In the gloom of a hilltop
cave in Nigeria where she was held
captive, Hajja had a knife pressed to
her throat by a man who gave her a
choice – convert to Islam or die.
Two gunmen from Boko Haram had
seized the Christian teenager in July as
she picked corn near her village in the
Gwoza hills, a remote part of
northeastern Nigeria where a six-
month-old government offensive is
struggling to contain an insurgency by
the al Qaeda-linked Islamist group.
In a new development, Boko Haram is
abducting Christian women whom it
converts to Islam on pain of death and
then forces into "marriage" with
fighters – a tactic that recalls Joseph
Kony's Lord's Resistance Army in the
jungles of Uganda.
The three months Hajja spent as the
slave of a 14-strong guerrilla unit,
cooking and cleaning for them before
she escaped, give a rare glimpse into
how the Islamists have changed tack in
the face of Nigerian military pressure.
"I can't sleep when I think of being
there," the 19-year-old told Reuters,
recounting forced mountain marches,
rebel intelligence gathering – and
watching her captors slit the throats of
prisoners Hajja had helped lure into a
trap. Nigerian security officials say the
Islamists have pulled back after army
assaults since May on their bases on
the semi-desert plain and are now
sheltering in the Mandara mountains,
along the Cameroon border around the
city of Gwoza. From the hills they have
been launching increasingly deadly
attacks.
The rugged mountain terrain – as fellow
al Qaeda allies found in Afghanistan –
has proven an advantageous base for a
movement that once styled itself the
"Nigerian Taliban" and sees all non-
Muslims as infidels who must convert
or
be killed.
The United States designated Boko
Haram a terrorist group on Wednesday.
Western governments are increasingly
concerned about the wider threat posed
by the group, which wants to create an
Islamic state in a religiously mixed
country of 170 million and which has
ties with al Qaeda's north African wing.
Hajja's account of how Boko Haram has
adapted and survived in recent months
underlines the difficulties governments
in the region face. The spread of the
threat was underscored by the kidnap
on Thursday of a French priest in
Cameroon, an attack France believes
may have involved Boko Haram.
The following day, Nigerian troops
raided a base for the group in the
Gwoza hills. The army said it killed 29
Boko Haram fighters and was "closing
in" on the rebels.
The group, whose name broadly
translates as "Western education is
sinful", has killed thousands during a
four-year insurgency against the
Nigerian state, targeting the police and
armed forces as well as politicians and
then turning on Christians in the
predominantly Muslim north of the
country.
The military offensive launched in mid-
May, and the fact that large numbers of
civilian vigilantes have supported it,
has triggered a fierce backlash against
local people by Boko Haram. The
militants have killed hundreds in the
past few weeks, including in massacres
of school children.
The Islamists dragged Hajja along
rocky
mountain paths and slept in caves in
the hills, a landscape unfamiliar to
most
Nigerian soldiers, recruited from the
plains.
She ceremonially converted to Islam,
cooked for the men, carried
ammunition
during an attack on a police outpost
and was about to be married to one of
the insurgents before she managed to
engineer a dramatic escape. She says
she was not raped.
"If I cried, they beat me. If I spoke, they
beat me. They told me I must become a
Muslim but I refused again and again,"
Hajja told Reuters in an interview. Her
family name is withheld to protect
relatives still living in the Gwoza area.
"They were about to slaughter me and
one of them begged me not to resist
and just before I had my throat slit I
relented. They put a veil on me and
made me read from the Koran," she
said in the Nigerian capital, Abuja,
where she is now living.
At least a dozen teenagers like her
remain in captivity, Michael Yohanna, a
councilor in Gwoza's local government
told Reuters. Some have married
commanders, recalling Kony's LRA,
which abducted thousands of "wives" in
a 20-year war in Uganda before a truce
in 1986. Kony remains a fugitive.
A man called Ibrahim Tada Nglayike led
the group Hajja was with. On one
mission, Hajja was sent to stand in a
field near a village to attract the
attention of civilians working with the
army. When five men approached her,
they were ambushed.
"They took them back to a cave and
tied them up. They cut their throats,
one at a time," Hajja said. "I thought
my heart would burst out of my chest,
because I was the bait."
Among those who did the killing was
the Muslim wife of the leader Nglayike,
the only other woman in the band of
fighters.
Reuters verified Hajja's account of
having been abducted with
independent figures in the region. Boko
Haram shuns the media and none of its
members could be contacted for
comment.
Hajja says the long-bearded insurgents
lived a basic lifestyle, eating corn,
millet
and occasionally meat from animals
they stole and which she slaughtered.
The group, armed with AK-47 rifles and
pistols stolen from police they killed,
moved every day around the hills to
avoid being tracked by the army and
slept in the caves to shelter from the
cold and for protection against air
assaults.
"They didn't use phones but they had a
radio," Hajja said.
"They would listen to BBC Hausa or
Voice of America and jump and shout if
they heard about Boko Haram attacks.
You can check her pics in here source:www.daillybook..com/2013/11/my-story-by-forced-bride-of-boko-haram.html?m=1

Hmmmmm...... To think that some avaricous farce will accept allurements to convert to a sect advanced by such creulty and intolerance..

And the flagrant show of a-s licking spear headed by Mr R. Such wasteage of state funds.

Well, Hajja thank God for your escape, you were under duress to lure those innocent victims. Forgive your self and keep speaking out. Let people know about their hide outs and modes of operation. You didn't slit the victims throats..

'Don't know what to say..

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