Boko Haram

Boko Haram, officially known as Jama'at Ahl al-Sunna li al-Da'wa wa al-Jihad (), is a self-proclaimed jihadist militant group based in northeastern Nigeria and also active in Chad, Niger, northern Cameroon, and Mali. In 2016, the group split, resulting in the emergence of a hostile faction known as the Islamic State's West Africa Province.

Founded by Mohammed Yusuf in 2002, the group was led by Abubakar Shekau from 2009 until his death in 2021, although it splintered into other groups after Yusuf's death in 2009, as well as in 2015. When the group was first formed, their main goal was to "purify", meaning to spread Sunni Islam, and destroy Shia Islam in northern Nigeria, believing jihad should be delayed until the group was strong enough to overthrow the Nigerian government. The group formerly aligned itself with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The group has been known for its brutality, and since the insurgency started in 2009, Boko Haram has killed tens of thousands of people, in frequent attacks against the police, armed forces and civilians. The conflict has resulted in the deaths of more than 300,000 children and has displaced 2.3 million from their homes. Boko Haram has contributed to regional food crises and famines.

After its founding in 2002, Boko Haram's increasing radicalisation led to the suppression operation by the Nigerian military and the killing of its leader Mohammed Yusuf in July 2009. Its unexpected resurgence, following a mass prison break in September 2010 in Bauchi, was accompanied by increasingly sophisticated attacks, initially against soft targets, but progressing in 2011 to include suicide bombings of police buildings and the United Nations office in Abuja. The government's establishment of a state of emergency at the beginning of 2012, extended in the following year to cover the entire northeast of Nigeria, led to an increase in both security force abuses and militant attacks.

Of the 2.3 million people displaced by the conflict since May 2013, at least 250,000 left Nigeria and fled to Cameroon, Chad or Niger. Boko Haram killed over 6,600 people in 2014. The group has carried out massacres including the killing by fire of 59 schoolboys in February 2014 and mass abductions including the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in Chibok, Borno State, Nigeria, in April 2014. Corruption and human rights abuses in the security services have hampered efforts to counter the unrest.

In mid-2014, the militants gained control of swaths of territory in and around their home state of Borno, estimated at in January 2015, but did not capture the state capital, Maiduguri, where the group was originally based. On 7 March 2015, Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. According to the BBC, due to internal disputes between the two groups, hundreds of militants left Boko Haram and formed their own organization, named "Islamic State's West Africa Province". In September 2015, the director of information at the Defence Headquarters of Nigeria announced that all Boko Haram camps had been destroyed but attacks from the group continue. In 2019, the president of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, claimed that Boko Haram was "technically defeated". Shekau was killed and confirmed to be dead in May 2021. Despite this, Boko Haram experienced a subsequent revival under a new leader, Bakura Doro.

Name

The organization's name has always been Group of the People of Sunnah for Dawa and Jihad (). It was also known as the West African Province (''Wilayat Garb Ifrqiya''), and, after pledging allegiance to Islamic State in 2015, was briefly called Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA) or Islamic State's West African Province (ISWAP). The group fractured in 2016, however, and ISWAP and Boko Haram are now separate groups.

The name ''Boko Haram'' is usually translated as "Western education is forbidden". "Haram" is from the Arabic ('' ḥarām'', "forbidden") and the Hausa word ''boko'' (the first vowel is long, the second pronounced in a low tone), meaning "fake", which is used to refer to secular Western education. In a 2009 statement they denounced that translation as the work of the "infidel media", claiming the true translation is "Western Civilization is forbidden", and that they are not "opposed to formal education coming from the West" but "believe in the supremacy of Islamic culture (not education)". Other translations in English include "Western influence is a sin", and "Westernization is sacrilege". Until the death of its founder Mohammed Yusuf, the group was also reportedly known as ''Yusifiyya''. Northern Nigerians have commonly dismissed Western education as ''ilimin boko'' ("fake education") and secular schools as ''makaranta boko'' ("fake school").

Causes, ideology, and takfir

Causes/contributors

Economic

Some analysts have emphasized economic causes as a factor in Boko Haram's success. Wealth in Nigeria has been concentrated among members of a small political elite. Nigeria is Africa's biggest economy, but 60% of its population of 173 million live on less than $1 a day.

Religious

The sharia law imposed by local authorities, beginning with Zamfara in January 2000 and covering 12 northern states by late 2002, may have promoted links between Boko Haram and political leaders, but was considered by the group to have been corrupted.

Extant resentment of colonialism

Academic Atta Barkindo explains the group's "baffling" ability to "maintain momentum" in part by the "accumulated and unaddressed grievances" against colonialism in the region, including the colonial boundaries (of Nigeria, Ghana, etc.) established by Europeans that bear no resemblance to "pre-colonial empires, ethnic or cultural territories", and by the group's use of the "historical narrative" of the Islamic Kanem–Bornu Empire. Mohammad Yusuf preached that, "our land was an Islamic state before it was turned into a land of kafir (infidel); the current system is contrary to true Muslim beliefs".

Political advantage

The political interests and bias of the Nigerian elite is believed to play a major role in the thriving of the activities of the organization: the political leadership requires that the press refer to the group as bandits rather than terrorists, which downplays the threat they pose.

Illiteracy/lack of education

In a discussion organized by the Woodrow Wilson Center, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, a former president of Nigeria, highlighted the low level of literacy and education in the Northern parts of the country as contributing to the perpetuation of Boko Haram. According to Obasanjo, illiterate and uneducated children are more likely to be drawn into the ranks of the terrorist organization.

Ideology

The founder of Boko Haram, Muhammad Yusuf, was reportedly inspired by the controversial Islamic preacher Mohammed Marwa ( Maitatsine), who condemned the reading of any books other than the Quran. In one 2009 interview, Yusuf expressed his opposition not only to Western education, but to the theory of evolution, a spherical Earth, and to the idea that rain comes from " evaporation caused by the sun" rather than being created and sent down directly by God.

Boko Haram opposes the Westernization of Nigerian society, which it blames for "Nigeria's culture of corruption", and demands the establishment of an Islamic state in Nigeria. It developed into a jihadist group in 2009. As Sunni Salafi Jihadis, the group strives to re-establish the Islamic caliphate and bring all peoples under its domain, doing away with modern states and patriotic feeling towards them. After Boko Haram declared its allegiance to the Islamic State, an IS statement proclaimed "It was the rejection of nationalism that drove the '' mujahidin'' in Nigeria to give ''bay'ah'' (fealty) to the Islamic State and wage war against the Nigerian '' murtaddin'' (apostates) fighting for the Nigerian '' taghut'' (idolatrous tyrant)". The movement is diffuse, and fighters who are associated with it follow the Salafi doctrine.

Takfir

Members' beliefs tend to be centered on strict adherence to Wahhabism, which is an extremely strict form of Sunni Islam that sees many other forms of Islam as idolatrous.

The group has denounced the members of the Sufi and the Shiite sects as infidels, and also mainstream Sunni Muslims who fail to support their jihad. This willingness to takfir – i.e. accuse self-professed Muslims of being apostates from Islam and thus subject to execution – is a departure from mainstream Islam but not Salafi jihadism.

An insurgent aiming to overthrow a Muslim government faces a challenge due to mainstream Islamic doctrine, which forbids the killing or enslaving of fellow Muslims, including government officials, military personnel, or ordinary Muslims who don't support the insurgency. However, by using takfir—declaring opponents as apostates—the insurgents not only bypass this prohibition but also turn the killing of these Muslims into a "religious duty." In a 18 December 2016 speech to his commanders, Shekau proclaimed that 'even if a woman is praying and fasting, once she engages in democracy I can capture her in a battle'.

According to researchers Jacob Zenna and Zacharias Pier,

History

Background

Before it was colonized and subsequently incorporated into the British Empire as Colonial Nigeria in 1900, the Bornu Empire

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