AFRICA NEWS
Nigerian Insurgents Take a Shot at Governing
Boko Haram Imposes Islamic Law in Towns Under its Control, Enforcing Rules on Women, Dress Code, Under Penalty of Death
ENLARGE
An image taken on Nov. 9 from a Boko Haram video showed fighters from the Islamist insurgency parading on a tank in an unidentified town. AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
By
DREW HINSHAW
Dec. 19, 2014 8:33 p.m. ET
11 COMMENTS
YOLA, Nigeria—After seizing another village in Nigeria’s northeast last month, Boko Haram militants took a step in their transition from terror group to governing authority. They rounded up the men and ordered them to wear pants as the prophet Mohammed did, several inches above the ankle.
Otherwise, a Boko Haram commander told a crowd of men, they would be killed. “So we folded our trousers,” said Birgamus Kadams, a 26-year-old who was among the group of several hundred residents of Garkidi village the militant addressed.
Like 1.5 million other Nigerians, Mr. Kadams fled his home, in his case to the government-held town of Yola. But the world he left behind is changing.
After years of sowing chaos—bombing mosques, gunning up markets, kidnapping children, and leaving thousands dead, Boko Haram now appears intent on establishing order in towns it holds.
Fighters are imposing rigorous Islamic law in a bid to carve out a corner of a strategic, oil-rich country—just as its fellow jihadists in the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are doing.
“We are beginning to see a totally different picture of the nature of the Boko Haram threat,” said Kwesi Aning, research director at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center in Accra, Ghana. “Boko Haram is now in a totally new league than West African leaders earlier on ever contemplated. We need a new strategy.”
Since 2011, Boko Haram’s rampages through Nigeria have left more than 16,000 people dead, according to a tally of news reports compiled by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. They have seized control of 11,000 square miles of this West African country—an area the size of Belgium.
In April, Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls, 57 of whom subsequently escaped. Since then, it has captured towns and even small cities.
“These people refused to believe,” said one young fighter, referring to the scores of men his fellow fighters had just shot in a recently-released propaganda video. “So we killed them.”
ENLARGE
Nigeria’s military, aided by a recently beefed-up arsenal including Russian-made helicopter gunships and surveillance planes, has recaptured several towns, including Chibok, where militants seized the schoolgirls eight months ago.
But large stretches of the country remain beyond the reach of ground troops. In these areas, the forest-dwelling militants have chased away or killed politicians, and taken over their homes. Boko Haram has flown its flag from police stations, and from there, attempted to establish an Islamic utopia with a mixture of brutality and surprising pragmatism.
Besides issuing dress codes, it has erected checkpoints on rural highways and confiscated Western technology.
The militants have also continued to take young men and women in mass kidnappings.
Esther Peter was held alongside about 15 other women in a room, forced to cook rice and chicken stew for her guards over three days. It is a fate shared by many hundreds of women who have been kidnapped by the group, a large number of them raped, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch.
But Ms. Peter’s guards only forced her to recite the Shahada, the Muslim profession of faith. They filmed themselves on a small videocamera preaching to her and her fellow captives, before the women sneaked away.
In some towns, Boko Haram militants have been forced to flee before establishing any order. In others, it has been camped for months, mingling with the population, even feeding the hungry.
“They go street by street, house by house, saying ‘Don’t go away,’ ” said James Sunday, 36, who fled the town of Michika, 9 miles from Nigeria’s border with Cameroon. “If you can abide by their teaching, they won’t hurt you.”
ENLARGE
An image from a Boko Haram video shows fighters and tanks in an unidentified town.AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Boko Haram isn’t the first terrorist group in Africa to move beyond brute force to attempt new political and social arrangements. For a decade, al Qaeda-allied groups across the Sahara have attempted the same transition. Boko Haram has trained with some of them.
When the militant group al-Shabaab swept through Somalia late in the past decade, Boko Haram sent recruits to train there, a Boko Haram spokesman told reporters in 2011. Al-Shabaab since then has lost control of the eastern African country’s major cities, though it continues to hold sway over much of rural Somalia.
In 2012, al Qaeda in Mali swept through a stretch of Sahara the size of France. Hundreds of Boko Haram fighters trained there, practicing firing shoulder-mounted weaponry, residents said. French troops followed by U.N. peacekeepers cleared that space last year, but Islamist attacks since have made Mali the world’s deadliest peacekeeping mission.
More recently, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau in his videos has compared his movement to Islamic State. In one, footage showing Mr. Shekau preaching cuts to a picture of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The Boko Haram logo increasingly resembles that of its Middle East cousin’s, and their videos have borrowed the same militant anthem used by Islamic State.
Islamic State has returned the adoration. In October, the group’s magazine lauded the kidnapping of the schoolgirls as a precedent that helped inspire its own abductions, said a report by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington think tank.
Some Nigerian officials say the ties amount to more than mutual admiration. At least 23 Nigerians are currently in Iraq and Syria, a security adviser in Nigeria said.
A woman kidnapped by Boko Haram who recently escaped said her captors told her about support coming from Iraq and Pakistan. Counterterrorism experts said they see no reason such training wouldn’t include shared thinking on how to govern, too.
“There’s an impression that Boko Haram is just a bunch of chaotic youth,” said Jacob Zenn, an Africa analyst at the Jamestown Foundation research institution in Washington. “If anything, they want people to think they’re disorganized and confused.”
ENLARGE
An image from a Boko Haram video shows the leader of the Islamist insurgency, Abubakar Shekau, delivering a speech. He has compared his movement to that of Islamic State. AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Boko Haram’s changing ways were evident in the Nigerian mountain town of Gwoza, where fighters belonging to the group arrived in August and began shooting people it viewed as informants. Mohammed Musa hid in his home and listened to the gunfire.
“After five days, they stopped killing people,” Mr. Musa said. Instead, Boko Haram’s men began going through town, feeding old people. They renamed the town “House of Understanding” in Arabic.
The group forbade women from wearing flip-flops without socks. It also banned them from walking in public with a man who isn’t a relative.
Although Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, had ended weeks earlier, Boko Haram insisted residents should regularly fast to purify themselves. Gunmen would sometimes walk through town, firing in the air in a display of authority.
“At the sound of their gunshots, we would stop cooking,” said Binta Amadu, a 20-year-old homemaker who escaped to Yola.
ENLARGE
Civilians who fled their homes following an attack by Boko Haram receive government aid at the camp for internally displaced people in Yola. ASSOCIATED PRESS
In Michika, Goji Babaji sat on a bench in front of his house, until Boko Haram told him idleness was banned, too. “ ‘It isn’t permissible,’ ” he recalled the fighters saying. “ ‘It’s better for you to go read the Quran.’ ”
On the morning Boko Haram rode into Garkidi, where Mr. Kadams lived, children ran into the street shouting “Allah akbar,” or God is great. A Christian, Mr. Kadams tried to slip away but found himself looking down the barrel of a rifle brandished by a Boko Haram fighter.
Then, as part of a captive audience, Mr. Kadams listened as Boko Haram explained the rules, citing Islamic scripture. Besides proper trouser hems, collared shirts were forbidden as products of the West. So was pornography, automated-teller machine cards or carrying government identification.
They wouldn’t burn down the churches immediately, a Boko Haram commander said, but in time they would. All Christians eventually would be required to convert to Islam. Schools were also closed. The Hausa-language term “Boko Haram” roughly translates to “Western education is sin” in English.
Mr. Kadams and others listened as Boko Haram leaders launched into a favorite topic of derision—astronomy. Nigerian schoolbooks teach the sun rises because the earth is round and turns on its axis. In reality, the sun rises because God commands it, the militants explained.
Neighborhood boys listened to the speech, he said: “You will see so many youth going in their direction, getting together with them, discussing so many things.”
Backpacks were banned, too, Mr. Kadams added, but he loaded one up anyway before fleeing.
Write to Drew Hinshaw at drew.hinshaw@wsj.com
Nigerian Insurgents Take a Shot at Governing
Boko Haram Imposes Islamic Law in Towns Under its Control, Enforcing Rules on Women, Dress Code, Under Penalty of Death
An image taken on Nov. 9 from a Boko Haram video showed fighters from the Islamist insurgency parading on a tank in an unidentified town. AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
By
DREW HINSHAW
Dec. 19, 2014 8:33 p.m. ET
11 COMMENTS
YOLA, Nigeria—After seizing another village in Nigeria’s northeast last month, Boko Haram militants took a step in their transition from terror group to governing authority. They rounded up the men and ordered them to wear pants as the prophet Mohammed did, several inches above the ankle.
Otherwise, a Boko Haram commander told a crowd of men, they would be killed. “So we folded our trousers,” said Birgamus Kadams, a 26-year-old who was among the group of several hundred residents of Garkidi village the militant addressed.
Like 1.5 million other Nigerians, Mr. Kadams fled his home, in his case to the government-held town of Yola. But the world he left behind is changing.
After years of sowing chaos—bombing mosques, gunning up markets, kidnapping children, and leaving thousands dead, Boko Haram now appears intent on establishing order in towns it holds.
Fighters are imposing rigorous Islamic law in a bid to carve out a corner of a strategic, oil-rich country—just as its fellow jihadists in the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are doing.
“We are beginning to see a totally different picture of the nature of the Boko Haram threat,” said Kwesi Aning, research director at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center in Accra, Ghana. “Boko Haram is now in a totally new league than West African leaders earlier on ever contemplated. We need a new strategy.”
Since 2011, Boko Haram’s rampages through Nigeria have left more than 16,000 people dead, according to a tally of news reports compiled by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. They have seized control of 11,000 square miles of this West African country—an area the size of Belgium.
In April, Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls, 57 of whom subsequently escaped. Since then, it has captured towns and even small cities.
“These people refused to believe,” said one young fighter, referring to the scores of men his fellow fighters had just shot in a recently-released propaganda video. “So we killed them.”
Nigeria’s military, aided by a recently beefed-up arsenal including Russian-made helicopter gunships and surveillance planes, has recaptured several towns, including Chibok, where militants seized the schoolgirls eight months ago.
But large stretches of the country remain beyond the reach of ground troops. In these areas, the forest-dwelling militants have chased away or killed politicians, and taken over their homes. Boko Haram has flown its flag from police stations, and from there, attempted to establish an Islamic utopia with a mixture of brutality and surprising pragmatism.
Besides issuing dress codes, it has erected checkpoints on rural highways and confiscated Western technology.
The militants have also continued to take young men and women in mass kidnappings.
Esther Peter was held alongside about 15 other women in a room, forced to cook rice and chicken stew for her guards over three days. It is a fate shared by many hundreds of women who have been kidnapped by the group, a large number of them raped, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch.
But Ms. Peter’s guards only forced her to recite the Shahada, the Muslim profession of faith. They filmed themselves on a small videocamera preaching to her and her fellow captives, before the women sneaked away.
In some towns, Boko Haram militants have been forced to flee before establishing any order. In others, it has been camped for months, mingling with the population, even feeding the hungry.
“They go street by street, house by house, saying ‘Don’t go away,’ ” said James Sunday, 36, who fled the town of Michika, 9 miles from Nigeria’s border with Cameroon. “If you can abide by their teaching, they won’t hurt you.”
An image from a Boko Haram video shows fighters and tanks in an unidentified town.AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Boko Haram isn’t the first terrorist group in Africa to move beyond brute force to attempt new political and social arrangements. For a decade, al Qaeda-allied groups across the Sahara have attempted the same transition. Boko Haram has trained with some of them.
When the militant group al-Shabaab swept through Somalia late in the past decade, Boko Haram sent recruits to train there, a Boko Haram spokesman told reporters in 2011. Al-Shabaab since then has lost control of the eastern African country’s major cities, though it continues to hold sway over much of rural Somalia.
In 2012, al Qaeda in Mali swept through a stretch of Sahara the size of France. Hundreds of Boko Haram fighters trained there, practicing firing shoulder-mounted weaponry, residents said. French troops followed by U.N. peacekeepers cleared that space last year, but Islamist attacks since have made Mali the world’s deadliest peacekeeping mission.
More recently, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau in his videos has compared his movement to Islamic State. In one, footage showing Mr. Shekau preaching cuts to a picture of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The Boko Haram logo increasingly resembles that of its Middle East cousin’s, and their videos have borrowed the same militant anthem used by Islamic State.
Islamic State has returned the adoration. In October, the group’s magazine lauded the kidnapping of the schoolgirls as a precedent that helped inspire its own abductions, said a report by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington think tank.
Some Nigerian officials say the ties amount to more than mutual admiration. At least 23 Nigerians are currently in Iraq and Syria, a security adviser in Nigeria said.
A woman kidnapped by Boko Haram who recently escaped said her captors told her about support coming from Iraq and Pakistan. Counterterrorism experts said they see no reason such training wouldn’t include shared thinking on how to govern, too.
“There’s an impression that Boko Haram is just a bunch of chaotic youth,” said Jacob Zenn, an Africa analyst at the Jamestown Foundation research institution in Washington. “If anything, they want people to think they’re disorganized and confused.”
An image from a Boko Haram video shows the leader of the Islamist insurgency, Abubakar Shekau, delivering a speech. He has compared his movement to that of Islamic State. AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Boko Haram’s changing ways were evident in the Nigerian mountain town of Gwoza, where fighters belonging to the group arrived in August and began shooting people it viewed as informants. Mohammed Musa hid in his home and listened to the gunfire.
“After five days, they stopped killing people,” Mr. Musa said. Instead, Boko Haram’s men began going through town, feeding old people. They renamed the town “House of Understanding” in Arabic.
The group forbade women from wearing flip-flops without socks. It also banned them from walking in public with a man who isn’t a relative.
Although Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, had ended weeks earlier, Boko Haram insisted residents should regularly fast to purify themselves. Gunmen would sometimes walk through town, firing in the air in a display of authority.
“At the sound of their gunshots, we would stop cooking,” said Binta Amadu, a 20-year-old homemaker who escaped to Yola.
Civilians who fled their homes following an attack by Boko Haram receive government aid at the camp for internally displaced people in Yola. ASSOCIATED PRESS
In Michika, Goji Babaji sat on a bench in front of his house, until Boko Haram told him idleness was banned, too. “ ‘It isn’t permissible,’ ” he recalled the fighters saying. “ ‘It’s better for you to go read the Quran.’ ”
On the morning Boko Haram rode into Garkidi, where Mr. Kadams lived, children ran into the street shouting “Allah akbar,” or God is great. A Christian, Mr. Kadams tried to slip away but found himself looking down the barrel of a rifle brandished by a Boko Haram fighter.
Then, as part of a captive audience, Mr. Kadams listened as Boko Haram explained the rules, citing Islamic scripture. Besides proper trouser hems, collared shirts were forbidden as products of the West. So was pornography, automated-teller machine cards or carrying government identification.
They wouldn’t burn down the churches immediately, a Boko Haram commander said, but in time they would. All Christians eventually would be required to convert to Islam. Schools were also closed. The Hausa-language term “Boko Haram” roughly translates to “Western education is sin” in English.
Mr. Kadams and others listened as Boko Haram leaders launched into a favorite topic of derision—astronomy. Nigerian schoolbooks teach the sun rises because the earth is round and turns on its axis. In reality, the sun rises because God commands it, the militants explained.
Neighborhood boys listened to the speech, he said: “You will see so many youth going in their direction, getting together with them, discussing so many things.”
Backpacks were banned, too, Mr. Kadams added, but he loaded one up anyway before fleeing.
Write to Drew Hinshaw at drew.hinshaw@wsj.com