The Spreading Menace of Boko Haram By Emad Mostaque
http://www.wsj.com/articles/emad-mostaque-the-spreading-menace-of-boko-haram-1422315934
The jihadist group in Nigeria killed 11,245 people last year. Now their rampage seems ready to escalate in 2015.
The new year began with terror attacks in Paris inspired or orchestrated by al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula and ISIS and then reports of up to 2,000 residents killed by Boko Haram in a days-long massacre in Baga, Nigeria. While Paris has grabbed the majority of media attention, the events in Baga may prove to be the most significant as Boko Haram expands in northeastern Nigeria. This weekend the group captured the town of Monguno and its military barracks while simultaneously attacking the state capital, Maiduguri.
A key goal of all terrorists is to provoke outsize reactions by committing heinous deeds. This is particularly true of jihadists, whose main feature is the takfir they impose on the majority of other Muslims—declaring them not to be “true” believers and thus outside of their group and liable for death. High-profile attacks aim to polarize societies and create animus against mainstream Muslims, creating more potential recruits for the radical Islamists.
ISIS has intensified its bloodletting over the last year, using social media to amplify its mass beheadings and other fearsome deeds—and thus the group’s power and threat—in line with the recommendations outlined in jihad theoretician Abu Bakr Naji ’s 2006 text “The Management of Savagery.” However, ISIS has reached the limits of unopposed and easy expansion in Iraq as it now faces well-armed forces in non-Sunni areas, bolstered by coalition airstrikes. ISIS gains in Syria continue, but the group appears more contained, having failed to take Kobani from its Kurdish defenders.
In contrast, the Nigeria-based terror group Boko Haram seems bent on escalating the scale and terror of its violence in 2015—after killing an estimated 11,245 people last year, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. It also appears to be on the edge of a significant expansion into neighboring states.
Boko Haram’s initial strategy was to try to undermine and gain control of the Kanuri ethnic regions of northeast Nigeria while looking to polarize society by attacking states along the Christian-Muslim divide known as the Middle Belt region. The Nigerian government response to this push has been slow, with only 25,000 poorly equipped troops deployed against Boko Haram in the country’s northeast. Nigeria’s whole defense budget for 2014 was only a third of the $5.8 billion security budget, small for a country with a GDP of more than $500 billion and facing an insurgency.
Following the tactics of ISIS, with whom Boko Haram appears to have advisory links at the least, the next stage is governance of the areas they have ravaged, along the classical warlord model. This will give a pool of potential conscripts to use as first-wave cannon fodder, allowing them to rapidly create tens of thousands of utterly disposable “recruits.” This has already included forcing a girl of about 10 years old to carry a bomb strapped to her into a market in Nigeria’s Borno state on Jan. 10, killing at least 16 people and highlighting how nobody is safe.
Boko Haram’s strategic shift from insurgency to governance is a main reason that it was particularly ruthless in its massacres in Baga this month. The city is close to the borders of three other Muslim-majority countries—Chad,Niger and Cameroon. Ominously, Baga was overwhelmed and decimated by Boko Haram even though the village housed both a significant Nigerian Civilian Joint Task Force militia and a multinational task force from neighboring states.
Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has stated his intention to expand the fight into these states, where—with the exception of Chad, which hosts the French Operation Barkhane task force—armies are generally weak and underequipped. Air support across the region is minimal and the terrain is less conducive to airstrikes than it has been in campaigns against ISIS in Syria or jihadists led by Iyad ag Ghali in Mali. Nigeria probably has only nine functional combat bombers. Without air power, forces like Boko Haram’s will be very difficult to dislodge once entrenched.
Regional populations remain extremely poor and inequality is pronounced. These conditions have fed increasing sectarian unrest, such as Niger protesters burning down 45 churches after protests against Charlie Hebdo following the Jan. 7 terrorist attack at the magazine in Paris. Boko Haram can exploit such unrest to spread and recruit, possibly linking up with other jihadist groups in the Sahel region.
We are also approaching a critical juncture within Nigeria as it holds elections on Feb. 14. A tight race may be decided in effect by the millions of northern voters Boko Haram keeps from the polls—which would aid Nigeria’s incumbent and largely southern-based People’s Democratic Party and lead to violence if the result is not accepted by the opposition northern All Progressives Congress. Meanwhile, the sharp drop in oil receipts is reducing the government’s ability to pay off southern Christian militias such as MEND, with whom a cease fire expires this year. Further devaluation of Nigeria’s currency, the naira, is likely as the central bank runs out of options, stoking more inflation and misery.
If Boko Haram is to be stopped from entrenching itself across the Sahel, Nigerian security forces and the existing French counterterror operations in the region urgently need significant multinational support—while preserving the rule of law. Nigeria must also admit to the scale of the problem and agree to accept more external aid. Unless greater attention is paid in the region to the jihadist cancer that feeds on violence, corruption and poverty, it may become inoperable.
Mr. Mostaque is a London-based strategist specializing in the Middle East and Africa at Ecstrat, an emerging-markets consultancy.
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