The Army of Anger and Hate

Under Pressure, Boko Haram Is Changing Its Tactics

ADF STAFF

In a neighborhood of mud-brick buildings in Diffa, Niger, young men say there is one opportunity for work that is always lurking in the shadows. The job offers come from recruiters for the terror group Boko Haram, who approach teens with offers of cash and a way out.

In a 2014 interview with the BBC, recruits in Niger said they are paid as much as 500,000 Nigerian Naira (about $3,000) to join the group. If they are willing to follow the recruiter back to Nigeria, they are sometimes given Tramol, an opiate, or other narcotics and promised more money if they set roadside bombs. Those who stay in Niger are paid for information about troop movements and told to break into homes to steal money and other supplies.

The young Nigeriens said they don’t join for ideological reasons — it’s simply about money. “We have no jobs; some of us are still at high school, but we need money. Violence has become a form of work for us,” said one teen.

Niger isn’t the only country where Boko Haram is recruiting. The group has tried to make inroads in Chad, Cameroon, as well as Benin and Senegal. Analysts point to a willingness to cross borders as evidence of the group’s aspirations to become a regional threat.

Viewed for years by outsiders as a northern Nigerian phenomenon, Boko Haram has never fit neatly into that box. The group’s second in command, Mamman Nur, the alleged mastermind of a 2011 attack on the United Nations headquarters in Abuja, is originally from Cameroon. Boko Haram’s ideological leader, Abubakar Shekau, was born in Niger, according to some media reports. Before 2013, Boko Haram was said to have connections in northern Mali with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and may have operated a training base near Gao. The group has claimed that some of its members train as far away as Somalia.

“There is also a thin line between these groups and a well-known international terrorist network,” said Nigeria’s National Security Advisor Mohammed Sambo Dasuki. “Game-changing incidents and sophistication of the emerging terrorist groups has thrown up greater challenges to security and intelligence agencies across the region.”

In response, the nations of the region are joining forces. In March 2014, the nations of the Lake Chad Basin Commission agreed to expand the scope of the Multinational Joint Task Force to patrol the borders of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria. The task force was created in 1998 to curb banditry and protect cross-border trade, but its mandate was expanded to include counterterror activities. The task force has its headquarters in Baga in Nigeria’s Borno State.

Cameroon, which historically has had strained relations with Nigeria over border issues, has moved hundreds of its elite Bataillon d’Intervention Rapide Soldiers (BIR) to the northern border with Nigeria. The BIR now has an agreement with Nigeria allowing it to pursue criminals across the border for up to 8 kilometers, the International Crisis Group reported. Under a 2012 agreement, Soldiers from Nigeria and Niger are conducting mixed patrols along the stretch of border between Gaya, Nigeria and Diffa.

“We share 1,500 kilometers of a common border,” said Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou. “On either side of this border are the same population groups and the same cultures. Globally, in Nigeria just as in Niger, they practice a moderate Islam. Those who are tempted by terrorism are in the minority.”

Although Chad has not suffered a significant attack from Boko Haram, Brig. Gen. Madjior Solness Dingamadji, advisor to Chad’s chief of defense staff, said security forces are on alert for incursions into the country, particularly from across the Cameroonian border and on the waters of Lake Chad.

To combat this threat, Chad has installed computerized controls at each of the posts bordering Cameroon, doubled searches of the people and vehicles crossing the border, and organized regular boat patrols on Lake Chad and its islands.

Still, Dingamadji said he is under no illusion that his country is immune from the threat. “The four countries bordering Nigeria are all, whether from near or far, under the threat of Boko Haram,” he told ADF. “In Chad we fear an infiltration and an attack from Boko Haram because the elements linked to the Islamist sect could be present in a residual manner in Chad. Some are Chadians living in the communities every day, others could enter illegally, and that doesn’t include the thousands of Nigerian refugees dispersed across the Lake Chad region.”

During a May meeting in Paris to discuss the Boko Haram threat, regional leaders agreed on an action plan that includes heightened border surveillance, sharing intelligence and a readiness to intervene. Cameroonian President Paul Biya spoke for the group when he said they were gathered there to “declare war” on Boko Haram.

Dingamadji said the countries bordering Nigeria have already stepped up the fight. “To better contain the problem, the countries bordering the Lake Chad Basin have begun the exchanges of intelligence and information across their special services,” he said. “Equally, they have installed electronic border control systems, and joint patrols will be reinforced all along the borders between these countries and with Nigeria.”

ELEMENTS OF THE TALIBAN

Like the Taliban of Afghanistan, Boko Haram wants a government with a narrow, intolerant interpretation of Muslim law, and it believes in ethnic cleansing. Like the Taliban, Boko Haram has no respect for women and treats them brutally. In fact, some people refer to the group as the “Nigerian Taliban.” The group drew the rage and contempt of most of the rest of the world in April 2014 with the kidnapping of 276 teenage girls. Boko Haram said the girls would be sold into slavery or as child brides for as little as $12 apiece.

Boko Haram’s sworn enemy is Western civilization — its very name means “Western education is forbidden.” The group wants part of northern Nigeria to be an Islamic state, but to say Boko Haram is a Muslim organization does a disservice to Muslims. Boko Haram rejects all Western thought, including science, secular education and democratic elections. Boko Haram’s followers do not wear Western-style shirts or pants.

The sect may have originated as early as 1995. What is certain is that Mohammed Yusuf started, or at least took over, Boko Haram in Maiduguri, in northeastern Nigeria, in 2002. The official name at the time was Congregation of the People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad. Yusuf organized a complex that included an Islamic school and a mosque, but he was not interested in education, and the school soon became a recruitment center for extremists.

Yusuf was regarded as the spiritual descendant of Mohammed Marwa, also known as Maitatsine. Like Yusuf, Maitatsine preached an austere brand of Islam, rejecting all things Western, including radios, watches and bicycles. He called for war against virtually every facet of Nigerian society and government and declared himself to be a prophet.

Like Maitatsine, Yusuf rejected Western culture, including science. In a 2009 interview with the BBC, Yusuf referred to rain as “a creation of God rather than an evaporation caused by the sun that condenses and becomes rain.”

“Like saying the world is a sphere,” he added. “If it runs contrary to the teachings of Allah, we reject it. We also reject the theory of Darwinism.”

The first known act of violence by the sect was on December 24, 2003, when it attacked police stations and other public buildings in two towns in Yobe State. Less than a year later, it attacked more police stations, killing police officers and stealing weapons.

The Nigerian government cracked down on the group in 2009 so effectively that many believed it had been eliminated. Eight hundred people were killed, including Yusuf. But the crackdown had the reverse effect; the group went on a murderous rampage that continues to this day. When countries all over the world expressed outrage over the April 2014 kidnappings of the teenage girls, Boko Haram responded weeks later by attacking a farmers’ market and slaughtering more than 300 people. Some were burned alive.

THE ‘CITY OF FEAR’

Maiduguri is the capital and the largest city of Borno State in northeastern Nigeria. It has a population of more than 1 million and has historically been called the “Home of Peace.” It is now also known as the “City of Fear” because of regular attacks by Boko Haram followers. Among Boko Haram’s defining tactics is the use of gunmen on motorcycles, killing anyone who opposes the group, including Muslim clerics. Boko Haram gunmen are so closely identified with motorcycles that Maiduguri has issued 24-hour bans on them on occasion, despite the fact that they are the primary means of transportation there.

In December 2013, hundreds of Boko Haram militants attacked several areas of the city, forcing government officials to temporarily impose a dusk-to-dawn curfew. But the attacks never really stopped, and as of June 2014, small groups of Boko Haram militants were regularly attacking parts of the city and surrounding villages.

The village attacks were typical of Boko Haram’s tactics: Display overwhelming force, kill people and burn down everything. Boko Haram specifically targets schools, churches, police stations and hospitals, as well as Nigerian Soldiers, police and politicians.

A WAR ON EDUCATION

The education system in northern Nigeria lags behind the rest of the nation. In Borno State, the epicenter of Boko Haram activity, only 52 percent of school-age children are enrolled in school. In an effort to reverse this, in 2013 the government announced an initiative to build more schools and get more children into classrooms. Boko Haram, however, is working in the other direction, by burning down schools. The DailyPost of Nigeria reported in January 2014 that Boko Haram was specifically targeting schoolteachers for murder as part of a crusade against secular education.

The attacks are based on a twisted misinterpretation of the Islamic law which, Boko Haram loyalists believe, makes schoolchildren kafir, or unbelievers, and legitimate targets for attack.

Boko Haram is thorough when it burns a school, using sufficient petrol to destroy the building and everything in it, including desks and blackboards. Although exact figures are elusive, Amnesty International reported in 2013 that in the course of about 20 months, the terror group had killed at least 70 teachers and more than 100 students. At least 50 schools had been destroyed or damaged, and 60 more had been forced to close. Amnesty International said the casualty figures probably were “significantly understated.”

The Borno State government has a policy of rebuilding schools that have been burned down, even though the terrorist group is likely to return and burn them again.

“Imagine, each time government spends huge money renovating burnt schools or rebuilding them, the insurgents would return and destroy them again,” Borno State Commissioner for Education Inuwa Kubo told the DailyPost. “It is quite frustrating. It is the same insecurity that is affecting attendance of students.”

There seems to be no limit to the cruelty Boko Haram is willing to inflict. The BBC said in September 2013 that the group murdered 50 students as they slept in their dormitory at an agriculture college. The bodies had to be stacked in vans for removal.

A NEW TARGET

Boko Haram has attacked virtually every sector of Nigerian life, including media outlets. Dr. Freedom Onuoha of the National Defence College in Nigeria predicted in a 2013 study that Boko Haram, like other extremist groups in other parts of the world, would step up its attacks on telecommunications infrastructure, a tactic he labeled “cell wars.” He compared Boko Haram’s attacks in Nigeria to the Taliban’s attacks in Afghanistan, where they have begun blowing up cellphone towers and trying to extort cellphone companies. In 20 days in Afghanistan, Taliban raiders destroyed or damaged about 30 cellphone towers.

Cellphone use in Nigeria has skyrocketed in recent years, with an estimated 150 million subscribers and 20,000 cellphone towers. In 2011, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan announced plans to make telecommunications operators dedicate toll-free emergency lines to the public to improve intelligence-gathering on the sect. Boko Haram responded with a threat to retaliate.

In September 2012, Onuoha said, Boko Haram began a two-day attack on cellphone towers in five cities in northern Nigeria. The group has since attacked other facilities.

“Attacks on telecom facilities add a new dimension to the pre-existing security challenges, as entire base stations are destroyed by (homemade bombs), suicide bombers and other incendiary devices,” Onuoha wrote. He said that Boko Haram damaged 150 cell towers in northern Nigeria in 2012 alone. These attacks came at a tremendous price; the average cost of a Nigerian cellphone base tower is $250,000. Onuoha noted that the sect also targets the staffs of cellphone facilities.

“With several telecom facilities scattered in isolated areas in Nigeria, Boko Haram can always attack and destroy them at ease,” concluded Onuoha.

Despite Boko Haram’s supposed disdain for technology, it has not limited its attacks to bombs and murders. In August 2012, a computer operator hacked the personnel records of Nigeria’s secret service. The hacker said the breach was in the name of Boko Haram and revealed the names, addresses, bank information and family members of the agency’s past and present members.

“The attack would not have tremendous significance in and of itself,” wrote Denise N. Baken of the University of Maryland University College. “However, it represents a substantial shift in tactics for a group whose name connotes an anti-Western stance.” She said that, given Boko Haram’s close ties to al-Qaida and al-Qaida’s own cyber attacks dating to 1996, Boko Haram’s continued use of Internet hacks is “almost inevitable.”

HOW TO STOP THEM

Osumah Oarhe, a lecturer at Ambrose Alli University in Ekpoma, Nigeria, said intelligence-gathering will have to improve and include working with neighboring countries. He said Nigeria’s intelligence community and its military will need to cooperate more to stop Boko Haram.

Nigeria will have to manage its borders better to stop the flow of “illegal arms, illegal immigrants, criminals and contrabands.” And, he said, “The defense and intelligence establishments need to muster the courage to confront the political elites allegedly behind the sect.”

Onuoha agreed, telling ADF the measures to stop Boko Haram must include “targeting politicians who are known to provide support or sponsorship to the group.”

“I think that ultimately the Boko Haram undoing will lie on its growing indiscriminate attack on defenseless local residents,” he said. “As more and more Northerners realize that the sect’s objective of Islamizing Nigeria is untenable, coupled with growing anger over continued killing of innocent persons by the sect, it will lose whatever is available in the form of sympathy to its cause. The Nigeria government can quickly end the insurgency if it pays less attention to the foot soldiers meandering in remote border communities and forest areas of northern Nigeria, but greater attention on powerful individuals believed to be behind the sect.”

Onuoha said stopping Boko Haram will require that Nigeria dismantle the “tripod of terrorist sustainability” — ideology, recruitment and funding.

“In a sense, government must undertake a comprehensive approach that deconstructs the appeal of Boko Haram ideology, deny it opportunities for recruitment and radicalization, and cut off its financial lifeline.”

One Nigerian security official described the frustration of trying to catch them.

“It’s the toothpaste effect: Squeeze one end and it comes out the other,” he said. “They have proven resilient and are adapting faster than the military.”