REVEALED: How Nigerian Terrorist Group Boko Haram Recruits Members And Finances Its Operations
In July 2014, Cameroon’s Defence Ministry announced that Boko Haram was a growing threat in the Lake Chad region and now has approximately 1...
http://www.africaeagle.com/2014/12/revealed-how-nigerian-terrorist-group.html
In July 2014, Cameroon’s Defence Ministry announced that Boko Haram was a growing threat in the Lake Chad region and now has approximately 15,000 to 20,000 members. A Nigerian journalist with longstanding contacts with Boko Haram, however, says that Boko Haram has up to 50,000 members.
Even the lower estimate of the two would mean Boko Haram has similar manpower as militant groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria and pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine.
The higher estimate may be correct if “members” include not only armed militants but also individuals who cooperate with Boko Haram, whether intentionally or coerced. Using this inclusive definition of “members,” two of Boko Haram’s newest recruitment profiles are of forcible conscripts, especially teenage boys and girls, and financiers, who are primarily businessmen, arms traffickers, and kidnappers in Cameroon.
Forcible recruitment of teenage boys
Since the Chibok kidnapping in April 2014, Boko Haram has increasingly kidnapped teenage boys in northeastern Nigeria and “re-educated” them at Qur’anic schools that are often in Cameroon. Signposts in Arabic language that Boko Haram erected in Cameroonian border towns with ISIL’s rayat al-uqab insignia on them say, “It is a crime and treason not to join jihad.” (The author received a video of a battle between security forces and Boko Haram in Fotokol, Cameroon where such signposts could be seen). This is likely Boko Haram’s justification for the forcible conscription and killing of boys (and girls) who refuse.
The militants use untrained boys to acquire intelligence and carry out the first wave of attacks on villages or barracks. When they gain experience, they can be part of the second wave designed to overwhelm the security forces after the first wave weakens their positions and morale. Boys may also be given a quota of how many security officers or “high value targets” they must attack, and risk death at the hands of their commanders if they fail or show “cowardice.”
Boko Haram also appears to be focusing on Cameroon for its non-forcible recruitment of men, possibly because the destruction of villages in Nigeria has alienated youths and caused them to flee to IDP camps outside of Borno or join the anti-Boko Haram Civilian Joint Task Force (JTF) vigilante group. In Cameroon, which until 2014 was spared from large-scale attacks, locals often consider Boko Haram “just another religious group” or “the boys.” According to Cameroonian police, there have been more than 500 new recruits in villages along the border with Nigeria, some of whom were “drugged or manipulated” in training camps. They provide Boko Haram with the ability to use Cameroon as a rear base for attacking Nigeria, to raise money through kidnapping foreigners, and to traffic weapons into Nigeria from Cameroonian border towns.
Financiers, arms traffickers and kidnappings in Cameroon
When Boko Haram was an above ground movement before 2009, it had wealthy members who served as intermediaries between financial sponsors, such as local government officials or wealthy Salafists abroad, and Muhammad Yusuf. Now officials have distanced themselves from Boko Haram, while mainstream Salafist and al-Qa`ida funding decreased as a result of Boko Haram’s massacres, the break-up of Ansaru’s shura in Kaduna in 2012, and the French-led military intervention in northern Mali in 2013, which disrupted the AQIM supply line to Boko Haram. However, Boko Haram has made inroads with new financiers, who are from Borno and bordering areas of Cameroon’s extreme North Region and are often ethnic Kanuris like Yusuf, Shekau and most Boko Haram members. These financiers provide Boko Haram with weapons and a route to negotiation with the Cameroonian government in kidnapping-for-ransom operations.
One Cameroonian financier, Alhaji Abdalla, is a vehicle exporter based in Amchide whose business operations extend to Qatar (the vehicles likely move from Doha to other ports in Asia). He served as a key negotiator for Boko Haram in talks with the Cameroonian government for the release of the French Moulin-Fournier family of seven, which was kidnapped by Boko Haram (likely in coordination with Ansaru) in Waza (a town 16 miles east of Amchide) in February 2013. The government paid a $3.14 million ransom and released Boko Haram prisoners in April 2013 in exchange for the family.
In July 2014, Boko Haram kidnapped from Kolofata (a town three miles from Amchide) the town’s Lamido (local ruler) and his family and the wife of Cameroon Deputy Prime Minister, Amadou Ali, who represented the Cameroon side in negotiations for the Moulin-Fourniers and ran programmes to prevent recruitment of Cameroonian youths to Boko Haram (Amadou Ali was outside of Kolofata so he avoided being kidnapped). The kidnapping was reportedly motivated in part by Cameroon’s failure to pay the full ransom for the Moulin-Fourniers.
In October 2014, however, Boko Haram released the wife of Amadou Ali and the Lamido and his family, along with 10 Chinese engineers who were kidnapped in April 2014 from Waza, after the Cameroonian government paid approximately $600,000 in ransom to cover the remaining payment for the Moulin-Fourniers. In addition, Cameroon released 30 prisoners, including some who were imprisoned in Maroua in July 2014 after being caught stockpiling weapons in the town of Kousseri on Cameroon’s border with Chad.
Others released from prison included a leading Boko Haram recruiter, the mastermind of a kidnapping of two Italian priests and a Canadian nun in a town north of Maroua in June 2014, and the top Cameroonian Boko Haram commander, Abakar Ali. Abakar Ali was arrested in September 2014 in Kousseri and revealed under interrogation that he coordinated arms trafficking with the mayor of Fotokol (a town on Cameroon’s border with Nigeria at Gambarou-Ngala), who was subsequently arrested with stockpiles of weapons at his residence. Cameroon also reportedly returned to Boko Haram some of the weapons and ammunition it confiscated from Boko Haram in Kousseri.
The pattern of Boko Haram kidnappings of foreigners in exchange for ransoms and the release of weapons traffickers occurred in several other instances. When Boko Haram kidnapped a French priest in “coordination” with Ansaru in November 2013 from a town 16 miles south of Amchide, the militants released him weeks later for a multi-million dollar ransom and a Kanuri weapons trafficker. Boko Haram also released the two Italian priests and Canadian nun after several weeks in captivity in June 2014 in another prisoner exchange and ransom deal.
The tie between arms traffickers and Boko Haram commanders was also highlighted in key arrests in Cameroon. One Chadian weapons trafficker was arrested in Waza in June 2014 working on behalf of a Maroua-based Boko Haram commander and possessed $15,000 from deals that he made in Chad. Days before his arrest, Cameroon uncovered weapons stockpiles in Maroua’s central market. In addition, in June 2014, Cameroon discovered travel documents from Libya (Africa’s largest arms market since 2011) and Qatar and receipts from car exports to Qatar in a Boko Haram camp, which suggests a possible link to Alhaji Abdalla, who was Boko Haram’s negotiator in the Moulin-Fournier and other kidnappings.
Across the border in Nigeria, one of the financiers of the Chibok kidnapping and a plotter of the assassination of the emir of Gwoza was a Kanuri named Babaji Yaari, who runs a lucrative taxi business. He coordinated the Chibok kidnapping with the leader of Boko Haram’s female wing, Hafsat Bako, who was discussed above. Bako was arrested based on the Nigerian security force’s interrogation of Yaari. The transfer of many of the schoolgirls to Cameroon and Chad after the kidnapping suggests that Bako’s and Yaari’s network and the network of kidnappers, financiers, and arms traffickers in Cameroon likely overlap.
This piece reveals several new trends in the Boko Haram insurgency. First, Boko Haram’s recruitment now includes hundreds, if not thousands, of forcibly conscripted boys and girls, who are often taken to and “re-educated” in Cameroon. This type of recruitment demonstrates Boko Haram’s need for more human resources to control territory in its self-described caliphate in northeastern Nigeria, and increasingly also in Cameroon.
The introduction of new commanders other than Abubakar Shekau, who was previously the only public face of Boko Haram, in videos of an attack in Gwoza in Borno State and the beheading of a Nigerian air force pilot in August and October 2014 show Boko Haram’s intent to reveal new commanders and emirs as the militants gain control of more local government areas. Moreover, the arrest of Tuaregs from Mali fighting for Boko Haram in Cameroon in September 2014 suggests that its kidnapping and arms trafficking operations may be attracting militants who can strengthen the cross-border insurgency in Nigeria and Cameroon.
Second, Boko Haram is increasingly launching operations in Cameroon’s extreme North Region and attempting to seize control of Cameroonian border towns, such as Fotokol, Amchide and Kolofata, to secure supply lines for receiving weapons from Chad and Libya for use in Nigeria. Boko Haram may also seek to gain control of interior towns in the Extreme North Region, such as Maroua, Waza, and Kousseri, not only for their importance in the supply line, but also for their historic value as parts of the former Kanem-Borno Caliphate, or “Greater Kanoura.”
The Kanem-Borno Caliphate’s former boundaries correspond almost precisely to Boko Haram’s current area of operations, and Boko Haram may seek to recreate that caliphate through its own newly-declared caliphate, but with takfiri ideology replacing the Sufi traditions of the descendants of the Kanem-Borno emirs, who Boko Haram has killed or expelled from northeastern Nigeria. Boko Haram’s seizure of Abadam on Borno’s border with Niger’s Diffa Province in October 2014, which is also part of the historic Kanem-Borno empire, could signal future Boko Haram operations in Niger, where Boko Haram has supply lines that are currently more often used for receiving food and fuel than weapons.
The “reunification” of the former Kanem-Borno Caliphate areas would seemingly erase the legacy of colonialism that Boko Haram founder, Muhammed Yusuf, criticised in his sermons for “amalgamating (Borno) to the infidels…leaving Niger in poverty…and creating ethnic problems and political divisions in Chad.”
Finally, one of the key questions for the Nigerian government is whether a deal for the release of the Chibok schoolgirls, or any type of ceasefire with Boko Haram, is possible and whether it would require Nigeria to cede territory to Boko Haram.
According to Muhammed Yusuf’s sermons, establishing an Islamic State was a prerequisite for Boko Haram to have the “independence” to negotiate on equal footing with the “infidel” Nigerian government. It therefore appears that Boko Haram still follows Yusuf’s doctrine, but now also with a model and legitimacy from ISIL on how to create this Islamic State through guerrilla warfare and territorial control.
Jacob Zenn is an analyst of African and Eurasian Affairs for The Jamestown Foundation in Washington DC, United States and is an expert on countering violent extremism for think-tanks and international organisations in West Africa and Central Asia.
Source: Nigerian Tribune
Even the lower estimate of the two would mean Boko Haram has similar manpower as militant groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria and pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine.
The higher estimate may be correct if “members” include not only armed militants but also individuals who cooperate with Boko Haram, whether intentionally or coerced. Using this inclusive definition of “members,” two of Boko Haram’s newest recruitment profiles are of forcible conscripts, especially teenage boys and girls, and financiers, who are primarily businessmen, arms traffickers, and kidnappers in Cameroon.
Forcible recruitment of teenage boys
Since the Chibok kidnapping in April 2014, Boko Haram has increasingly kidnapped teenage boys in northeastern Nigeria and “re-educated” them at Qur’anic schools that are often in Cameroon. Signposts in Arabic language that Boko Haram erected in Cameroonian border towns with ISIL’s rayat al-uqab insignia on them say, “It is a crime and treason not to join jihad.” (The author received a video of a battle between security forces and Boko Haram in Fotokol, Cameroon where such signposts could be seen). This is likely Boko Haram’s justification for the forcible conscription and killing of boys (and girls) who refuse.
The militants use untrained boys to acquire intelligence and carry out the first wave of attacks on villages or barracks. When they gain experience, they can be part of the second wave designed to overwhelm the security forces after the first wave weakens their positions and morale. Boys may also be given a quota of how many security officers or “high value targets” they must attack, and risk death at the hands of their commanders if they fail or show “cowardice.”
Boko Haram also appears to be focusing on Cameroon for its non-forcible recruitment of men, possibly because the destruction of villages in Nigeria has alienated youths and caused them to flee to IDP camps outside of Borno or join the anti-Boko Haram Civilian Joint Task Force (JTF) vigilante group. In Cameroon, which until 2014 was spared from large-scale attacks, locals often consider Boko Haram “just another religious group” or “the boys.” According to Cameroonian police, there have been more than 500 new recruits in villages along the border with Nigeria, some of whom were “drugged or manipulated” in training camps. They provide Boko Haram with the ability to use Cameroon as a rear base for attacking Nigeria, to raise money through kidnapping foreigners, and to traffic weapons into Nigeria from Cameroonian border towns.
Financiers, arms traffickers and kidnappings in Cameroon
When Boko Haram was an above ground movement before 2009, it had wealthy members who served as intermediaries between financial sponsors, such as local government officials or wealthy Salafists abroad, and Muhammad Yusuf. Now officials have distanced themselves from Boko Haram, while mainstream Salafist and al-Qa`ida funding decreased as a result of Boko Haram’s massacres, the break-up of Ansaru’s shura in Kaduna in 2012, and the French-led military intervention in northern Mali in 2013, which disrupted the AQIM supply line to Boko Haram. However, Boko Haram has made inroads with new financiers, who are from Borno and bordering areas of Cameroon’s extreme North Region and are often ethnic Kanuris like Yusuf, Shekau and most Boko Haram members. These financiers provide Boko Haram with weapons and a route to negotiation with the Cameroonian government in kidnapping-for-ransom operations.
One Cameroonian financier, Alhaji Abdalla, is a vehicle exporter based in Amchide whose business operations extend to Qatar (the vehicles likely move from Doha to other ports in Asia). He served as a key negotiator for Boko Haram in talks with the Cameroonian government for the release of the French Moulin-Fournier family of seven, which was kidnapped by Boko Haram (likely in coordination with Ansaru) in Waza (a town 16 miles east of Amchide) in February 2013. The government paid a $3.14 million ransom and released Boko Haram prisoners in April 2013 in exchange for the family.
In July 2014, Boko Haram kidnapped from Kolofata (a town three miles from Amchide) the town’s Lamido (local ruler) and his family and the wife of Cameroon Deputy Prime Minister, Amadou Ali, who represented the Cameroon side in negotiations for the Moulin-Fourniers and ran programmes to prevent recruitment of Cameroonian youths to Boko Haram (Amadou Ali was outside of Kolofata so he avoided being kidnapped). The kidnapping was reportedly motivated in part by Cameroon’s failure to pay the full ransom for the Moulin-Fourniers.
In October 2014, however, Boko Haram released the wife of Amadou Ali and the Lamido and his family, along with 10 Chinese engineers who were kidnapped in April 2014 from Waza, after the Cameroonian government paid approximately $600,000 in ransom to cover the remaining payment for the Moulin-Fourniers. In addition, Cameroon released 30 prisoners, including some who were imprisoned in Maroua in July 2014 after being caught stockpiling weapons in the town of Kousseri on Cameroon’s border with Chad.
Others released from prison included a leading Boko Haram recruiter, the mastermind of a kidnapping of two Italian priests and a Canadian nun in a town north of Maroua in June 2014, and the top Cameroonian Boko Haram commander, Abakar Ali. Abakar Ali was arrested in September 2014 in Kousseri and revealed under interrogation that he coordinated arms trafficking with the mayor of Fotokol (a town on Cameroon’s border with Nigeria at Gambarou-Ngala), who was subsequently arrested with stockpiles of weapons at his residence. Cameroon also reportedly returned to Boko Haram some of the weapons and ammunition it confiscated from Boko Haram in Kousseri.
The pattern of Boko Haram kidnappings of foreigners in exchange for ransoms and the release of weapons traffickers occurred in several other instances. When Boko Haram kidnapped a French priest in “coordination” with Ansaru in November 2013 from a town 16 miles south of Amchide, the militants released him weeks later for a multi-million dollar ransom and a Kanuri weapons trafficker. Boko Haram also released the two Italian priests and Canadian nun after several weeks in captivity in June 2014 in another prisoner exchange and ransom deal.
The tie between arms traffickers and Boko Haram commanders was also highlighted in key arrests in Cameroon. One Chadian weapons trafficker was arrested in Waza in June 2014 working on behalf of a Maroua-based Boko Haram commander and possessed $15,000 from deals that he made in Chad. Days before his arrest, Cameroon uncovered weapons stockpiles in Maroua’s central market. In addition, in June 2014, Cameroon discovered travel documents from Libya (Africa’s largest arms market since 2011) and Qatar and receipts from car exports to Qatar in a Boko Haram camp, which suggests a possible link to Alhaji Abdalla, who was Boko Haram’s negotiator in the Moulin-Fournier and other kidnappings.
Across the border in Nigeria, one of the financiers of the Chibok kidnapping and a plotter of the assassination of the emir of Gwoza was a Kanuri named Babaji Yaari, who runs a lucrative taxi business. He coordinated the Chibok kidnapping with the leader of Boko Haram’s female wing, Hafsat Bako, who was discussed above. Bako was arrested based on the Nigerian security force’s interrogation of Yaari. The transfer of many of the schoolgirls to Cameroon and Chad after the kidnapping suggests that Bako’s and Yaari’s network and the network of kidnappers, financiers, and arms traffickers in Cameroon likely overlap.
This piece reveals several new trends in the Boko Haram insurgency. First, Boko Haram’s recruitment now includes hundreds, if not thousands, of forcibly conscripted boys and girls, who are often taken to and “re-educated” in Cameroon. This type of recruitment demonstrates Boko Haram’s need for more human resources to control territory in its self-described caliphate in northeastern Nigeria, and increasingly also in Cameroon.
The introduction of new commanders other than Abubakar Shekau, who was previously the only public face of Boko Haram, in videos of an attack in Gwoza in Borno State and the beheading of a Nigerian air force pilot in August and October 2014 show Boko Haram’s intent to reveal new commanders and emirs as the militants gain control of more local government areas. Moreover, the arrest of Tuaregs from Mali fighting for Boko Haram in Cameroon in September 2014 suggests that its kidnapping and arms trafficking operations may be attracting militants who can strengthen the cross-border insurgency in Nigeria and Cameroon.
Second, Boko Haram is increasingly launching operations in Cameroon’s extreme North Region and attempting to seize control of Cameroonian border towns, such as Fotokol, Amchide and Kolofata, to secure supply lines for receiving weapons from Chad and Libya for use in Nigeria. Boko Haram may also seek to gain control of interior towns in the Extreme North Region, such as Maroua, Waza, and Kousseri, not only for their importance in the supply line, but also for their historic value as parts of the former Kanem-Borno Caliphate, or “Greater Kanoura.”
The Kanem-Borno Caliphate’s former boundaries correspond almost precisely to Boko Haram’s current area of operations, and Boko Haram may seek to recreate that caliphate through its own newly-declared caliphate, but with takfiri ideology replacing the Sufi traditions of the descendants of the Kanem-Borno emirs, who Boko Haram has killed or expelled from northeastern Nigeria. Boko Haram’s seizure of Abadam on Borno’s border with Niger’s Diffa Province in October 2014, which is also part of the historic Kanem-Borno empire, could signal future Boko Haram operations in Niger, where Boko Haram has supply lines that are currently more often used for receiving food and fuel than weapons.
The “reunification” of the former Kanem-Borno Caliphate areas would seemingly erase the legacy of colonialism that Boko Haram founder, Muhammed Yusuf, criticised in his sermons for “amalgamating (Borno) to the infidels…leaving Niger in poverty…and creating ethnic problems and political divisions in Chad.”
Finally, one of the key questions for the Nigerian government is whether a deal for the release of the Chibok schoolgirls, or any type of ceasefire with Boko Haram, is possible and whether it would require Nigeria to cede territory to Boko Haram.
According to Muhammed Yusuf’s sermons, establishing an Islamic State was a prerequisite for Boko Haram to have the “independence” to negotiate on equal footing with the “infidel” Nigerian government. It therefore appears that Boko Haram still follows Yusuf’s doctrine, but now also with a model and legitimacy from ISIL on how to create this Islamic State through guerrilla warfare and territorial control.
Jacob Zenn is an analyst of African and Eurasian Affairs for The Jamestown Foundation in Washington DC, United States and is an expert on countering violent extremism for think-tanks and international organisations in West Africa and Central Asia.
Source: Nigerian Tribune
Shameful... If you know Cameroon, you won't mention it as a Boko haram ground!
ReplyDeleteBoko Haram is a Pure Nigerian thing, and please focus on your poor leadership, than to mention well secure Countries as Cameroon.
WHEN WILL YOU (NIGERIANS) FOCUS ON YOUR WEAKNESS THAN LOOKING FOR SCAPEGOATS????