[ 2015-01-11 ]

Boko Haram is now a mini-Islamic State
After days of razing villages and pitiless
massacre, Boko Haram finished the week with its
most chilling atrocity.

As people bustled through the Saturday market in
the Nigerian city of Maiduguri, a device borne by
a ten year-old girl exploded near the entrance.

A witness said the girl probably had no idea that
a bomb had been strapped to her body.

The explosion just before lunch killed 20,
including the girl, and injured 18, according to
the police.

Boko Haram did not immediately claim the attack,
but the Islamic insurgents have increasingly used
young girls as human bombs as they carve an
African “Caliphate” from the plains of
northern Nigeria.

Today, Boko Haram controls about 20,000 square
miles of territory - an area the size of Belgium.

Within this domain, the black flag of jihad flies
over scores of towns and villages scattered across
the neighbouring states of Borno and Yobe.

The latest conquest was the fishing town of Baga
on the shores of Lake Chad, which fell to the
Islamists last Wednesday.

“For five kilometres (three miles), I kept
stepping on dead bodies until I reached Malam
Karanti village, which was also deserted and
burnt,” one surviving fisherman, Yanaye Grema,
said.

Boko Haram’s fighters have now achieved mastery
over 11 local government areas with a total
population exceeding 1.7 million people, according
to the official 2006 census.

Once, the movement’s fighters would launch
hit-and-run attacks on defenceless villages. Now,
Boko Haram’s realm stretches from the Mandara
Mountains on the eastern border with Cameroon to
Lake Chad in the north and the Yedseram river in
the west.

The Nigerian army, crippled by corruption and
incompetence, has shown itself unable to resist
the jihadist advance.

Last September, Abubakar Shekau, the self-styled
“Emir” of Boko Haram, proclaimed his ambition
to conquer a “Caliphate” and follow the
example of the Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant (Isil).

“There is a copy-cat element at work here,”
said Andrew Pocock, the British High Commissioner
to Nigeria. “If Isil can declare a Caliphate,
then so can we. Boko Haram want to be seen by
their peers as grown-up jihadis. They want to show
'we can control territory, we can control a
Caliphate’.”

There is also a clear practical rationale for Boko
Haram to capture territory. “Success - and they
have had success - creates a different kind of
requirement,” added Mr Pocock. “You need a
place where you can base yourself and keep
equipment and supplies and, indeed, captives. It
means that you’ve got to hold territory.”

Shekau has established Boko Haram’s unofficial
headquarters in the town of Gwoza in Borno state.
This stronghold has been chosen with great care.

Gwoza is shielded from attack by the volcanic
peaks of the Mandara Mountains spanning the nearby
frontier with Cameroon. Most important of all, the
surrounding area is the homeland of Shekau’s own
ethnic group, the Kanuri.

From this base among his brethren, Shekau sends
his fighters to strike across a vast area. The
border with Cameroon means nothing to Shekau,
since it slices directly through the area
inhabited by the Kanuri. His men have frequently
attacked villages in the neighbouring country,
killing 68 of Cameroon’s soldiers in the last
month alone.

Sometimes, Shekau’s goal is to grab more
territory - as with the assault on Baga last week.
Just as often, he dispatches his fighters on what
can only be described as slave raids.

Boko Haram profits greatly from the trade in human
beings. Last April, Shekau committed his most
infamous act by abducting over 200 schoolgirls
from the town of Chibok, about 50 miles south-west
of Gwoza, triggering a global campaign to “bring
back our girls”. By his own admission, the girls
were then sold into slavery.

Britain and France stamped out the slave trade in
this part of Africa a century ago, but Boko Haram
has succeeded in partially reversing this
achievement. Today the ancient caravan routes
running north across the Sahara are active once
more, except that trucks have replaced camels as
the means of conveying human cargo.

Boko Haram has expanded to a point where it defies
simple categories. Its name is normally translated
as “Western education is banned”, yet
“boko” means “book” in the Hausa language,
so “books are banned” would be more accurate.

In part, Boko Haram is a branch of al-Qaeda’s
brand of jihadism. As well as seizing towns,
Shekau’s men carry out suicide bombings in
Nigerian cities, including Abuja. Like the Taliban
in Afghanistan and Isil in Iraq, they have become
expert users of improvised explosive devices. In
particular, its men have mastered the technique of
creating charges that are carefully shaped to
destroy armoured vehicles.

A fighter of the Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant (Isil) holds an Isil flag and a weapon on a
street in the city of Mosul

In short, Boko Haram have learnt the classic
tactics of al-Qaeda. Its operatives have picked up
these skills from the jihadist tentacles
stretching across the Sahel region of Africa.
“Unquestionably, Boko Haram have benefited from
the broader Sahelian jihadi network,” said Mr
Pocock.

Yet at the same time, Boko Haram is a Kanuri
tribal insurgency. In addition, the movement works
as a criminal gang, profiting from theft,
extortion and slave raiding. Shekau amounts to a
global jihadist, crime boss and tribal rebel
leader - all at the same time.

If there are limits to his ambitions, they have
not been imposed by the Nigerian army. The 7th
division was specially created to fight Boko Haram
and deployed to Borno. In practise, it does little
but try to mount a static defence of Maiduguri,
the state capital. In common with the rest of the
army, it lacks the mobility and the manpower to
challenge Boko Haram’s control of the
surrounding area.

The army may also lack the resolve. Last year, the
federal government allocated 20 per cent of its
budget to the armed forces - over £4 billion.
Yet precious little trickled down to the soldiers
in the frontline, who remain poorly armed and
equipped. Instead, a large proportion of the
military budget simply disappeared into the
pockets of senior officers.
Despite being the headquarters of the 7th
division, Maiduguri lives under the constant
threat of attack.
Oliver Dashe Doeme, the Roman Catholic Bishop in
the city, said that 70 of the 150 churches in his
diocese had been destroyed by Boko Haram. “We
have many parishes which have been sacked and
overrun,” he said. “Our major concern is not
our buildings - it’s not the churches themselves
- but our people who have been driven away from
their homes. Some are living in mountains and
forests, some are in Cameroon and some have gone
elsewhere in Nigeria.”

About 10,000 Catholic refugees have gathered in
Maiduguri after fleeing Boko Haram’s new domain,
added Bishop Doeme.
President Goodluck Jonathan, who faces re-election
next month, has declared an emergency in the three
states most threatened by the Islamists. But
Bishop Doeme has no confidence in the army’s
ability to recapture the territory lost to Boko
Haram.
“Nigeria is a very corrupt nation,” he said.
“Our main problem is not that Boko Haram cannot
be contained, but that you have a deep-seated
corruption in high and low places. Many of our top
military officers are gaining from what is
happening here because it means that a lot of
money is coming in their direction.”
Goodluck Jonathan, the Nigerian president, faces
an election next month
Instead of being imposed by the army, the borders
of Boko Haram’s new domain may be defined by the
ethnic patchwork of northern Nigeria.
Shekau is confident of holding the territory
inhabited by his fellow Kanuris, but his grip is
looser wherever other groups hold sway.
He recently withdrew from a string of towns in
Adamawa state, perhaps because they were inhabited
by non-Kanuris.
Boko Haram possesses armoured personnel carriers,
anti-aircraft guns and rocket launchers - in other
words, the heavy weapons of a conventional army.
Despite all this firepower, the invisible borders
of ethnicity may still be a brake on its
expansion.
For Bishop Doeme, however, this comes as little
consolation. “We have cases here of soldiers
deliberately abandoning their armaments,” he
said.
“There are cases of corrupt senior officers. The
president should sack them so there is an example
to the others - but that has never happened.”

Source - The Telegraph

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