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How Boko Haram Keeps Its Secrets Secret by Nobody: 5:43pm On Sep 18, 2015 |
Boko Haram is probably the best-known
unknown insurgency around today. The group
and its brutal exploits are notorious the world
over, and yet when it comes down to naming
Boko Haram’s various leaders and factions,
even security services and researchers
dedicated to understanding the militants may
be at a loss. There are hardly any direct sources
of information about the group, and much
about the militants’ goals and dreams are
unknown.
There are three broad reasons why it is so
difficult to garner reliable intelligence about
Boko Haram.
The first is that the group has a very tight
system of maintaining control over its fighters
and their recruitment. Boko Haram has a
history of deeply vetting those they allow to
join their ranks. They know their recruits’
family histories and relationships with people
in their core areas, and unlike so-called Islamic
State, they do not allow walk-in fighters. This
makes it hugely difficult for security forces to
infiltrate their ranks at any meaningful level.
Boko Haram fighters captured on the
battlefield are mostly young men who are not
ideologically committed to the group, but
either accepted money or were forced to fight
by their captors. These recruits may become
informants easily, but they know very little of
operational relevance and cannot be used to
infiltrate the group further since captives who
return claiming to have escaped are reportedly
either locked up or killed.
Promotion within the insurgency is typically
decided by length of tenure, meaning that
newcomers remain at the bottom of the
ladder, far from positions of authority and
access. To rise, one needs to be vouched for by
members who were trusted by former leader
Muhammad Yusuf, and to gain the trust of
seniors, one usually requires close and long-
term familial and marriage-based relationships
with other commanders. The leadership within
Boko Haram’s often disparate factions tends to
be very tight-knit in this sense, and despite the
best efforts of the intelligence services, there
is only so much they can do.
A second reason information is so difficult to
come by is that the internal structure of Boko
Haram is very closed and the group generally
takes pains to keep its cards close its chest.
To begin with, it is important to note that the
group is by no means a monolithic
organisation. Rather, it is made up of several
factions who share a common origin, and access
to one branch does not translate into access to
all.
The leadership of these various factions
meanwhile is understood to be closely secured.
Commanders are disciplined in ensuring that
they rarely communicate with people outside
their ranks. And those external to the group
that senior Boko Haram officials may talk to
are those who were once comrades or contacts
with whom they had relationships prior to the
2009 uprising. This keeps the loop of people in-
the-know very tight, and for intelligence
services, searching for these trusted
confidantes is like finding a needle in a
haystack. Potential informants know the huge
dangers associated with leaking information
and are aware that Boko Haram members are
likely watching them with suspicion.
A final reason getting reliable information on
Boko Haram is so difficult is that it may not just
be the group itself that has an interest in
keeping intelligence locked away. Political and
military elites who may have been complicit, or
have had a role to play, in the group’s activities
will also be desperate to ensure information is
closely guarded. This is likely to be true of not
just Nigerian elites but also their Chadian,
Nigerien and Cameroonian counterparts, all of
whom would want to suppress anything that
could implicate them.
The importance of intelligence
These factors combine to create a huge
stumbling block in defeating Boko Haram as
any strategy to combat the group will need to
be informed by a deep understanding of its
goals, make-up and membership.
The Nigerian government has to study the
group and come up with a plan that eliminates
the militants on multiple levels – economically,
politically, ideologically and otherwise. They
have to move past an approach of firing at the
insurgents until they disappear, as the militants
invariably return through assassinations and
bombings. No matter the effort being put into
preventing them from seizing and holding
territory, a group like Boko Haram is only
being dealt a temporary setback through these
kinds of tactics.
For example, Khalid Al-Barnawi, one of the
factional leaders of Boko Haram is said to have
long ago made plans on how his faction would
operate if there was a concerted effort by
Nigeria and Cameroon to take back territory –
and it is these plans he is understood to now be
following as his faction engages in a campaign
of suicide bombings hitting towns from
N’Djamena to Damaturu.
Such a person cannot be stopped unless there
is accurate and sufficient information to
analyse so that the patterns behind his strategy
can become identifiable, thus making him
predictable and defeatable. Until Boko Haram
ceases to be an information black hole and
until accurate information about the insurgency
is available, security forces will not be able to
understand what drives the group, why they
will not surrender, why their tactics are so
brutal, and why they will not negotiate except
to buy time. This lack of understanding will only
lead the governments battling Boko Haram to
keep making strategic and tactical blunders that
will drag out this war to the advantage of the
militants.
Source:africanarguments.org/2015/09/18/how-boko-haram-keeps-its-secrets-secret/ |
Re: How Boko Haram Keeps Its Secrets Secret by 4reala(m): 5:46pm On Sep 18, 2015 |
Hmmm |
Re: How Boko Haram Keeps Its Secrets Secret by Boyooosa(m): 6:37pm On Sep 18, 2015 |
am coming, i want to buy another one there... |
Re: How Boko Haram Keeps Its Secrets Secret by tafabaloo(m): 4:53am On Sep 19, 2015 |
In my opinion..- think you are wrong. You don't know because you simply just don't know. |
Re: How Boko Haram Keeps Its Secrets Secret by prospero5(m): 5:18am On Sep 19, 2015 |
is the writer of this article trying to give boko haram an unnecessary bragging right to keeping secrets? I dey suspect you o. |
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