In early January 2015, as all eyes were on
France, Islamist gunmen attacked the town of
Baga in Nigeria. It’s unknown how many died, but
the highest estimates mention 2,000 civilians ,
making it possibly one of the deadliest terror
attacks in history. The culprits: Boko Haram.
Since coming to prominence in 2009, the radical
jihadist group has been waging a catastrophic
war against the Nigerian state. In 2013 alone,
10,000 people died, more than have died in the
entire Ukrainian civil war. But these statistics are
only the tip of the iceberg. Dig a little deeper and
you’ll uncover a nightmare of violence and
bloodshed threatening to tear open the heart of
central Africa.




10 They Already Have A
Caliphate

When ISIS overthrew the Iraqi city of Mosul and
declared an Islamic caliphate, it seemed like a
nightmare. The idea that a gang of armed fanatics
could carve out their own state was uniquely
horrific.

Less than a year later, it’s no longer so unique.
Boko Haram currently controls over 50,000
square kilometers (20,000 mi ) of northeast
Nigeria, setting up their own caliphate that rules
1.6 million people. For comparison, that’s an area
of land roughly the size of Costa Rica now
governed by mass murderers. It’s every bit as
gruesome as life under ISIS. With Boko Haram in
charge, Christian men are subject to decapitation,
and their wives are forced to convert and get sold
into sex slavery . Petty criminals routinely have
their hands cut off, while young girls are forced to
work as laborers or as bait to lure in enemy
soldiers.

Such atrocities are unlikely to stop anytime soon.
Back in 2012, the group declared it wouldn’t rest
until the whole of Nigeria was under sharia law.
Back then, their goal seemed chilling, yet unlikely.
Today, it feels terrifyingly real.


9 They’re Expanding Rapidly

Unlike ISIS, Boko Haram currently control
territory in only one country. But this could
change at any moment. Already, the group runs
frequent cross-border raids into Cameroon ,
slaughtering civilians and bombing buses. In
January 2015, they stepped up the attacks,
brazenly assaulting a local army base in a (failed)
attempt to get a foothold in the country.

Even when they’re not actively trying to seize
territory, fear of the group is wreaking havoc.
Many schools in Niger’s border towns have shut
down out of fear of a massacre, and new security
restrictions have devastated the local economy .
Meanwhile, Chad is being overwhelmed by
hundreds of thousands of refugees pouring
across the border in desperate need of food and
shelter.

Although the group has yet to extend its reach out
of Nigeria, analysts worry about their plans for
expansion. According to experts, a powerful Boko
Haram could destabilize the entire region , with
consequences for us all. Only a year ago, the
group vowed they would attack the United States,
calling it a “prostitute nation of infidels and liars.”


8 They Target Schools

The name Boko Haram loosely translates as
“Western education is a sin.” It’s an idea the
group takes very seriously.
Since Boko Haram first emerged, the militants
have made it their mission to attack as many
schools as possible. In the first five months of
2014 alone, they targeted 50 schools in Nigeria,
killing more than 100 children and 70 teachers.

The attacks were almost demonic in their
cunning. In one instance, the group detonated a
bomb hidden in a dormitory, killing 40 students. In
another, they sewed explosives into a rucksack,
dressed a teenager in school uniform, and sent
their bomber wandering into a school assembly.
The subsequent explosion killed a minimum of 48
teenagers. Those who survive such attacks are
often forced to flee, joining the tide pouring into
Chad.

When violence has failed, Boko Haram has
frequently resorted to kidnapping. Most
infamously, this involved the mass abduction of
200 schoolgirls in May last year. Although the
world responded with outrage and a global
Twitter campaign, most of those girls are still
missing, presumed to have been sold into
slavery.


7 Horrifying Massacres

When Boko Haram drove into the town of Baga on
January 7, 2015, they used rocket-propelled
grenades to slaughter civilians. Bodies were left
piled in the bush. Those who hid in their homes
were burned alive. Terrible as this is, it’s only the
latest in a long line of massacres horrifying in
their depravity.

Over the past few years, the group has targeted
Nigeria’s citizens with a combination of
psychopathy and impunity terrifying to behold. In
January 2015, they razed 16 villages to the
ground, leaving a pile of bodies so deep survivors
couldn’t count them all. Nearly a year beforehand,
they targeted the country’s capital with a bomb
that killed 71 after it detonated during the morning
rush hour. By way of comparison, that’s nearly 20
more people than died during London’s 7/7
bombings.

The list goes on. Football matches , markets , and
mosques were all bombed in 2014, each attack
killing a minimum of 40 people. In the case of the
mosque attack, gunmen then opened fire on
worshipers fleeing the scene, adding dozens
more to the death toll.


6 They Use Children

On January 10, 2015, a 10-year-old girl
wandered into a crowded market in Maiduguri,
Borno State. As shoppers went about their daily
business, the girl activated a suicide belt, killing
20 and injuring many more. The girl herself was
torn in half by the blast, part of her body thrown
across the nearby buildings by the force of the
explosion. Officials later said she may not have
known what she was carrying, bringing the total
number of innocents killed in the attack to 21.

If you’re hoping this was just a particularly
depraved one-off, we’ve got some bad news for
you. Less than a day after the attack in
Maiduguri, two more girls blew themselves up at
a market, killing three and injuring 46. They were
estimated by survivors to have been no more
than 10 years old.


5 Funding

By this point, you may be wondering where Boko
Haram gets the money to pull off such vicious
operations. The answer lies in a dark network of
extortion and slavery almost breathtaking in its
scope.

According to the Washington Post , the group first
started to pull money in following 9/11, when Al-
Qaeda went looking for proteges. Since then, Bin
Laden’s old terror network has continued to pour
cash into Boko Haram, while new groups such as
Somalia’s deadly Al-Shabaab have begun to chip
in. The result is an influx of cash and training
flowing from some of the worst people on Earth,
pushing Boko Haram to ever more violent
extremes.

But this only accounts for a fraction of the
group’s money. Much more worrying is their side
line in kidnapping. Currently, the group is making
millions from abducting foreigners and Nigerian
officials and holding them for ransom. Those who
can’t fetch a price find themselves instead sold in
one of Nigeria’s booming slave markets. Thanks
to lax efforts on the part of governments to shut
this trade in humans down, Boko Haram are in no
danger of running out of money anytime soon


4 Thhe Nigerian Government Is
Useless

Faced with a growing insurgency movement that
could destabilize the entire region, Nigeria’s
government has collapsed into acrimony and
politicking. After 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped
by Boko Haram last May, President Goodluck
Jonathan spent 18 days claiming the news was a
rumor designed to stop him getting re-elected.
His paranoia delayed a meaningful search for the
kidnapped children, possibly costing them their
freedom.

This isn’t the only time propaganda has gotten in
the way of fighting Boko Haram. In October,
President Jonathan declared that a ceasefire had
been agreed upon—only for the militants to
savagely attack a village only hours later. At best,
Jonathan was revealed to be an incompetent
who’d accidentally been negotiating with the
wrong terrorists . At worst, some have suggested
he simply made the deal up to boost his poll
ratings.

Bad as this is, it only touches the tip of the
government’s problems in Nigeria. Since the
1960s, successive heads of state have used oil
money to enrich themselves while making
ordinary Nigerians increasingly poorer. According
to The Guardian , this has driven thousands into
the arms of Boko Haram while severely
weakening the state’s power to deal with
insurrections.


3 They’ve Infiltrated The State

Trust isn’t the only issue affecting the Nigerian
government right now. There are credible reports
that Boko Haram has gotten so powerful that its
members are actively infiltrating arms of the
state.

In April 2014, it was reported that the militants
were receiving arms and supplies by helicopter,
despite a curfew that should have made such a
thing impossible. At the time, local branches of
government feigned ignorance of any suspicious
activity, leading many to believe corrupt officials
were deliberately allowing the helicopters
through. Nor was this confined to the tinfoil hat
brigade. In 2012, the president himself declared
Boko Haram were taking control of the
government. In his own words:
“Some of them are in the executive arm of
government, some of them are in the
parliamentary/legislative arm of government,
while some of them are even in the judiciary,
some are also in the armed forces, the police and
other security agencies.”

In the years since, officials have accused
President Jonathan as well of being in Boko
Haram’s pocket.


2 The Military Is Almost As
Bad

In August 2014, chilling footage emerged on
YouTube from the Nigerian town of Maiduguri.
Beginning with 16 young men and boys being held
at gunpoint, the video showed armed men pull
five out the crowd, slit their throats, and dump
their bodies in a mass grave. The perpetrators
weren’t Boko Haram or another Islamist group.
They were Nigerian military .

As Boko Haram grow ever more brazen, the
Nigerian state has responded by going to
disturbing extremes. Following a mass prisoner
breakout in March 2014, Amnesty declared that
the military had hunted down and extrajudicially
murdered 600 former convicts in a single night.
Escapees were rounded up, forced to dig their
own graves, and then shot or knifed as part of a
cleanup operation. Less than two months later, a
military detachment opened fire on a group of
protestors, killing 19 adults and two children.
These are far from one-offs. A 10-year Amnesty
investigation found that Nigeria’s state frequently
electrocuted, tortured, and raped men, women,
and children as part of its fight against militants.
Separate reports have concluded that the military
is thoroughly corrupt and violently distrusted by
up to 90 percent of all Nigerians. In a battle for
hearts and minds, it seems Nigeria’s state is
happy to be on the losing side.


1 Our Leaders And Media Are
Ignoring Them

When ISIS captured the town of Mosul, they
became global news. Emergency meetings were
convened between heads of state. American
planes were sent in to halt their advance and
bomb them. When Boko Haram took the town of
Baga, cementing their caliphate, the media was
nearly silent and our leaders did nothing .

Part of this is to do with the timing. As Baga fell,
gunmen were on the streets of Paris conducting
massacres, taking up a lot of the media’s
attention. Even so, the response to the Nigerian
attacks was so muted that the Catholic
Archbishop of Jos felt compelled to condemn the
lack of reaction in the press. He also claimed that
the Boko Haram problem was more than simply a
local one. In his words:
“I can smell a lot more trouble. It’s not going to
be confined to this region. It’s going to expand. It
will get to Europe and elsewhere.”

Others have expressed similar sentiments. Israeli
paper Haaretz claimed this global apathy was
exactly what had allowed Boko Haram to gain
such ground in the first place.

http://listverse.com/2015/01/31/10-dark-facts-about-boko-haram/

They are muslim.