Nigeria: The Boko Haram Battle
By Stephanie Schulze for ISN
A little-known Islamist sect called Boko Haram attacked a police station in Nigeria’s northern state of Bauchi on 26 July 2009. The incident led to a four-day armed struggle between state security forces and members of the militant group, spreading to three other states (Yobe, Kano and Borno) and external pageleaving as many as 800 dead, many of them members of the sect.
The militant attacks, which followed the arrest of several of its members, targeted mainly police stations, prisons, government buildings and churches in the four states.
Since the completion of a military attack that sought to break up the sect, no more violent outbreaks have occurred. Borno State and its capital city Maiduguri - the sect’s stronghold - were most affected.
Bolaji Aina, an official from Germany’s Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ), a development agency, in Maiduguri, reported that the situation in Borno State is now tense but calm. “People are very careful, security is tight and the group has disintegrated completely,” she told ISN Security Watch.
Boko Haram, which roughly translates as ‘western education is a sin,’ rejects western influences and values and seeks to overthrow the federal government. The sect appears to be an outlet for young, often educated, but unemployed people to express dissatisfaction with the establishment.
Most newspapers reported that the sect was established in 2004, but Director of Defense Information Colonel Muhammed Yerima has recently said that it has in fact existed since 1995, but has changed its name several times.
Boko Haram advocates the introduction of sharia law (external pagewhich has already been adopted in 12 out of Nigeria’s 36 states, all of them in the predominantly Muslim north), throughout the whole country.
Threat to national security?
With a relatively small membership (the exact figure remains vague) and little support from Muslim leaders and populations in the region, Boko Haram seems to be far from reaching its goal.
Nevertheless, the federal government has stepped up security in major cities and police have been made ‘combat-ready’ to avert religious riots. Meanwhile, Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua, who had left the country for a three-day state visit in Brazil on 28 July, was quick to declare that the situation was “under control.”
During a hastily summoned press conference at Abuja airport just before his departure, the president maintained that “our security agencies have been tracking them [Boko Haram] for years and I believe that the operation we are launching now will be an operation that will contain them once and for all.”
Just two weeks after the incidents in Maiduguri, police reacted harshly and were quick to disintegrate another Islamist external pagesect in northwestern Niger State, which has displayed any violent behavior.
While there are no indications that Boko Haram is powerful enough to turn into a major threat for the country, the federal government appears to be playing it cautious. Given the extensive criticism he received over the handling of this recent crisis, Yar’Adua is clearly anxious to limit the damage.
On 30 July, police captured the group’s leader, Mohammed Yusuf, in Maiduguri. After a few hours in custody, Yusuf was shot dead in what appeared to be an extra-judicial killing, while police officials maintained that he was killed during a shootout after his attempted escape.
Several other members of Boko Haram met the same fate.
These killings, together with the high number of casualties, resulted in criticism of the way the federal government handled the crisis, not only from human rights groups but also from its own ranks.
The minority leader of the House of Representatives, Mohammed Ndume, alleged publicly that the government had received information about a possible eruption of violence linked to Boko Haram, but had failed to respond.
The struggle to define the struggle
Although the sect is sometimes referred to as the ‘Nigerian Taliban,’ there is external pageno evidence of any links between Boko Haram and international terrorist networks such as al-Qaida; indeed, it seems to be more of a bandwagon effect to increase attention.
The authenticity of a external pagestatement published by the Nigerian daily newspaper Vanguard, in which the “acting leader” of Boko Haram, Mallam Sanni Umaru, declares that “Boko Haram is just a version of Al Qaeda” and that the sect has “started a Jihad in Nigeria” and will carry out bomb attacks in major Nigerian cities soon, requires further examination.
The group is unrelated to rebel movements in the country’s external pageNiger Delta region, and despite the fact that Nigeria has been prone to religious conflicts in the past - the country is relatively evenly split between Christians and Muslims - various religious sects are not organized or connected to each other.
Indeed, Boko Haram is ideologically isolated and lacks popular support from the population and Muslim leaders. The Nigerian umbrella body of Muslims, Jama’atul Nasril Islam (JNI), condemned the sect’s actions and stated that it wished to “categorically dissociate Islam from the activities” of Boko Haram.
But despite the common depiction of the conflict as being a religious one, several commentators point to its political nature.
Questions about sponsorship
The Vanguard daily has voiced allegations that Mohammed Yusuf was killed so hastily “in order to shield his sponsors who are influential members of the society.” While it is impossible to prove those links and their exact nature, Nigerians seem to have no doubt about their existence.
The fact that the sect owned heavy and sophisticated weaponry and that among its members are highly educated former university lecturers feeds those allegations.
“The conflict is not political at all. It is a purely religious issue,” Aina told ISN Security Watch, though she conceded that it was common for Islamic scholars (such as Yusuf) to “receive money from local political leaders in exchange for securing votes.”
Aina also said that Yusuf “clearly received some outside help.” She estimates that some of the weapons used by the sect were “carried through Chad.”
It remains unclear whether Boko Haram will be able to regroup without its influential leader. But even if it does, President Yar’Adua is likely to respond faster the next time round.
So-called religious clashes are relatively common in Nigeria and are likely to persist in the future. However, many of those clashes have in fact had a much stronger political background than often suggested, concerning more the uneven distribution of power and wealth, rather than religion per se.
While those crises have remained localized in the past and haven’t had the potential to turn into a full-scale national crisis, the destructive effects on the communities are immense. The Nigerian government would therefore be well advised to recognize this as a problem that requires more than military action.