Boko Haram kills 24 in Maiduguri

Boko Haram

Suspected Boko Haram militants killed 24 people in two separate attacks in northern Nigeria, eyewitnesses said on Saturday, just as the military vowed to ramp up security over Christmas.

Seven fishermen were ambushed and killed in the first attack in Baga, a fishing community on Lake Chad in Borno state, one of three in the northeast of the country under emergency rule since May this year.

Seventeen people died in a separate attack on Thursday, other eyewitnesses said, when gunmen in pick-up trucks torched more than 100 shops and vehicles in the Sabon Gari area of the Damboa district, 90 kilometres (56 miles) from the state capital, Maiduguri.

There was no immediate confirmation of either attack from the military or local authorities. "They killed seven fishermen, injured 15 others and burnt some local boats and nets used for catching fish," fisherman Ibrahim Gambo said in Maiduguri, where he had brought his brother for treatment. "It was a reprisal by insurgents because the soldiers have two weeks ago clamped down on them," added another fisherman, Sheriff Bababa. "They (the military) even arrested some of their members, including a leader, with the assistance of youth vigilantes."

Human Rights Watch on Friday said Boko Haram fighters were carrying out reprisals on civilians in retaliation for intelligence on supposed militant activity passed to the military by civilian vigilante groups.
It urged the militants to stop targeting civilians and the vigilantes to stop using minors in counter-intelligence and security operations.

In Sabon Garin, villagers told reporters that the attack happened at about 11:35 pm (2235 GMT) on Thursday and those responsible were chanting "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) as they arrived.
The violence lasted until about 4:00 am, they added.

News of the attacks, which are often slow to emerge because of a communications black-out in Borno designed to disrupt militant planning, came as Nigeria's military pledged to step up security in vulnerable border areas.

Boko Haram, which wants to impose a strict form of Islamic law or sharia on Muslim-majority northern Nigeria, has previously launched deadly attacks on and around the Christian festival.

A wave of attacks against churches and police on December 25, 2011, left 49 people dead.
Nearly 200 people, including soldiers, insurgents and scores of civilians, were killed in fierce fighting between troops and Islamist insurgents in Baga in April this year.

Area army spokesman Colonel Mohammed Dole said troops had been deployed to frontier villages and towns in Borno state that have been targeted while suspected Boko Haram bases were being cleared, backed by air support.

"We have identified their hideouts and we are determined to make all the border communities and the state generally free of Boko Haram activities so that people can move freely and celebrate the Yuletide peacefully," he added.

Borno state deputy governor Zanna Umar Mustapha has said the military would now set up permanent bases in trouble spots, which have shifted from urban centres to the countryside as a result of emergency rule.
National army spokesman Brigadier General Ibrahim Attahiru meanwhile said that Nigeria was seeking regional help from its neighbours to help put down the insurgency.

Boko Haram and their new strategy

Boko Haram

Hearing his neighbors' screams around midnight, a businessman in northeast Nigeria ripped off his pajamas and jumped out a window, hoping his dark skin would not be visible to the people attacking his village. Like many villages in the region in recent weeks, Mbitiku was under attack from Islamic militants competing with the government for support.

Before the attack, the insurgents sent threatening letters to the village ordering young men to join their Boko Haram insurgency. "Boko Haram people were going from one house to the other slaughtering people by slicing their throats," the survivor told The Associated Press of the Nov. 4 attack. He insisted on anonymity for fear of being targeted by the extremists.

Security forces have pushed Boko Haram out of cities and towns in northeastern Nigeria in recent months but the militants are now terrorizing rural villages to prevent them from supporting security forces, according to Thomas Hansen, an Africa analyst for Control Risks.

"Boko Haram needs to make sure that local communities do not support government, and they're using violence to try and further that aim," he said.

Among their latest targets are young people who do not join their rebellion. Scores of school and college students have been killed and dozens of schools forced to close in a region of the country that already suffers the worst poverty and literacy rates.

In Mbitiku, a village of mud huts, a primary school and a few concrete buildings, the businessman said 30 fighters marched in carrying large guns. They slit the throats of 10 young men, he said, so the sound of gunfire wouldn't scare off other potential victims. Cutting throats — the Muslim method for slaughtering animals — also signals disdain for the victims.

As the insurgents left the town they burned several houses to the ground, the businessman said. Mbitiku is about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Maiduguri, the Borno state capital that is the birthplace of Boko Haram, near the border with Cameroon in an area where insurgents are using mountain caves as hideouts.

Boko Haram has killed thousands of people in the past four years in a bid to force Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, to adopt the group's harsh version of Islamic law. Three northeastern states, including Adamawa, have been under emergency rule for six months and the United States now classifies Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization.

Thursday night, suspected Boko Haram fighters struck at the heart of Adamawa, killing three young men at the popular Kasuwar Gwari market in the state capital, Yola. Witnesses said the three belonged to a vigilante group that had been helping soldiers flush out insurgents. "The attackers stormed the market, fingered their victims and shot them at close range," said Musa Aboki, who sells oranges.

Several villages in Adamawa state have been attacked in recent weeks and families that can are moving to the cities for safety, said the businessman. But most rural people are subsistence farmers growing corn and rice and have no choice but to remain at home despite the danger, he added.

The United Nations has documented some 10,000 people fleeing northeast Nigeria to neighboring Chad, Cameroon and Niger in recent months but says the numbers are probably much larger. Many more are displaced inside the West African nation. Tens of thousands of farmers have abandoned their fields.

Boko Haram is 'Nigeria's problem' for now, say analysts

Car burned by Boko Haram in Bama on May 7, 2013

Nigeria requires more regional help to tackle Boko Haram militants in its restive northeast but the country is likely to have to shoulder most of the burden on its own for now, according to analysts.A senior Nigerian military official last week urged neighbouring Cameroon to do more to help tackle the Islamist insurgency, which has claimed thousands of lives since 2009 and caused international concern over its potential to spread.

The multi-national force enforcing emergency rule in Nigeria's extreme northeast and tasked with hunting down militants is currently made up of Nigerian troops, assisted by soldiers from Chad and Niger.
"Cameroon has not contributed troops. Cameroon ought to be on board and it is seen as the weak link in the fight against Boko Haram," said Kyari Mohammed, a Boko Haram specialist at the Modibbo Adama University in Yola, Adamawa state.

"If Cameroon decides to close its borders, it would help," Mohammed, who is director of the university's Centre for Peace Studies, told AFP.

Emergency rule, backed for extension by Nigeria's upper house of parliament last week, has largely pushed Boko Haram fighters from urban areas into the countryside over the last six months but attacks have continued unabated.

 

The three states under special measures -- Yobe, Borno and Adamawa -- share frontiers with Niger, Chad and Cameroon and the military has said that insurgents have struck in Nigeria then fled across the porous borders.

As such, regional co-operation was vital to tackle the issue, said Marc-Antoine Perouse de Montclos, a Nigeria specialist at the Institute of Development Research (IRD) in Paris.

Nigeria and Cameroon, whose ties have been strained in a sovereignty dispute over the territory of Bakassi, last week created a joint body aimed at securing their common border from Boko Haram and pirates in the Gulf of Guinea.

Experts recommended joint military operations and better intelligence sharing to police the more than 1,000-kilometre-long (620-mile) shared frontier. Both countries agreed to meet again in Abuja next May.

"It (the fight against Boko Haram) needs a regional resolution of the problem," said Perouse de Montclos.

"It's not the first time that Nigeria has asked for the help of its neighbours. But there's a problem of capacity."
Elizabeth Donnelly, assistant head of the Africa programme at the Chatham House international affairs think-tank in London, agreed.

"Cameroon, Niger and Chad... have competing pressures. Niger and Chad are very concerned about the fall-out from (the conflicts in) Mali and Libya. They certainly don't want another problem from another border," she said. Mohammed said Cameroon had been reluctant to engage further for fear of Boko Haram reprisals within its own borders.

 

"Nigeria is the biggest regional power," added Donnelly. "The expectation will be that Nigeria resolves its own problem."As a result attention will focus on the effectiveness of six more months of emergency rule, given that civilian deaths remain high -- both from Boko Haram strikes and military action -- and the frequency of bloody violence.

Donnelly said improving civilian protection was key in the coming months, as was better intelligence to find active Boko Haram members, while suspects needed to be put on trial in court to enforce the rule of law.
Perouse de Montclos, who likened Boko Haram to a "wild, dangerous beast trying to bite everyone", said it was vital to ensure that members of civilian vigilante groups, encouraged by the military, did not become disaffected.

Previous experience had shown that to do so would make them ripe for recruitment by the likes of Boko
Haram, he added. But Mohammed suggested that the Nigerian government needed to identify moderate elements within the militant group who are willing to talk.

"Emergency rule has not worked... Boko Haram have boxed the government into a situation where they are like Boko Haram," carrying out indiscriminate attacks that have caused scores of civilian deaths.
"We have to open a window of opportunity," he added. "We need some people to break ranks."