kidnapped and taken as wives by Boko Haram members. In April 2014, when attackers stormed the
town of Chibok and abducted 276 girls from their school, Nigeria's military seemed to have barely put up a fight.

This has all led to intense speculation over what Boko Haram has become, including from Western nations deeply worried over the spread of what they call terrorism. The group's re-emergence, and its increasingly violent and sophisticated insurgency, would occur at a time of major change not only in Nigeria, but also among Islamist extremist groups globally. A decade after the 11 September 2001 (9/11) attacks, US President Barack Obama's administration was claiming to have decimated the core of Al-Qaeda's leadership, with the help of a campaign of drone strikes. The bulk of those assertions may have been attributed to Obama's strategy ahead of the 2012 elections, with the president eager to show he had succeeded in his earlier promise of bringing the war in Iraq to a close and refocusing on defeating his country's main enemy, Al-Qaeda.

Still, political rhetoric aside, there certainly seemed to be important shifts occurring in the landscape of ‘global terrorism', as it was labelled by the Western world, and there were concerns that unstable African nations could become safe havens for Islamist extremist groups. US military officials in 2011 began warning of signs that the main extremist groups based in Africa – Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Al-Shebab in Somalia and Boko Haram – were working toward closer cooperation through arms or financing. There had been evidence of Nigerian Islamists travelling to northern Mali since 2004 for training with extremists from what would later be known as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, but deeper ties remained an open question. Muammar Gaddafi's fall in Libya in 2011 led to fears that the region's black market would be flooded with looted weapons from depots in that country. A rebellion in Mali in 2012 that saw Tuareg and Islamist groups take over half of the country prompted further concern and fuelled speculation over whether Boko Haram members had gone there to fight – and what would happen after they returned home. France responded with a military assault to push out the rebels in Mali,
and a US drone base was established in Niger with the aim of monitoring the Islamists who were responsible.

The US government has since labelled Boko Haram a ‘global terrorist' group, but the move has not seemed to have had any major effect, and the debate over whether to designate it as such seemed to again heavily involve American politics. Shekau himself has been put on a US wanted list offering a reward of up to $7 million. After he was named a ‘global terrorist' by the United States, allowing his assets there to be frozen, he mocked the designation in a video message. ‘I know the United States exists, but I don't know which part of the world it is located in, whether in the west or the north, the south or the east', he said in a sarcastic tone, an AK-47 leaning against the wall next to him. ‘I don't know where it is, not to talk of freezing my assets there.'

Mapping out the details of what Boko Haram is remains extremely difficult. Even the name Boko Haram is something of an illusion. Roughly translated to mean ‘Western education is forbidden', it was given to the group by outsiders based on their understanding of the budding sect and its beliefs. The group itself, or at least Abubakar Shekau's faction of it, says it wants to be known as Jama'atu Ahlus Sunnah Lid Da'awati Wal Jihad, or People Committed to the Prophet's Teachings for Propagation and Jihad.
²
As for Shekau himself, little is known about him. The US government's wanted notice lists three different possible dates of birth, 1965, 1969 and 1975. His vicious rhetoric and bizarre behaviour in video messages, where he has said he likes to kill humans when commanded by God to do so in the same way he enjoys killing rams and chickens, has led some to label him a psychopath. He also strangely refers to long-dead Western leaders as his enemies, from Abraham Lincoln to Margaret Thatcher. But simply labelling him insane is inadequate, a conclusion based on guesswork that ignores the possibility that he may be trying to provoke by acting in that way. There is also the question of whether it is always the same person appearing in video messages over the
last several years. The appearance of the man identified as Shekau in videos has been significantly different at times.

All of this becomes quite confusing very quickly, but overall outlines have emerged and a larger picture can be assembled. It is perhaps best to think of Boko Haram as an umbrella term for the insurgency and the violence that has come with it, with an unclear number of cells or factions carrying out attacks. Foot soldiers may be shared or recruited as needed, drawn from the massive population of desperate young men vulnerable to extremist ideas and perhaps attracted to the money and support the group can provide. Any kind of true organisation may exist only at the very top, with limited cooperation between the various cells. Their aims seem to vary greatly, from the sincere will to create an Islamic state to the desire to collect ransom money, with many other motivations in between. ‘Do I think that the kids who abducted the girls in Chibok are the ones who set off the bombs in Jos? No', one Nigerian official who has closely followed the insurgency told me. It appears that they finance themselves mainly through illegal activity, including ransom kidnappings and bank robberies. They have stolen weapons from the Nigerian military, and likely would not find it difficult to buy arms on the region's black market. Explosives have also been stolen from private companies.

How much all of this involves politics has been continually debated. As elections scheduled for February 2015 began to draw near, new accusations of politicians financing elements of Boko Haram emerged – certainly a possibility, but if so, more likely on the margins. The overarching conspiracy theories repeatedly offered in Nigeria – northern elites seeking to bring down a southern president; southern power brokers seeking to discredit the north – do not hold up to scrutiny. There are simply too many varying interests, the range of targets too great, to be attributable to one sole purpose.

Concerning foreign links, as one well-versed observer put it to me in early 2014, it seems that a practical relationship has
developed between certain Nigerian Islamists, particularly those identified with Ansaru, and the leadership of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb or its offshoots. They seek out help when they need it, but otherwise act on their own. Another knowledgeable source, a Western diplomat with extensive experience in the region, told me in March 2014 that it appeared that cooperation involving training and weapons had been deepening over the last few years.

Shekau has pledged solidarity with jihadists globally, including ISIS in Syria and Iraq, but it has never been clear whether such feelings were mutual. For one, outside extremist groups would face the same problem that authorities and would-be peace negotiators have encountered when seeking to probe or communicate with Boko Haram: one never knows with whom one is dealing. Beyond that, Boko Haram's mindless violence may not fit with more recent Al-Qaeda strategy, with the group's leadership having expressed concerns over the indiscriminate killings of fellow Muslims and civilians by its regional affiliates.

Yet it is important to keep all of this in perspective. While links have formed with foreign groups and attacks have been carried out in neighbouring Cameroon, the various elements of the Boko Haram insurgency have remained Nigerian in their outlook. Though demands have ranged widely, they have to a large degree focused on local concerns. The insurgents have sometimes simply seemed bent on the destruction of the Nigerian state, seeking to tear everything down with no end goal in mind. In late 2014, the group again seized territory in parts of north-eastern Nigeria and declared it would be part of a caliphate, but it was not clear whether there were any true attempts at governing such areas.

‘While there are links and there's procurement of weapons and there's communication and a whole range of ties between Boko Haram and AQIM and to a lesser extent al-Shebab, it really remains a domestically focused group in the sense that their enemy really is the Nigerian federal state and certain state officials', the same Western diplomat said. ‘And I think that in an opportunistic manner they cooperate and have communications
with transnational groups that may be committed to the global jihad like AQIM, but that's not their primary objective.'

It is a problem born and bred in Nigeria – and one that Nigerians must resolve amongst themselves. The conditions that have given rise to it must remain the focus of any potential solution.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian from the Niger Delta, has offered little beyond heavy-handed military raids that have led to accusations of widespread abuses against civilians – including shootings of innocent people, the burning of homes, torture and indiscriminate arrests. The government has engaged in doublespeak, at one point claiming to be involved in back-channel talks in a bid to halt the violence, but later dismissing this, with the president calling the Islamists ‘ghosts' who refuse to show their faces. Shekau, whose whereabouts are unknown and who has often been rumoured to be dead, has repeatedly ruled out dialogue in videos.