Boko Haram - Boko Haram

Boko Haram

OHIO SHORT HISTORIES OF AFRICA

This series of Ohio Short Histories of Africa is meant for those who are looking for a brief but lively introduction to a wide range of topics in African history, politics, and biography, written by some of the leading experts in their fields.

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by Lindy Wilson

Spear of the Nation (Umkhonto weSizwe):

South Africas Liberation Army, 1960s1990s

by Janet Cherry

Epidemics: The Story of South Africas Five Most Lethal Human Diseases

by Howard Phillips

South Africas Struggle for Human Rights

by Saul Dubow

San Rock Art

by J.D. Lewis-Williams

Ingrid Jonker: Poet under Apartheid

by Louise Viljoen

The ANC Youth League

by Clive Glaser

Govan Mbeki

by Colin Bundy

The Idea of the ANC

by Anthony Butler

Emperor Haile Selassie

by Bereket Habte Selassie

Thomas Sankara: An African Revolutionary

by Ernest Harsch

Patrice Lumumba

by Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja

Short-changed? South Africa since Apartheid

by Colin Bundy

The ANC Womens League: Sex, Gender and Politics

by Shireen Hassim

The Soweto Uprising

by Noor Nieftagodien

Frantz Fanon: Toward a Revolutionary Humanism

by Christopher J. Lee

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

by Pamela Scully

Ken Saro-Wiwa

by Roy Doron and Toyin Falola

South Sudan: A New History for a New Nation

by Douglas H. Johnson

Julius Nyerere

by Paul Bjerk

Thabo Mbeki

by Adekeye Adebajo

Robert Mugabe

by Sue Onslow and Martin Plaut

Albert Luthuli

by Robert Trent Vinson

Boko Haram

by Brandon Kendhammer and Carmen McCain

Boko Haram

Brandon Kendhammer and Carmen McCain

OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS

ATHENS

Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701

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2018 by Ohio University Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kendhammer, Brandon, author. | McCain, Carmen, author.

Title: Boko Haram / Brandon Kendhammer and Carmen McCain.

Other titles: Ohio short histories of Africa.

Description: Athens, Ohio : Ohio University Press, 2018. | Series: Ohio short histories of Africa | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018031924| ISBN 9780821423516 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780821446577 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Boko Haram--History. | Terrorist organizations--Nigeria, Northern--History--21st century. | Terrorism--Prevention--Government policy--Nigeria. | Social conflict--Nigeria, Northern--Religious aspects. | Nigeria, Northern--Social conditions--21st century. | Nigeria--Politics and government--21st century.

Classification: LCC HV6433.N62 B6535 2018 | DDC 363.3250966909051--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018031924

Contents

Illustrations

Figures

Maps

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Gill Berchowitz of Ohio University Press for her tireless support and encouragement of this project. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their feedback and suggestions. Over the years, we have both accumulated substantial debts in the form of support and encouragement, and we cannot thank everyone here. Nonetheless, we wish to especially acknowledge Cornell Universitys Institute for Africa Development, the University of Vermont Rakin Lecture series, and the Northwestern University Nollywood Working Group, who hosted presentations of this work in draft form. We are also grateful to Philip Ostien, who provided invaluable primary sources on Boko Harams early days, and to the communities of Kannywood filmmakers and Jos-based music video producers who were generous with their work responding to and influenced by the conflict. We dedicate this book to the lives of all of Boko Harams victims, and to the remarkable courage of so many Nigerians affected by its violence.

Map 1. Nigeria. Map by Brian Edward Balsley, GISP

Map 2. Northeastern Nigeria. Map by Brian Edward Balsley, GISP

Introduction

In July 2009, a showdown was brewing in Maiduguri, northeastern Nigerias largest city. On one side were the followers of a charismatic local Muslim scholar named Mohammed Yusuf. Yusuf had risen over the course of a decade from relative anonymity to become one of the most influential (and radical) clerics in the country, building a community of thousands of followers informally known around the region as Boko Haram (roughly, Westernization Is Forbidden). A powerful public speaker and skilled organizer, Yusuf taught that Nigerian Muslims had fallen away from the true Islam of the Prophets time and that it could only be restored by rejecting outside influences such as democracy and Western-style education. To that end, he and his supporters had amassed money, property, and (it was rumored) weapons in anticipation of a showdown with a government they regarded as entirely illegitimate.

On the other side were fearful local authorities, many of whom had watched Yusufs rise with interest and even sought to co-opt or collaborate with him on their own political schemes in the years following Nigerias surprising return to democratic rule in 1999. In recent months, they had responded to growing evidence of his strength and rumored connections to more violent movements in North Africa and the Middle East by stepping up their campaign of public harassment and intimidation, and the situation was clearly escalating. It would take only a little spark to set off an explosion.

On July 26, Yusufs supporters struck first, and the police and military responded with their full might. Within just a few days, eight hundred members of the group were dead, many reportedly killed in cold blood by security forces after the fighting had stopped. The tally included Yusuf himself, illegally executed behind a police station after interrogation. Soon after, the Nigerian government declared the movement over and the problem solved. Yet within a year, Boko Haram had rebuilt itself under the leadership of a charismatic and vicious figure named Abubakar Shekau, Yusufs former second-in-command. Under Shekau, Boko Haram fashioned itself into a violent jihadist movement dedicated to destroying the Nigerian state and establishing its own strident vision of Islam as the law of the land. Within just a few years, it would become one of the deadliest insurgencies in the world, capable of mounting well-planned bombings, brutal hit-and-run attacks and assassinations, and even winning pitched battles with the Nigerian Army.

Yet for the vast majority of Nigerians, the realities of the warand by 2013 it was indeed a war, with a federal state of emergency in three of Nigerias thirty-six states and a massive troop deploymentmade little impression. Nigerias political leadership downplayed the conflicts severity, both to its own people and the international community. Meanwhile, rumors (partially true but often wildly exaggerated) that the group was supported by foreigners circulated as proof that Boko Haram was not really a