Kort efter nytår kom der rapporter fra Nigeria om en massakre begået af den ekstremistiske bevægelse Boko Haram med op mod 2.000 ofre. Men noget tyder på, at der er tale om en overdrivelse og det er et meget brugt våben i den verserende konflikt.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFlystDeTrY]Last weekend, Amnesty International published reports that 2.000 civilians had been murdered near the village Baga close to Lake Chad. There had been an attack, but there were no independent information on its scale. Later, other sources estimated the number of deaths at around 150, says The Nordic Africa Institute (NAI) on its website.
“It is of course serious, but the picture is different now compared to the massive massacre we were talking about earlier. I had expected this turn”, NAI social anthropologist Mats Utas, who has researched about West Africa for almost 20 years, says.
“There are no journalists or NGOs in the area so we know very little about what is happening. The local population is of course in great need of help so they are exaggerating the numbers. Boko Haram, for its part, is pushing up the numbers to show their strength in negotiations with the Nigerian government. Finally, the army turns to exaggerations to increase its support.”
Children bombers part of the propaganda
Utas believes that one easily gets too a extreme picture a of the Nigerian violence.
It is a serious situation but not worse than in war zones in general, he says.
He is concerned about Boko Haram successfully playing with the feelings of the international community, as in the case with the kidnapped school girls.
This year, there have been reports about children being used as suicide bombers.
“They are skilled spin doctors. Boko Haram knew they would get attention by exploiting children. This is a media game. The more we notice ten year-old suicide bombers, the more children will be killed in order for the group to get a better position at the negotiating table.”
“Reports from northern Nigeria have to be seen as potential propaganda from all parties of the conflict. This is high-level information warfare”, Mats Utas says.
See the video interview in English with Mats Utas above. The interview is also available in Swedish on Youtube.
