Culture | Boko Haram

Bringers of sorrow

The story of Nigeria’s jihadists and the mayhem they have sown across four different countries

Boko Haram: Inside Nigeria’s Unholy War. By Mike Smith. I.B. Tauris; 233 pages; $29 and £18.99.

“YES, Western education is forbidden,” said the shirtless man with the bandaged arm. “Any type of knowledge that contradicts Islam, Allah does not allow you to acquire it.” It was July 2009, and the speaker was Mohammed Yusuf, the leader of a group of then little-known jihadists. The setting was a hasty interrogation that followed Yusuf’s capture after a brief uprising in north-eastern Nigeria sparked by a clash with policemen. A few hours later he was executed by security forces.

Rather than focusing on the usual subjects of such conversations—locations of weapons and quantities of soldiers, say—the interrogation took the form of a theological debate between two Muslims. Details of the encounter, which was recorded on video, shed much light on the contradictory and messianic world view of Yusuf, the founder of a group that has since become familiar to the wider world as Boko Haram, a name that loosely translates as “Western education is forbidden”. That the group takes exception to such teaching is all too plain. Last year it kidnapped more than 200 girls from a school in Chibok in north-eastern Nigeria that used Western teaching principles.

Boko Haram does profess a commitment to learning, but of a specific sort. Members prefer it to be known as “Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad”, which in Arabic means “People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad”. In its early days the group emphasised teaching rather than killing. Yet it took a radical, violent turn soon after Yusuf’s brutal death.

In the five years since, Boko Haram has spread havoc across parts of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad. More than 10,000 people have been killed in related violence and as many as 1.5m driven from their homes. By the end of 2014 the group had conquered large tracts of three of Nigeria’s north-eastern states and had declared its intention to form a caliphate. More recently, it has proclaimed its allegiance to Islamic State (IS), a jihadist group that holds sway over parts of Syria and Iraq.

We don’t need no education

Much has been written about extremist groups such as IS and al-Qaeda, which directly threaten Westerners at home or abroad. But little is understood about Boko Haram, its leaders and its beliefs. This is partly because it has made little effort to explain itself to the wider world, unlike jihadists such as IS who reach out to potential recruits using social media, and partly because journalists are unable to enter territory it controls safely. Moreover, its limited regional focus means that most Western intelligence agencies have viewed it as posing little international threat.

This book by Mike Smith, a journalist, sheds light both on its crackpot ideas—Yusuf insisted that the world was flat and that rain was made by God—and on the deep contradictions faced by people who propose to return to a sixth-century lifestyle. When asked why he had computer equipment and hospital facilities at his home, Yusuf replied, “These are technological products. Western education is different. Western education is westernisation.”

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Yusuf’s successor, Abubakar Shekau, is a particularly enigmatic figure who is known largely through the brief videos his group has released. In one he justifies selling into slavery the schoolgirls kidnapped in Chibok: “Allah says I should sell. He commands me to sell.” Each time Nigerian forces claim to have killed him, new videos emerge, though security officials question whether the same person appears in all the grainy images.

Boko Haram has played an important role in Nigeria’s forthcoming presidential election, which has been rescheduled for March 28th. The vote was postponed by six weeks because the army said it could not guarantee the security of polling stations. The government’s inability to counter the jihadists has eroded its popularity. Assistance from Chad, new arms and better-trained troops have brought some military successes against Boko Haram. But the political response has been ham-fisted, as Mr Smith’s book cogently explains.

Initially the government sat largely idle as a small band of jihadists progressed steadily from pinprick assassinations to attacks on police stations and finally to the wholesale takeover of towns and army bases. When galvanised into action, Nigerian troops acted brutally towards villagers in the north-east of the country, abducting and killing those suspected of supporting Boko Haram.

A staccato tone means the book can at times read too much like a piece of overlength, wire-agency journalism. Readers are left with an unclear understanding of why Boko Haram acts as it does. But they do get a vivid impression of the horrors associated with the group and the campaign against it, thanks to Mr Smith’s reporting—the book’s main strength. He describes seeing the rotting bodies of civilians killed by jihadists, which had been collected from the roadside and dumped by the police and army in the grounds of a hospital in Maiduguri, a northern town, and vigilantes armed with swords and magical charms trying to defend their villages. Considering the dearth of information available, this is a commendable first draft of history.

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline "Bringers of sorrow"

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