Boko Haram, officially known as Jama'at Ahl al-Sunna li al-Da'wa wa al-Jihad (JAS) and sometimes referred to as its state name Daular Musulunci, is a jihadist militant organisation based in northeastern Nigeria and also active in Chad, Niger, northern Cameroon, and Mali.
Founded by Mohammed Yusuf in 2002, the group was led by Abubakar Shekau from 2009 until his death in 2021 during the Battle of Sambisa Forest, although it splintered into other groups after Yusuf's death in 2009, as well as in 2015. When the group was first formed, their main goal was to "purify" the Sunni Islam in northern Nigeria, believing jihad should be delayed until the group was strong enough to overthrow the Nigerian government. The group formerly aligned itself with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The group has been known for its brutality, and since the insurgency started in 2009, Boko Haram has killed tens of thousands of people, in frequent attacks against the police, armed forces and civilians. The conflict has resulted in the deaths of more than 300,000 children and has displaced 2.3 million from their homes. Boko Haram has contributed to regional food crises and famines.
After its founding in 2002, Boko Haram's increasing radicalisation led to the suppression operation by the Nigerian military and the killing of Yusuf in July 2009. Its unexpected resurgence, following a mass prison break in September 2010 in Bauchi, was accompanied by increasingly sophisticated attacks, initially against soft targets, but progressing in 2011 to include suicide bombings of police buildings and the United Nations office in Abuja. The government's establishment of a state of emergency at the beginning of 2012, extended in the following year to cover the entire northeast of Nigeria, led to an increase in both security force abuses and militant attacks.
Of the 2.3 million people displaced by the conflict since May 2013, at least 250,000 left Nigeria and fled to Cameroon, Chad or Niger. Boko Haram killed over 6,600 people in 2014. The group has carried out massacres including the killing by fire of 59 schoolboys in February 2014 and mass abductions including the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in Chibok, Borno State, Nigeria, in April 2014. Corruption and human rights abuses in the security services have hampered efforts to counter the unrest.
In mid-2014, the militants gained control of swaths of territory in and around their home state of Borno, estimated at 50,000 square kilometres (20,000 sq mi) in January 2015, but did not capture the state capital, Maiduguri, where the group was originally based. On 7 March 2015, Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. According to the BBC, due to internal disputes between the two groups, hundreds of militants left Boko Haram and formed their own organisation, named "Islamic State's West Africa Province". In September 2015, the director of information at the Defence Headquarters of Nigeria announced that all Boko Haram camps had been destroyed but attacks from the group continue. In 2019, the president of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, claimed that Boko Haram was "technically defeated". Shekau was killed and confirmed to be dead in May 2021. Despite this, Boko Haram experienced a subsequent revival under a new leader, Bakura Doro.
Name
The organisation's name has been Group of the People of Sunnah for Dawa and Jihad (Arabic: جماعة أهل السنة للدعوة والجهاد, romanised: Jamā'atu Ahli is-Sunnah lid-Da'wati wal-Jihād). It was also known as the West African Province (Wilayat Garb Ifrqiya), and, after pledging allegiance to Islamic State in 2015, was briefly called Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA) or Islamic State's West African Province (ISWAP). The group fractured in 2016, however, and ISWAP and Boko Haram are now separate groups.
The name Boko Haram is usually translated as "Western education is forbidden". "Haram" is from the Arabic حَرَام (ḥarām, "forbidden") and the Hausa word boko (the first vowel is long, the second pronounced in a low tone), meaning "fake", a word used to refer to secular Western education. In a 2009 statement they denounced that translation as the work of the "infidel media", claiming the true translation is "Western Civilization is forbidden", and that they are not "opposed to formal education coming from the West" but "believe in the supremacy of Islamic culture (not education)". Other translations in English include "Western influence is a sin", and "Westernization is sacrilege". Until the death of its founder Mohammed Yusuf, the group was also reportedly known as Yusifiyya. Northern Nigerians have commonly dismissed Western education as ilimin boko ("fake education") and secular schools as makaranta boko ("fake school").
Causes, ideology, and takfir
Causes/contributors
Economic
Some analysts have emphasised economic causes as a factor in Boko Haram's success. Wealth in Nigeria has been concentrated among members of a small political elite. Nigeria is Africa's biggest economy, but 60% of its population of 173 million (as of 2013) live on less than $1 a day.
Religious
The sharia law imposed by local authorities, beginning with Zamfara in January 2000 and covering 12 northern states by late 2002, may have promoted links between Boko Haram and political leaders, but was considered by the group to have been corrupted.
Extant resentment of colonialism
Academic Atta Barkindo explains the group's "baffling" ability to "maintain momentum" in part by the "accumulated and unaddressed grievances" against colonialism in the region, including the colonial boundaries (of Nigeria, Ghana, etc.) established by Europeans that bear no resemblance to "pre-colonial empires, ethnic or cultural territories", and by the group's use of the "historical narrative" of the Islamic Kanem–Bornu Empire. Mohammad Yusuf preached that, "our land was an Islamic state before it was turned into a land of kafir (infidel); the current system is contrary to true Muslim beliefs".
Illiteracy/lack of education
In a discussion organised by the Woodrow Wilson Center, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, a former president of Nigeria, highlighted the low level of literacy and education in the Northern parts of the country as contributing to the perpetuation of Boko Haram. According to Obasanjo, illiterate and uneducated children are more likely to be drawn in.
Ideology
The founder of Boko Haram, Muhammad Yusuf, was reportedly inspired by the controversial Islamic preacher Mohammed Marwa (Maitatsine), who condemned the reading of any books other than the Quran. In one 2009 interview, Yusuf expressed his opposition not only to Western education, but to the theory of evolution, a spherical Earth, and to the idea that rain comes from "evaporation caused by the sun" rather than being created and sent down directly by God.
Boko Haram opposes the Westernisation of Nigerian society, which it blames for "Nigeria's culture of corruption", and demands the establishment of an Islamic state in Nigeria. It developed into a jihadist group in 2009. As Sunni Salafi Jihadis, the group strives to re-establish the Islamic caliphate and bring all peoples under its domain, doing away with modern states and patriotic feeling towards them. After Boko Haram declared its allegiance to the Islamic State, an IS statement proclaimed "It was the rejection of nationalism that drove the mujahidin in Nigeria to give bay'ah (fealty) to the Islamic State and wage war against the Nigerian murtaddin (apostates) fighting for the Nigerian taghut (idolatrous tyrant)". The movement is diffuse, and fighters who are associated with it follow the Salafi doctrine.
Takfir
Members' beliefs tend to be centred on strict adherence to Wahhabism, which is an extremely strict form of Sunni Islam that sees many other forms of Islam as idolatrous.
The group has denounced Sufis and the members of the Shiite sects as infidels, and also mainstream Sunni Muslims who fail to support their jihad. This willingness to takfir – i.e. accuse self-professed Muslims of being apostates from Islam and thus subject to execution – is a departure from mainstream Islam but not Salafi jihadism.
An insurgent aiming to overthrow a Muslim government faces a challenge due to mainstream Islamic doctrine, which forbids the killing or enslaving of fellow Muslims, including government officials, military personnel, or ordinary Muslims who don't support the insurgency. However, by using takfir—declaring opponents as apostates—the insurgents not only bypass this prohibition but also turn the killing of these Muslims into a "religious duty". In a 18 December 2016 speech to his commanders, Shekau proclaimed that 'even if a woman is praying and fasting, once she engages in democracy I can capture her in a battle'.
Some scholars have characterised Boko Haram's ideology as a "militant Salafi-jihadist" version of Islamic ideologies which deplores secular governments, educational and legal systems, preferring a governance system in accordance with Boko Haram's understanding of Islamic law. Many people translate the group's name as "Western education is not allowed", but according to researchers it is more than just a matter of formal education, as they also reject political spheres they see to be incompatible with their religious world, or the authority of the government itself and any norms of society.
Interpretations of this resilience make use of two sets of ideas, ideological and organisational. Several groups of experts point to two sets of ideas as explanations of the group's resilience, namely, ideological and organisational. It appears that its ideology has served the movement well in helping with bisociation in situations of leadership change, military pressure and intra-factionalism, according to studies. Other reasons suggested for recruitment have been political marginalisation, poverty, unemployment, lack of education and insecurities, as well as differences over or dissatisfaction with state institutions. Such issues have made the group's messages more attractive than ever in certain communities where they are operating, along with the recruitment methods the group employs. These conditions have made it more appealing to the group's messages (in some affected communities) and its recruitment practices.
Meanwhile, another group of scholars believes Boko Haram's ideology has long changed as a result of both internal squabbles and military engagements and is still largely committed to the notion of the utopia of a religiously-based society. The movement's propaganda and recruitment techniques have been tailored to different audiences; the younger generation and local communities, and its messages have been religious, political and socio-economic. Researchers have therefore tended to explain this persisting group recruitment with a combination of the group's ideological appeal, the problems and grievances of the people in the north-eastern Nigeria and adjacent areas, as well as the problems of governance and conflicts in these areas.
According to researchers Jacob Zenna and Zacharias Pier,
after 2010 ... Shekau, believed that jihad was obligatory and that not actively joining his jihad was tantamount to apostasy. This did not mean Shekau actively killed anyone after he announced jihad and renamed the group "JAS" in 2010. Rather, there was a "priority scale" with Christians, the government and publicly anti-JAS Muslim preachers targeted first. This also meant any Muslims killed collaterally were not a concern since they were "guilty" for not having joined his jihad. ... [by] October 2010, ... assassinations targeting Muslim religious leaders, especially Salafists who opposed JAS's religious interpretation, as well as civil servants, became an almost weekly occurrence in northeastern Nigeria. In addition to this, prisons, banks, mosques, churches and beer halls also were common targets of attack.
History
Background
Before it was colonised and subsequently incorporated into the British Empire as Colonial Nigeria in 1900, the Bornu Empire ruled the territory where Boko Haram is currently active. It was a sovereign sultanate run according to the principles of the Constitution of Medina, with a majority Kanuri Muslim population. In 1903 the Sokoto Caliphate (and parts of the Borno Emirate) had come under mostly British rule, and in the Adamawa Wars to German rule in its eastern provinces. At this time, Christian missionaries spread the Christian message in the region and converted a large segment of the Nigerian populace. British rule ended when Nigeria was granted independence in 1960.
Except for a brief period of civilian rule between 1979 and 1983, Nigeria was governed by a series of military dictatorships from 1966 until the advent of democracy in 1999.
According to the Borno Sufi Imam Sheik Fatahi, Yusuf was trained by the Kano Salafi Izala Sheik Ja'afar Mahmud Adamu, who called him the "leader of young people"; the two split some time in 2002–2004. They both preached in Maiduguri's Indimi Mosque, which was attended by the deputy governor of Borno. Many of the group were reportedly inspired by Mohammed Marwa, known as Maitatsine ("He who curses others"), a self-proclaimed prophet (annabi, a Hausa word usually used only to describe the founder of Islam) born in Northern Cameroon who condemned the reading of books other than the Quran. In a 2009 BBC interview, Yusuf expressed similarly pre-modern ideas on evolution, a flat earth, and rain sent directly from God rather than evaporation. Followers of Maitatsine "wreaked havoc" in northern cities of Nigeria "off and on" from 1980 to 1985.
Ethnic militancy is thought to have been one of the causes of the 1967–1970 civil war; religious violence reached a new height in 1980 in Kano, the largest city in the north of the country, where the Muslim fundamentalist sect Yan Tatsine ("followers of Maitatsine") instigated riots that resulted in four or five thousand deaths.
In the ensuing military crackdown, Maitatsine was killed, fuelling a backlash of increased violence that spread across other northern cities over the next twenty years. Social inequality and poverty contributed both to the Maitatsine and Boko Haram uprisings.
In the decades since the end of British rule, politicians and academics from the mainly Islamic North have expressed their fundamental opposition to Western education. Political ethno-religious interest groups, whose membership includes influential political, military and religious leaders, have thrived in Nigeria, though they were largely suppressed under military rule. Their paramilitary wings, formed since the country's return to civilian rule, have been implicated in much of the sectarian violence in the years following. The Arewa People's Congress, the militia wing of the Arewa Consultative Forum, the main political group representing the interests of northern Nigeria, is a well-funded group with military and intelligence expertise and is considered capable of engaging in military action, including covert bombing.