Boko Haram/ISWAP Roundup for August 27, 2020

Previous roundup here.

Politics

Recent activities and remarks by Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum:

• Isa Lameen, governor of Niger Republic’s Diffa Region, led a delegation to Maiduguri, Borno’s capital, on August 21 to offer sympathy regarding the recent attack on Zulum’s convoy in Baga, Borno. See press coverage of the visit here, and Zulum’s Facebook post on the meeting here.
• In an interview with BBC Hausa published on August 21, Zulum said that Boko Haram has recruited internally displaced persons (IDPs) who are frustrated at the lack of opportunity to go home and resume farming. See English-language coverage of his remarks here.
• Zulum visited Magumeri (map), site of a recent attack, on August 25. His Facebook post on the visit, with excerpts of remarks he gave in Magumeri, is here.

Senator Ali Ndume (Borno South) spoke on August 26 to the Senate Committee on Special Duties and the North East Development Commission at a stakeholders’ meeting in Maiduguri. He emphasized Boko Haram’s impact on his constituents, particularly in his hometown of Gwoza (map).

“Even as a serving senator, I still cannot go to Gwoza my home town because it is not safe,” he said.

“Our security operatives are trying their bests, and we have to give it to them. But the situation is overwhelming. People are dying every day, either from attacks or by hunger. We have lost many lives here.

“There was a time in my home town Gwoza, that about 75 elders most of whom I know personally were dragged by Boko Haram to the town’s abattoir and slaughtered like animals. Only two persons survived because their bodies were covered with other people’s’ blood and the assailants thought they were dead.

“In the same Gwoza, Boko Haram had in a single day lined up young men and summarily shot them dead. These were just some stand out cases.”

The Nigerian human rights activist Chidi Odinkalu, however, poses some critical questions regarding Ndume’s remarks:

Sen. Ali Ndume: “Even as a serving senator of @NGRSenate, I still cannot go to Gwoza my home town because it is not safe."

Me: But people felt safe enough to vote en masse for u, no? How did u get elected – ex-parte or by affidavit?https://t.co/SYBhERAskC

— Chidi Odinkalu (@ChidiOdinkalu) August 27, 2020

Attacks

Here is the Council on Foreign Relations’ Nigeria Security Tracker update for August 15-21.

Punch (August 27):

Jihadists have killed 14 people on a Cameroonian island on Lake Chad near the border with Nigeria after their town decided to block food supplies to the insurgents, security sources said Thursday.

Fighters from the so-called Islamic State West Africa Province landed on the island of Bulgaram aboard speedboats from an enclave on the Nigerian side late Tuesday, they said.

Reports are still emerging about the mass hostage-taking by ISWAP in its August 18 attack on Kukawa, Borno (map).

Nigeria’s The Guardian (August 21):

Jihadists linked to an Islamic State insurgency group have registered their presence in Yobe State, despite claims from the Nigeria Army that the state is free of terrorists.

Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) terrorists Thursday [August 20] dropped leaflets in Buni Gari region of the state [approximate map here] threatening to attack security officials in the region. ISWAP is a splinter group of Boko Haram.

The Boko Haram splinter group Ansar al-Muslimin, commonly known as “Ansaru,” has claimed a few attacks so far in 2020. Here is one, in Kaduna State:

Ansaru claims an attack on Nigerian soldiers in Kaduna State, saying at least 35 soldiers were killed. 3 vehicles are said to have been destroyed, 1 captured.
The statement quotes "European and local media" but I have no idea what attack are they referring to. pic.twitter.com/oAg2RiS4tY

— Tomasz Rolbiecki (@TomaszRolbiecki) August 23, 2020

Publications and Reports

The Church of the Brethren is publishing a book of testimonials by members who were victimized by Boko Haram, based on interviews in February-March 2017.

Human Rights Watch (August 25):

Boko Haram used apparent child suicide bombers in an unlawful attack on a site for displaced people in the Far North region of Cameroon, Human Rights Watch said today.

The attack, carried out overnight between August 1 and 2, 2020 in the town of Nguetechewe, killed at least 17 civilians, including 5 children and 6 women, and wounded at least 16. There was no evident military objective in the vicinity.

Here’s one I don’t believe I included in previous roundups – a new factsheet (French) from UN OCHA on Diffa, Niger, covering the period April-June 2020. Among other important details, the factsheet estimates that some 28,000 were displaced in Diffa between December 2019 and June 2020. The factsheet estimates that there are over 125,000 refugees in Diffa and over 100,000 IDPs there, and 740,000 inhabitants. The factsheet further notes a spate of kidnappings by non-state actors (presumably they mean jihadists) and bandits, often targeting women and children.

Roundup of Recent Reports on Boko Haram, Ansaru, ISWAP, and the Surrounding Conflict

Philip Olayoku and Bassim Al-Hussaini, Spoor Africa, “Beyond the Decade of Boko Haram Insurgency in Nigeria: Counterinsurgency through the Eyes of Key Stakeholders.” For me, the most interesting part was Chapter 4, “Multi-Stakeholder Counterinsurgency Approaches in Nigeria’s Northeast.” An excerpt (pp. 12-13):

Abiola Sanusi, the Chair of the Safe Schools Declaration Sub-Committee of the Education in Emergencies Working Group Nigeria emphasised the fact that women and children remain the worst sufferers as they constitute 79% of the IDPs. Overall, women make up 54% of the total IDP population as most of them have become household heads resulting from death of or separation from their spouses. In giving the statistics of the impacts on these vulnerable groups, wom- en and children in the base states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, about 2.7million women and children need nutrition, out of which around 350, 000 children suffer from severe acute malnutrition (SAM) and 250,000 others from moderate acute malnutrition (MAM). Children victims include at least 3,500 recruits by the insur- gents while young girls have been most targeted as human bombs numbering up to 136 from 2017 according to the available data. Education has also been un- der severe attacks with 867 schools reportedly closed, leading to at least 390,150 children out of school and 19,000 teachers displaced. Also, 645 teachers have been killed and 1,500 schools destroyed or occupied (by the insurgents, military or IDPs). There is however the effort to create safe schools through the develop- ment of the Policy on Safety and Security in schools to ensure minimum stand- ards for ensuring that school children, teachers and administrators are protected from harm in schools. Edwin Kuria, Director of the Humanitarian Programmes at Save the Children, Nigeria puts the total number of people in need of assistance in affected communities at 7.1million across Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States, with about 930,000 people in very remote areas that are hard to reach resulting in very minimal or no access to aids by humanitarian actors, and 230,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women acutely malnourished. 2.8 million children reportedly out of school in Borno State alone while children constitute 58% of the total num- ber of 5.8 million people in need of assistance. He therefore advanced the need for the special protection of children facing grave human rights violations to avert a lost generation of children.

Zoë Gorman, Aspenia Online, “Chad: Extremist Violence and Recession in the Wake of the Pandemic.” A quote:

[Chadian President Idriss] Déby, who has held office since 1990, is struggling to balance a need to confront internal vulnerabilities with external military engagements critical to his continued political longevity.[6] Home to 60 million people from more than 200 ethnic groups, Chad is surrounded by conflict states — Libya, Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR), as well as the Lake Chad states, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria.[7] Against a highly variegated security landscape and a faltering oil-dependent economy, Chad faces internal insurgency and youth unrest. Elections for the national assembly have been repeatedly postponed or cancelled since 2015 with security concerns cited, and soldiers are increasingly frustrated with rampant corruption and ethnic discrimination concerning the payment of military salaries and access to medical care.[8]

Abdullahi Murtala, The Republic, “The Resurgence of Ansaru.” I wasn’t convinced by this one. From the article itself:

Ansaru claimed responsibility for the 17 January attack on a convoy in Kaduna State. This was the group’s first attack since 2013. Through Al Qaeda’s Al Hijrah Media, Ansaru stated that it targeted a military convoy and destroyed several vehicles along the Kaduna-Zaria road. It was later revealed that the military contingent attacked was escorting the convoy of the Emir of Potiskum, the northeastern town. In response, the Nigerian Police Force conducted a raid that supposedly killed 250 Ansaru members in the group’s Birnin Gwari camp in Kaduna. The 17 January attack is a disturbing signal that Ansaru is resuming its activities. Furthermore, the group is currently exploiting ungoverned spaces, vulnerable rural communities, and the existing climate of insecurity in the North, a region that has been plagued by kidnappings, armed rural banditry, and violence.

That’s the contradiction that runs through so much of the writing on Ansaru (and other jihadist groups) – any time they make a public statement or claim an attack, it’s supposedly a sign of their resurgence; but then they’re treated as super insidious because of all their supposedly unclaimed attacks. Which is it? If they’re dangerous because they’re in the shadows, then why is it a big deal when they make a statement? And if they only claim a few attacks, then how can we be confident they’re so powerful in the shadows?

One could ask related questions about the new International Crisis Group report on violence in northwest Nigeria. An excerpt (p. 12):

Many Nigerian security and other independent local sources interviewed by Crisis Group corroborate that amid the breakdown of stability in Zamfara and elsewhere, two Boko Haram offshoots are making inroads into the region, where they are forging tighter relationships with aggrieved communities, herder-affiliated armed groups and criminal gangs. The first is Jama’atu Ansarul Muslimina Fi Biladis Sudan (or the Group of Partisans for Muslims in Black Africa), better known as Ansaru, an al-Qaeda-linked group that declared itself independent from Boko Haram in 2012 and was operating in north-western Nigeria until it was largely dismantled by security forces by 2016. Now it seems to be making a comeback. Secondly, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) – another splinter of Boko Haram in Nigeria’s North East zone – has forged links to communities in the north-western region on the border with Niger, which is separately in the throes of fighting its own local Islamic State insurgency. Ansaru, which has a long history of operating in the North West (where it engaged in the high-profile kidnapping of expatriate engineers between 2012 and 2013), is forging new relationships with other smaller radical groups in Zamfara state, particularly in the areas around Munhaye, Tsafe, Zurmi, Shinkafi and Kaura Namoda. The group has also deployed clerics to discredit democratic rule and the state government’s peace efforts, a “hearts and minds” campaign aimed at winning support from rural communities. It is also wooing some of the armed groups to its ranks, including by offering or selling them AK-47 rifles supplied by its allies in the al-Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), at lower than the prevailing market price. Security officials say it has been recruiting members, and that it previously sent some recruits to Libya for combat training.

First, why should these statements from security officials – or even from ICG’s other interviewees – be accepted uncritically? And second, if Ansaru is so embedded in the conflict that it traffics arms, allies with other groups, and operates a preaching network, why does it not announce these activities? Are they shy? Again, you see this pattern throughout much analysis of jihadism. “The group made a statement! Drop everything!” and then in the next breath “This group is too clever to proclaim themselves publicly! Drop everything!”

Finally, Folahanmi Aina, Wilson Center Africa Up Close, “Re-Engineering Counter-Terrorism Efforts in Nigeria’s North East: The Pursuit of Peace.” Aina discusses what he calls “mutuality”:

Let us consider two levels of mutuality, using the case study of Nigeria’s North East region. The first level is international—the Nigerian state and its neighbors and partners under the umbrella of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJT)—which can be seen as the two ends of the same cord. For peace to be nurtured and achieved, it has to be rooted in mutuality between the two actors as distinct political entities. This requires their respective political leaders to commit to upholding agreements and commitments in the common war against the region’s insurgencies.

A second level of mutuality needed to nurture and achieve lasting is internal: each state must be able to secure mutuality with its own society in attaining shared goals. This internal mutuality is what this essay focuses on. This essay argues that the chances of ensuring lasting peace are better when this second level of mutuality (internal) is pursued alongside the first level (international), rather than being completely ignored.