Boko Haram: Winning the battle and the war

The biggest thing in my world last week – and in the weeks leading up – was the launch of my report on Boko Haram ahead of the 12th anniversary of the group’s first attack on 26 July, 2009. After what felt eternity of searching and researching, drafting and re-drafting, reviewing and re-reviewing, copyediting and designing, “Violent Extremism in Sub-Saharan Africa: Lessons From the Rise of Boko Haram” was finally published by the Tony Blair Institute. Every word contained therein is mine, and so is every error or slip, but the final product is the handwork of my incredible team as much as it is mine.

I couldn’t have been more pleased at how well the report landed. It went viral on Facebook within hours of publication, and a PDF version circulated on WhatsApp groups – I stumbled on it in three different groups comprising Nigerian leaders, researchers and thinkers. The National, an Abu Dhabi-based newspaper, published a fantastic story on the Middle Eastern angle of the report, calling it “a landmark report”, while CNBC Africa aired my interview with them on DSTV. America’s Newsweek carried my op-ed summarising the report, as Daily Trust and Daily Nigerian published stories on it. My hope is that the various stakeholders in the fight against Boko Haram, and violent extremism, will find the report in one way or the other, digest it and consider its recommendations.

I know this may sound like blowing my own trumpet, but if you have not yet read the report, you are unfortunately missing out on what is the deepest dive yet on an issue that has plagued Nigerians, and Africans, for nearly 20 years. So I compel you to read and absorb it. All you need to do is Google the title “Violent Extremism in Sub-Saharan Africa: Lessons From the Rise of Boko Haram” and download a PDF version for absolutely free. But before you do that, let me share with you just the tip of the iceberg.

The objective of the report was to highlight the lessons of Boko Haram’s 12 years of gruesome activity, illuminating not only Nigerians, but those from other countries in Africa and across the globe facing a similar challenge. When Boko Haram first struck in July 2009, we all thought they won’t last 12 hours, not even 12 minutes. President ‘Yar’Adua was bullish when he declared the situation to be “under control” and ordered the military to “contain them once and for all”, as he jetted out to Brazil on a three-day visit on 28 July, 2009. Twelve years on, Boko Haram is anything but under control or contained.

In all fairness to President Muhammadu Buhari, he did well from 2015 to 2016 in dislodging and dismantling Boko Haram from the 17 local government areas it occupied when he took office. But Buhari mistook dislodging and dismantling the group for defeating it, and declared victory rather prematurely. This allowed Boko Haram’s Shekau-led and ISIS-allied factions to reconstitute, and bounce back stronger. The duo have killed more than 1,800 security forces from 2018 to 2020, making the past three years the deadliest for such personnel. As we speak, ISWAP is able to overrun security formations with hundreds of soldiers, and hold big towns like Dikwa, Geidam and Kanamma as they control portions of the highways in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe.

Why does Boko Haram remain powerful, despite years of security efforts from countries of the Lake Chad who are supported by their western partners? That is what the new report highlights. It argues that it is because governments and their partners have failed to understand and confront the underlying causes that account for Boko Haram’s rise and resilience. No doubt, security effort to tackle a violent group is necessary and urgent, but it is insufficient. Bullets can kill terrorists, and bombs can destroy violent militants and their logical bases, but neither can kill the ideology upon which extremism thrives or address the grievances it exploits.

The report explains how Boko Haram’s four founding leaders and ideologues twisted Islam and weaponised a romanticised history of the religion, the Kanem-Borno empire, and Sokoto Caliphate; how they capitalised on poverty, inequality, and unemployment; how they seized upon ineffective governance and state repression. It shows how Boko Haram leaders had very limited understanding of Islam as well as the secular systems and ideas they attacked, yet were able to appeal to their audience because the listeners were mainly uneducated and monolingual. So Shekau, for example, may appear ignorant, crazy, or even insane to us, but to his followers, he was a highly educated cleric that was grounded in Islam, conventional education, and spoke five different languages.

The report also discusses Boko Haram’s relationship with groups across the world. It drew on exclusive, never-seen-before evidence to argue that, contrary to theories in some quarters, Boko Haram did not start in the early 2000s as an al-Qaeda representative in Nigeria. But it did establish a link with al-Qaeda around 2009 – 2010 and benefited with N50,000,000, weapons and training from the global extremist organisation. This facilitated Boko Haram’s come back, following its July 2009 blow by security forces. Within a couple of years, Shekau’s megalomania, ultra-takfirism and indiscriminate violence damaged his connection with al-Qaeda, which withdrew its support from him and recognised Ansaru — Boko Haram’s splinter group that has been based in North-west Nigeria since 2012 – as the al-Qaeda affiliate in Nigeria.

Boko Haram’s connection to the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) is another aspect the report touched on. From 2015, when Boko Haram pledged alliance to the ISIS, thereby becoming ISWAP, the latter has given the former substantial theological, operational, and financial assistance. Killing Shekau and absorbing his militants was part of ISWAP’s broader effort to consolidate around the Lake Chad. Having done the first and largely succeeded in the second, ISWAP is now working to reorganise and reposition itself under ISIS’s detailed guidance. This will usher a new phase of Boko Haram that will be even more difficult to rout with just guns and jets.

In this new phase, ISWAP will step up attacks on security personnel, Christians, civil servants and humanitarian workers. Therefore, the coming months may see a substantial drop in civilian fatalities. This should be welcomed, but it shouldn’t deceive as a sign of success. With Shekau – ‘the spoiler of the jihad’ – gone, ISWAP will step up its ‘hearts and minds’ game by not only sparing civilians from attacks, but also by actively protecting them and helping them economically. Last March and April alone, for example, the group reported that it had collected N51,000,000 as Zakat from wealthy individuals in the areas it controls, and distributed it to indigent members.

The bottom line is that bullets and guns alone have in the past 12 years not won the battle, much less the war on Boko Haram. They haven’t in the past, and certainly won’t now. To win the war, governments, partners and stakeholders must understand the Boko Haram’s strategy and confront it. This is what I drill into in the report. I identified nine policy areas that we must invest in, including quality education that inculcates open-mindedness, working with religious and traditional leaders to counter the group’s appeal, and addressing the socioeconomic grievances upon which the group thrives. This is admittedly the hard way, but it is the only way to beating Boko Haram and similar groups taking root in Africa.