Source: http://www.irinnews.org/report/100475/nigeria-the-community-turns-against-boko-haram
MAIDUGURI, 11 August 2014 (IRIN) - Young men with machetes manning road blocks is usually a bad sign. In Nigeria’s northeastern city of Maiduguri, for years tormented by the Boko Haram insurgency, it actually signifies progress.
Rather than the military’s Joint Task Force (JTF), it is these volunteer vigilantes dubbed “Civilian JTF” that are largely credited with pacifying the city over the past year. Whereas the often blundering and brutal JTF regarded everyone in Maiduguri as a potential Salafist, the community-rooted volunteers - officially the Borno Youth Association for Peace and Justice -actually know who Boko Haram members are. They are the eyes and ears of the security forces watching for infiltration and, though the best of their weapons are antique single-shot “Dane” guns, or the odd shotgun, they are often the first responders to trouble.
“Before, the community was afraid. If you opened your mouth against Boko Haram, that night they would kill you. But Borno State youth are tired of it,” Civilian JTF secretary and second-in-command, Abba Tijjani Sadiq, told IRIN. “God lifted us up. No matter you come with a gun, we will pursue you. For now there are no Boko Haram in Maiduguri.”
Borno was the birthplace of Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad (People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad), better known as Boko Haram. It was founded in 2002 by cleric Mohamed Yusuf and grew into a popular grassroots movement based on its strict adherence to conservative Islamic values and rejection of the political corruption and venality that has come to epitomize Nigeria. The execution of Yusuf and a number of his lieutenants in 2009 while in police custody won Boko Haram sympathy, but that popularity has soured as the death toll has soared in the shootings and bombings by the militants of their perceived enemies - the majority of them Muslims. The supposed support from the community was one reason the JTF meted out such indiscriminate punishment.
“The army took us as the enemy and vice-versa. We didn’t see them as here to protect us,” explained school headmaster Suleiman Aliyu. “[If there was a Boko Haram attack] they don’t come on time, they arrest whoever they see, or open fire, or burn shops and houses in revenge… The boys [Boko Haram] used to come and hide among us in the community. But later on we saw that couldn’t work. You hide them, then later on they can come into your house and kill your father. People were pressed to the wall, we needed to stand, to protect ourselves.”
He sees Borno’s insecurity as “a failure of government and ourselves” and celebrates the new-found “spirit of self-sufficiency” animating the civilian JTF. What began in just one of the city’s 14 wards in June last year has snowballed. “Everybody is a civilian JTF. Whenever we hear gunshots we pick up our axes and cutlasses [machetes] and go and see what’s wrong.”...
...The civilian JTF is stood up in all of Borno’s 27 Local Government Areas, but it is in the more remote border regions where Boko Haram is strongest, and the communities most at risk.
Nevertheless it was over Maiduguri that a propaganda battle was waged at the end of July.
Boko Haram boasted it would celebrate Eid el Fitr (the end of Ramadan) in the city’s prayer grounds.
“We said, ‘No way’,” Sadiq recounted, and a huge security operation, including a movement ban on all vehicles, made for a subdued but safe holiday period...
...The civilian JTF claim they have 45,000 members, led by local businessmen and former civil servants like Sadiq.
Their ranks reflect the spectrum of Maiduguri society, from Christians to the unemployed, to former Boko Haram.
Aside from parade ground drilling, the state government has also introduced civics lessons for the young men, previously noted for their eagerness to lynch suspects.
“We know we can’t take the law into our own hands,” said Sadiq.
“Now we take [suspects] to the barracks, and the army kills them,” he grinned...
...Money has been an effective recruiting tool for Boko Haram.
“Someone can come and give you a gun and [US$30] to kill someone. You don’t have anything in your pocket, you are easily recruited,” said Sadiq.
“It’s all about poverty”, and Borno is even worse off now as a result of the insurgency, which has shuttered businesses, driven up prices and closed the borders with Cameroon, Niger and Chad, squeezing the crucial livestock trade.
And then there are Nigeria’s upcoming elections in 2015.
Polls are always a violent affair, but this is a particularly tense ballot, with Jonathan facing extreme antipathy in the north.
There is the possibility that his interests and Boko Haram’s may bizarrely coincide with the cancellation of voting in the most insecure areas of the region.
As elsewhere in the world, young men will be hired by the politicians as thugs and enforcers - and deals will be struck with vote influencers.
It is a danger that Sadiq is aware of.
“When you bring politics into this, it will bring problems for us. The root of Boko Haram is politics,” he said, a reference to an agreement struck with former state governor Ali Modu Sheriff to introduce Shariah law in exchange for Yusuf’s political support, which went horribly wrong...  |
