Expanding Beyond Nigeria, Boko Haram Threatens Region Impoverished Niger particularly vulnerable to attacks by Islamic State affiliate By Yaroslav Trofimov
http://www.wsj.com/articles/expanding-beyond-nigeria-boko-haram-threatens-region-1449138601
NIAMEY, Niger—Just over a month ago, Ibrahim Foukori’s home village of Baroua in eastern Niger was a bustling farming community of 3,000 people. Now, it is burned to the ground and abandoned.
The villagers, like hundreds of thousands of others in the region, have escaped the advances of Boko Haram—the West African affiliate of Islamic State that is infamous for its unrestrained butchery and enslavement of hundreds of teenage schoolgirls.
“Every man took their children and wives and just ran for their lives,” said Mr. Foukori, who represents the area on the western shores of Lake Chad in the parliament of Niger. “Boko Haram first pillaged everything, and then came back to torch what was left of my village.”
Boko Haram—which is usually translated as “Western education is forbidden”—started out as radical Islamist sect in northern Nigeria’s Borno province more than a decade ago. For most of the time since then, it focused on battling the Nigerian state, which it considers illegitimate.
This year, however, Boko Haram dramatically expanded its campaign of killings and bombings far beyond Nigeria’s borders. It attacked the three other countries in the Lake Chad area—the former French colonies of Niger, Cameroon and Chad.
That expansion has coincided with Boko Haram’s leadership pledging allegiance to Islamic State’s “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in March and rebranding itself as the jihadist group’s “Province of West Africa.”
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Even before this shift, Boko Haram was by some counts the world’s deadliest terrorist group. It was responsible for 6,644 deaths last year, according to a tally by the Institute for Economics and Peace think tank. Just in recent weeks, hundreds were killed in suicide bombings, often by teenage girls coerced by the militants, that Boko Haram carried out in the four countries where it operates.
“From early this year, what we have seen is the Boko Haram insurgency turning from merely a domestic national problem in Nigeria into what has truly become a significant international challenge,” said French Army Col. Cyril Mathias, who heads a cell of French, U.S. and British officers based in Chad that assists the region’s militaries in tackling the group.
Niger, one of the world’s five poorest countries according to the World Bank, is perhaps the most vulnerable of these new battlefields, especially as it heads into a volatile election season. The country’s army, despite some assistance from France and U.S. special-operations forces, hasn’t been able to check Boko Haram’s spread into the southeastern region of Diffa.
Already, more than one-third of Diffa’s population, estimated at 600,000, has been displaced by the conflict. Some 151 schools have shut down.
“The situation in the region is very grave,” said Fode Ndiaye, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Niger. “This is the first time that we have internally displaced people in Niger.”
People in Diffa belong to the same Kanuri ethnic group as in the Boko Haram heartland in Nigeria. Before resorting to violence this year, the Islamist radicals in the area laid the groundwork by establishing networks of supporters and informers.
In a country with the world’s highest birthrate, they have been particularly successful in recruiting local young men. Some of them had to prove their loyalty by slitting the throats of their own fathers, according to local residents and officials.
“When Boko Haram are threatening a village, people call the army for help but the army doesn’t come,” said Hadiza Kiari Fougou, a researcher at the Higher Institute of Environment and Ecology in Diffa whose relatives live in villages raided by Boko Haram. “The army says: These are your own children. And we must admit the truth. These are their children.”
Mohamed Bazoum, the powerful minister of state at Niger’s presidency and the head of the country’s ruling party, acknowledged the difficulty of confronting the group.
ENLARGE “We do not have an army that is sufficiently numerous and that possesses sufficient means to protect all of our population, and to reduce to zero the risk that Boko Haram would come and slit the throat of a peasant,” he said.
In recent months, after Boko Haram overran a military base on one of the islands on Lake Chad, the Niger government ordered a mandatory evacuation of all the civilians living on the nearly 100 islands in Niger’s part of the lake, and in some coastal villages. Forced out overnight, some civilians died during this exodus to refugee camps in relatively more secure areas.
Amid other draconian measures, Niger also forbade fishing—pirogues on the lake are presumed to belong to Boko Haram and are shot on sight. Authorities also outlawed the trade in fish, the mainstay of the local economy and once a major export to Nigeria.
In addition, the government banned the use of motorcycles, Boko Haram’s favorite mode of transportation, and the sale of peppers, another Diffa specialty that authorities argue has been used to finance the insurgency.
Niger officials dismiss concerns that such unpopular measures could backfire.
“Boko Haram is not like a guerrilla movement that we know from history and that needs to be like a fish in the water among the population. It only needs to inspire fear,” said Mr. Bazoum, who until earlier this year served as Niger’s foreign minister. “When Boko Haram arrive, they destroy everything and spare nobody. They have wronged the population too much to find any sympathy.”
On that count, Lamido Harouna, an opposition lawmaker representing Diffa, isn’t so certain.
“All the economic activity has practically ceased. Every day, more and more villages of Diffa empty out,” Mr. Harouna said. “If things go on like this much longer, the populations will become more and more frustrated, and some will find it simpler to side with Boko Haram.”
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