Et af Afrikas vigtigste lande er ramt af terror fra yderligtgående islamister – hvor skal det ende?
MAIDUGURI, 24 November 2011 (IRIN): Across the road from Maiduguri railway station, in the corner of a now abandoned property, a leafy neem tree provides a canopy (løv-baldakin) for the remains of a mosque flattened by the Nigerian army.
The mosque had belonged to Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad (People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad), better known as Boko Haram – loosely translated from Hausa, the lingua franca of northern Nigeria, as “western education is forbidden”.
Its destruction followed coordinated attacks by Boko Haram militants against police stations and government buildings in four northern states in July 2009.
After several days of fighting, more than 800 people were dead, including the Salafist group’s leader, 39-year-old cleric Mohamed Yusuf, killed while in police custody.
Boko Haram’s revenge was dramatic.
Seen initially as an insular local sect – one of many in the north – it reached out of Borno State, on the fringes of the Sahara Desert, to bomb the Nigerian capital, Abuja, and make common cause with the global Jihadist movement.
Western governments are scrambling to provide counter-insurgency training to confront the group, which views the Nigerian state as illegitimate, and demands Sharia law even in the southern half of the country where the majority is non-Muslim.
There is a heavy security presence in Maiduguri, the northeastern city where Boko Haram began, in a region that has been a centre of Islamic learning for centuries.
Faceless and ruthless
But the militants are seen as faceless and ruthless, easily able to outwit the Joint Task Force (JTF), a federal unit comprising army, police and customs officials, who make up for their lack of operational intelligence with a wholly counter-productive willingness to use lethal force.
– Almost everybody is affected in this town, either directly or indirectly by the violence, said a medical doctor, who, like almost everyone IRIN spoke to, asked not to be named.
– The soldiers do not discriminate, do not define who is the enemy, and we do not even know if they are protecting us or intimidating us, noted he.
The large Christian community takes a different view.
There are three bullet holes in the signboard of the Church of the Brethren, next to a sand-bagged emplacement manned by soldiers.
Assistant Pastor Joshua Bulus acknowledges the excesses of the JTF, but reasons: – If the soldiers were removed from the state, this church would not be here.
It is one of 11 that have been attacked in Maiduguri since 2009, although it is not clear all the violence has been the work of Boko Haram.
Rooted in education
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