By now, much of the world has heard about Boko Haram and the kidnapping of hundreds of schoolgirls in northeastern Nigeria; and many voices are clamouring for the girls to be rescued. Good luck with that but those girls were not kidnapped for ransom, they were kidnapped to be raped… repeatedly.
Boko Haram is much more than another of the tribal insurgencies that pester Africa. They are Sunni Muslims who subscribe to the Salafist doctrines that inspire the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda. Their aim is to subject all of the Hausa and Fulani peoples of Nigeria to Sharia law and go on from there to build the Caliphate of the Umma. They have very real links to the Brotherhood and to African franchises of al-Qaeda.
Few people outside of Nigeria paid much attention to Boko Haram much before 2012, when they were attacking Animists (Nigerians who practice old traditional pagan ways), Sufi Muslims and – most particularly – Christians. One had to wonder how many more churches had to be incinerated with their congregations sealed inside before the rest of the world really started to pay attention to Boko Haram.
The BBC eventually noticed the eccentricities of Boko Haram’s founder when Muhammad Yusuf declared that it was “un-Islamic” to teach that the world was round, or to teach evolutionary theory or basic meteorology. The World Health Organization protested the results of Yusuf’s notion that polio vaccinations were also “un-Islamic” – an opinion shared by many Imans in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In any event the global campaign to eradicate polio has come to a halt and reservoirs for the disease remain intact now in Nigeria and Central Asia.
Various security professionals noticed that Boko Haram slowly moved beyond attacks with knives and even poisoned arrows in its early days to pick up new tricks. There are many Nigerian police officers who flinch now at the approach of a motorbike with two men – that old al-Qaeda ‘shoot-and-scoot’ technique got a good work-out in Nigeria. In any event, thanks to Boko Haram’s external contacts, they now use suicide bombers, truck-bombs, and have heavily armed guerilla cadres.
Boko Haram has settled into Northeastern Nigeria and are growing fast
Anyway, after 12 years, Boko Haram has settled into Northeastern Nigeria like a blood-tick and they are growing fast. The local police and politicians are thoroughly intimidated; the criminal underworld (who are already thick as thieves in Nigeria) are forming new partnerships; and the Army has got shy… not least because of the many Hausa and Fulani in its ranks.
Boko Haram’s real innovation comes with their new contribution to the ‘Sex Jihad’. Salafist and Wahhabi ‘jurists’ (such as Saleh al-Fawzan, who still sits on Saudi Arabia’s highest religious body) have increasingly maintained that non-Muslim women taken as captives in a conflict are the property of their captors and can be used as sex-slaves. Of course, if mercifully compelled to marry instead, there is another school of thought that this converts them to Muslim status although any girl fleeing such a marriage can be rightfully murdered as an apostate.
Then of course, for Muslim girls, there is the sanction of matrimony with a Jihadist… although the office of ‘temporary marriages’ lasting a few hours or an evening or two is also permissible. In the Western tradition a ‘shotgun wedding’ is when a reluctant groom is marched to the altar, often to be met by his pregnant bride. The Muslim ‘Kalashnikov wedding’ is when reluctant Muslim hosts to visiting Jihadis find their armed guests proposing a short-term arrangement with their daughters.
Rape, whether through enslavement or very dubious marriage, has been a part of the Jihad movement for some years now. There are numerous accounts of it cropping up in Afghanistan, in Iraq (where the lusts of visiting al-Qaeda members helped spark the ‘Anbar Awaking’ when outraged Sunni Muslims started to cooperate more fully with the Americans), and in Syria. What Boko Haram has done is to escalate the practice from grabbing girls in their ones and twos, and going wholesale.
The kidnapping of the schoolgirls betrays a sophisticated strategy by Boko Haram that should alarm anybody who takes the time to consider the ramifications. By dressing up as soldiers to ‘protect’ the girls they then drove off to captivity, Boko Haram has seriously undermined what was left of the credibility of the Nigerian Army in the area. They have let the undecided know that the authorities cannot protect them. This, by extension, makes the civil authorities look even more incompetent and foolish.
Boko Haram has attacked schools with the same enthusiasm they use on churches. With this mass-kidnapping, they have probably brought the education of girls in the region to a complete end for the time being. Parents will no doubt think twice about sending their boys to school as well… particularly if they can be murdered for learning about how clouds are formed.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has ties with Boko Haram and a well-developed set of networks for smuggling arms, narcotics and contraband. Considering that slavery has survived in many parts of the region, Boko Haram has probably just given the institution of slavery a shot in the arm and stumbled into a new-money maker for themselves.
Beyond this, Boko Haram has the ego-boost that all terrorists crave: Desperate parents, anxious government officials and attempts to ‘negotiate’ for ‘hostages’ are all grist for that particular mill.
Finally, and not least, there will be the sexual gratification to be derived from raping a school-girl. For those who know nothing else about Boko Haram, they should remember that this was a desirable goal and that will be all they need to know.
The world needs a take-no-prisoners approach now to Boko Haram and those who work with it. Sometimes a metaphor doesn’t need to be a metaphor.
