My Neighbor, Boko Haram

LONG BEFORE Boko Haram emerged in 2002, my home country of Nigeria was polarized along religious and ethnic lines by politicians who sought to pit one group against another. Disputes about religious freedom, resource control, and citizenship led to violent conflicts at the local and state levels. Many religious sites were desecrated.

Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa and seventh most populous worldwide, is fondly referred to as “the giant of West Africa.” It has the largest economy on the continent and is incredibly diverse in ethnicity and religion. Half of Nigeria’s population is Christian, living mostly in the southern part of the country, and the other half is Muslim, living primarily in the north.

In 2009, while I was pastor of a Catholic parish in Kano State, in northern Nigeria, a bloody confrontation broke out between the Nigeria Police Force and Boko Haram about 300 miles away in the northeast part of the country. Two years later, I was caring for eight families who had fled to the city of Kaduna, seeking safety from Boko Haram attacks. As I listened to their stories, I could not help but think of my own family’s displacement after riots in 1980 and 2002. Our congregation and my own family had been directly impacted by violent ethno-religious conflicts.

But the norm in the part of northern Nigeria where I grew up was very different from that. Christians and Muslims lived together as neighbors and friends. Young people bonded as they played sports with one another. Muslims and Christians exchanged greetings and attended one another’s naming and marriage ceremonies. We rejoiced and grieved together.

This included Nasiru, Ahmad, and Abdul, three of my Muslim neighbors who joined Boko Haram in 2009. They were attracted to Boko Haram because of their frustration with overwhelming socioeconomic inequality that had left them impoverished and unemployed. From their perspective, the ostentatious lifestyle of the political class indicated corruption, poor governance, and improperly managed resources. Boko Haram seemed to promise justice.

“We feel hopeful when the preacher reminds us that those who rob us of our livelihood will be judged and damned,” I remember Nasiru saying to me.

Birth of Boko Haram

Though it gained global attention in 2014 for the kidnapping of more than 270 schoolgirls, Boko Haram did not begin as a terrorist group. In 2002, Mohammed Yusuf, a native of northern Nigeria, formed a movement called Jama’atu Ahlus-Sunnah Lidda’Awati Wal Jihad, or “The Group of the People of Sunna for Preaching and Struggle.” Based on their cult-like following of Yusuf, they were more commonly known as the Yusufiyya Movement. The group had an aggressive attitude toward corrupt and indecent behaviors and a stated passion to create a more just society.

The sect was inspired by the teachings and works of a 13th century scholar, Ibn Taymiyya, a staunch defender of Sunni Islam based on strict adherence to the Quran and the Sunna, or practices, of the Prophet Muhammad. Like Ibn Taymiyya, Yusuf believed that the Quran and the Sunna contained all the religious and spiritual guidance necessary for salvation in the hereafter. Many Sunni scholars disagree with this philosophy and refute the group’s identity as Islamic.

Eventually the group came to be known as Boko Haram, a combination of Hausa and Arabic words referring to the group’s constant warnings to Muslims about the dangers of Western education. Following the implementation of sharia, the Islamic legal system, in several northern Nigerian states in the early 2000s, Boko Haram sought to further expand sharia throughout the country. To this day, politicians in Nigeria’s National Assembly still try to pass bills mandating sharia.

After Yusuf’s death in 2009, the group was reorganized into a more militant movement by Abubakar Shekau, who declared the group’s affiliation with al Qaeda. Later the group announced its allegiance to ISIS, the so-called Islamic State.

From neighbors to 'terrorists'

The impact of Boko Haram’s actions has been terrible, including kidnappings, abuse of women and girls, suicide bombings, and thousands of injuries and deaths. Data collected by the Church of the Brethren reveals numbers far higher than those in conventional media reports, with as many as 40,000 people killed and more than 2,000 people abducted, including the girls taken from the Chibok school in 2014.

The Nigerian government and the international community have responded in various ways, most of them militarized. In no small part due to Nigeria’s strategic and economic importance, in November 2013 the U.S. government designated Boko Haram and its splinter group, Ansaru, as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The U.S. claims the designation is part of its effort to help Nigeria adopt a comprehensive approach to its domestic terrorist threat. In May 2014, the U.N. Security Council followed suit, adding Boko Haram to its list of al Qaeda affiliates subject to targeted sanctions.

The decision to label members of Boko Haram as “terrorists” immediately fractured fragile interfaith relationships like the ones I had experienced in Kano State. Such relationships in communities throughout the country were the basis for any kind of sustainable interfaith exchange and were foundational for a future without violence.

Suddenly those who had been friendly neighbors for many years were designated as terrorists. Mistrust, suspicion, fear, intolerance, and dehumanization seeped into existing relationships.

Countering violent extremism

The U.S. State Department says that “countering violent extremism” is a critical part of a comprehensive, sustainable counterterrorism strategy that addresses the entire life cycle of radicalization. This includes addressing the conditions that make communities susceptible to violent extremism, such as poverty, high unemployment, and lack of educational opportunities.

While a step in the right direction, the U.S. carries out these development activities as part of a military and security strategy, often blurring the lines between military and development, thus undermining peacebuilding work.

According to Gordon Adams, a national security budget expert, the U.S. spends at least $100 billion annually on global counterterrorism efforts and likely more, as some costs are classified. The countries fighting Boko Haram—Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, and Benin—together have received more than $156 million worth of training and weaponry, including military planes and light attack jets with mounted machine guns, to support efforts against Boko Haram.

But it’s not all “free.” Nigeria has had to invest significant resources of its own to purchase ammunition and other military hardware, leading to substantial debt. Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, recently requested approval from the Nigerian Senate to borrow $30 billion, the highest request of its kind in Nigeria’s history.

A counterproductive response

There are other problems with this military response. Like Boko Haram, the Nigerian military has been credibly accused of human rights abuses and the use of child soldiers, as well as corruption and a lack of accountability. There are also concerns about the Civilian Joint Task Force, a local militia group in northeast Nigeria that has taken law enforcement into its own hands.

In December 2015, President Buhari announced that the war against Boko Haram “technically” had been won. Despite this claim, Boko Haram controls territories in the northeastern part of the country and continues to engage in reprisal attacks against the military. Killings, kidnappings, and human rights abuses, including abuse targeting women and girls, have also increased in the last two years. Suicide bombers attacked camps of displaced people at Dikwa and Dalori in February 2016, and Boko Haram forces engaged in a large-scale assault at Mallam Fatori in September. Dozens of soldiers remain missing after an attack on a military base at Gashigar village in October. As Boko Haram comes under increasing military pressure, it continues to adapt and rebound.

But increased violence isn’t the only consequence of military action; the fighting has also brought about a humanitarian crisis. The military’s tactic of forcing communities to relocate to military-controlled camps has caused food insecurity, loss of livelihoods, and increased violations of human rights.

In mid-2016, the United Nations reported that 99 percent of the 1.7 million people displaced in northeastern Nigeria have been driven from their homes by the insurgency. Another 155,000 Nigerians have become refugees in neighboring Cameroon, Niger, and Chad.

After an attack on a humanitarian convoy in July 2015, the United Nations suspended aid, leading to more hunger and malnutrition. The humanitarian organization UNICEF estimates that health crises and famine resulting from the insurgency and counterterrorism attacks could lead to 75,000 children’s deaths in Nigeria in 2017.

Hearing our enemies

I do not know what happened to Nasiru, Ahmad, and Abdul, my neighbors in Wudil who joined Boko Haram. In 2009 the state ordered the mosque in our town to be demolished; in retaliation, Christian communities began receiving threats from Boko Haram, warning us not to worship on Sundays anymore. Later, the military began a door-to-door search, forcing members of Boko Haram, including my neighbors, to flee to northeast Nigeria. No trace of them or their families is feasible.

“Why are they killing us?” Narisu, Ahmad, and Abdul asked me before they left. “They should listen to us because we are not killers.” Their words remind me of a saying popularized by Quaker peacebuilder Gene Knudsen Hoffman: “An enemy is one whose story we have not heard.” Nonviolence that transforms violent extremist ideology is undoubtedly a greater power in the long run than military interventions.

A huge gap remains between policy perceptions about how to combat the violent extremism of Boko Haram and the realities on the ground. Reports from organizations such as Human Rights Watch indicate that the government’s heavy-handed, militarized response—characterized by human rights violations of its own—has proved counterproductive. In a recent study commissioned by the Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers, the International Dialogue Centre, and Finn Church Aid, former members of Boko Haram said that “‘pitiless’ military action and the need to take revenge” ultimately “helped tip them over the edge” in deciding to join Boko Haram.

Since December 2011, the more militarized approach has led to an ever-increasing cycle of violence, with the civilian population suffering as a result. It has also disrupted the possibility of building trust and finding a healthy truce between the government and Boko Haram.

Strategies to counter Boko Haram should be based on research about the best constructive, nonviolent mechanisms to dissuade agents of extremism—mechanisms more likely to promote tolerance and encourage resistance to recruitment, radicalization, and indoctrination.

Is it possible to reach a healthy, long-term, just, and peaceful resolution in the midst of a cycle of counterattacks and gross human rights abuses from both Boko Haram and Nigeria’s military? If a peaceful, sustainable way forward is to be found, both Nigeria and the U.S. must redirect the huge resources invested in weaponry to more robust, life-saving humanitarian assistance, peacebuilding, and sustainable development.

The prophet Isaiah wrote, “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more” (Isaiah 2:4). This is the source of my hope for a just peace and the well-being of all my neighbors, in Kano State and beyond.