Master Thesis Political Science: International Relations

The rise of

A Social Movement Theory Approach

Author: Iris Visser

Student Number: 5737508

MA Research Project Political Science: International Relations

Supervisor: Dr. Said Rezaeiejan

Second reader: Dr. Ursula Daxecker

Date: 25 June 2014

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Master Thesis Political Science: International Relations

The rise of Boko Haram

A Social Movement Theory Approach

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Table of contents

Political map of 6

I. Introduction 7

II. Theoretical framework and literature review 13

III. Methodology 34 Variables 34 Methodological issues 34 Operationalization 35

IV. Background of Nigeria 43

V. The rise and evolution of Boko Haram 51

VI. United States- Nigeria cooperation concerning counterterrorism 59

VII. A political process perspective 64

VIII. A relative deprivation perspective 75

IX. A resource mobilization perspective 91

X. A framing perspective 108

XI. Conclusion 122

Bibliography 127

Appendix: timeline of Boko Haram attacks 139

Number of Boko Haram attacks and resulting deaths 2010-2014 per quarter 139 Timeline of Boko Haram attacks 2010-2014 140

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Map of Nigeria

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I. Introduction

Like many postcolonial states, Nigeria has a turbulent history. The country is plagued by all kinds of violence. There has been civil war,1 crime rates are high,2 communal violence is common, as is sectarian violence3 — and, often along the same lines, political violence4 — while in the south an added problem are conflicts concerning oil.5 One of the biggest problems Nigeria faces today, is that of radical Islamic violence in the north of the country. Whereas communal violence has long been an issue, the rise of radical Islamic groups such as Boko Haram, who function more like a terrorist organization, is relatively new (as it is in most parts of the world). Boko Haram is formally called Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad (People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad). The name Boko Haram, which means something along the lines of ‘western education is sinful’, was given to them by neighbours of their compound in the early days of the organization’s existence.6 It is used in this thesis since it is shorter and much better known than their official name. The attacks by Boko Haram and associated violence have led to thousands of deaths since 2009.7 And although government statements sometimes suggest otherwise,8 there are no signs of Boko Haram being seriously impeded and of its violence declining. On the contrary, in the first 3 months of 2014, the radical Islamic group popularly known as Boko Haram have killed around 1500 people,9 including a large number of civilians in attacks on villages,10 and dozens of

1 ‘1970: Nigeria marks end of the Biafra civil war’, BBC, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-11399157, 24 September 2010. 2 ‘Nigeria Watch: Third Report on Violence in Nigeria (2006-2011)’, Nigeria Watch, June 2011, 12-13. 3 Idem, 20-21. 4 Idem, 16-20. 5 Idem, 13-16. 6 Andrew Walker (2012) ‘Special Report 308. What Is Boko Haram?’, United States Institute for Peace, 3. 7 ‘Nigeria: Boko Haram Attacks Cause Humanitarian Crisis’, Human Rights Watch, http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/03/14/nigeria-boko-haram-attacks-cause-humanitarian-crisis, 14 March 2014. Also see the appendix: timeline of Boko Haram attacks. 8 See for example: ‘Boko Haram In Disarray, Nigerian Army Reports’, SaharaReporters, http://saharareporters.com/news-page/boko-haram-disarray-nigerian-army-reports, 19 May 2013. Also see: Kees Broere, ‘Tientallen doden bij aanslag in Nigeria’, De Volkskrant, 15 April 2014. 9 ‘Nigeria: more than 1,500 killed in armed conflict in north-eastern Nigeria in early 2014’, . 10 ‘Boko Haram raid kills dozens in Nigeria’, AlJazeera, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2014/02/boko- haram-raid-kills-dozens-nigeria-201421221431015516.html, last modified 12 February 2014. Also see: ‘Nigeria village attack leaves scores dead’, AlJazeera. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2014/02/nigeria-village-attack-leaves-scores-dead- 2014216172549157111.html, last modified 16 February 2014. ‘Scores killed in attack in northeast Nigeria’, AlJazeera, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2014/02/scores- killed-attack-northeast-nigeria-2014216221443992379.html, last modified 17 February 2014. Michael Olugbode, ‘Boko Haram Kills 210 in Borno Dawn Attack, Says Senator Ahmed’, THISDAY, http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/boko-haram-kills-210-in-borno-dawn-attack-says-senator-ahmed/175978/, 12 April 2014.

7 school children.11 And famously, in April of that same year, they kidnapped over 250 schoolgirls from Chibok, the large majority of whom were still missing at the time of writing, two months later.12 While Boko Haram is burning down villages, Nigerian police forces respond with equally harsh methods without much consideration for whether it is actual Boko Haram affiliates or random civilians that are targeted.13 The government forces are adding to the death toll in this conflict — the earlier mentioned 1500 deaths in the first three months of 2014 included a couple of hundred people killed by government forces.14 Also when civilians are not actually targeted, the extreme measures taken to hunt down Boko Haram still cause civilian deaths and displacement.15 The Yobe, Borno, and Adamawa states have been in an official state of emergency for nearly a year, which puts little strain on the military forces. It would seem that Nigeria’s government forces’ methods are not effective, however, since attacks by Boko Haram have only increased in recent years. Especially attacks on civilian targets seem to have proliferated since this state of emergency.16 Next to the death toll caused by both Boko Haram’s attacks and the government forces’ response, there are now also 300,000 to 500,000 displaced people in the three north-eastern states.17 While the February attacks all took place in , previous attacks have happened throughout a large area of the country covering the entire north and north-eastern regions and also capital territory, adding up to 17 of Nigeria’s 36 states — although in some states there were only one or two attacks while the noth-eastern ones faced much more.18 Next to attacks on civilians, there have been a lot of attacks on the police and the military, which was the main target

11 Anouk van Kampen, ‘43 leerlingen gedood op school Nigeria bij aanval Boko Haram’, NRC, http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2014/02/25/29-doden-op-school-nigeria-na-aanval-boko-haram/, last modified 25 February 2014. Also see: Kayode Idowu and Fidelis Soriwei, Boko Haram kills Scores of UTME candidates in Borno’, The Punch, http://www.punchng.com/news/utme-students-killed-in-boko-haram-attacks/, 12 April 2014. 12 Jacob Zenn, ‘Boko Haram and the Kidnapping of the Chibok Schoolgirls’, Combating Terrorism Center, https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/boko-haram-and-the-kidnapping-of-the-chibok-schoolgirls, 29 May 2014. 13 ‘Nigeria police accused of victimizing ’, AlJazeera, http://www.aljazeera.com/video/africa/2014/02/nigeria-police-accused-victimising-muslims- 201421516298454963.html, last modified 15 February 2014. Also see: ‘Nigeria: Torture, cruel inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees by Nigerian security forces: Amnesty International’s written statement to the 25th session of the UN Human Rights Council (3 – 28 March 2014)’, Amnesty International, 20 February 2014. 14 ‘Nigeria: more than 1,500 killed in armed conflict in north-eastern Nigeria in early 2014’, Amnesty International, 12. Via: http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AFR44/004/2014/en/543f7ac9-6889-4f02-bf5a- d73832e04229/afr440042014en.pdf, 2014. 15 Ola’ Audu, ‘185 killed in Borno town, Baga, as soldiers, Boko Haram fight’, Premium Times, http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/130680-185-killed-in-borno-town-baga-as-soldiers-boko-haram-fight.html, last modified 22 April 2014. 16 See the appendix: timeline of Boko Haram attacks. 17 ‘Nigeria: Boko Haram Attacks Cause Humanitarian Crisis’, Human Rights Watch. Also see: ‘UNHCR concerned as hundreds flee attacks in Nigeria’s Lake region’, UNHCR, http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/search?page=search&docid=531ee2736&query=nigeria, last modified 11 March 2014. 18 See the appendix: timeline of Boko Haram attacks.

8 especially at the start of the violence,19 and threats are also made against Nigeria’s oil refineries in the Delta,20 against federal government and its president, Goodluck Jonathan, in particular.21 Also, Nigeria’s borders are porous and there are fears of a spill-over into Cameroon, where Boko Haram have already kidnapped a French family in early 2013. Recently, images of Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau surfaced in which threats were made against the US and other western countries.22 Aside from these threats and the loss of lives caused by Boko Haram, it also severely disrupts public life and harms the economy. The group’s regular attacks on schools have caused destruction and have led to the closing of over 200 schools and around 15,000 children not being able to attend school anymore in Yobe state.23 In Borno state, in March 2014 85 schools were ordered to close by officials, in fear of more Boko Haram attacks.24 As the above signals, the Nigerian government is facing a lot of difficulties in battling Boko Haram. While Boko Haram has thus far been a mostly national problem (notwithstanding some earlier mentioned spill-over into Cameroon and Niger25), other states have also voiced their concern about the violence in the north-eastern part of the country. One of the most prominent states in this is the United States, who have designated Boko Haram and its offshoot organization Ansaru as international terrorist organizations in November 2013.26 Ansaru is officially named Jama’atu Ansarul Muslimina fi Biladis , which means ‘Vanguard for the Protection of Muslims in Black Africa’.27 It was founded in January of 2012 when it split off from Boko Haram because of ideological differences.28 To designate Ansaru as an international terrorist organization is more understandable than it is for Boko Haram, since it is more regionally focused (as opposed to Boko Haram’s mostly national focus). Ansaru also does not support Boko Haram’s

19 Ibid. 20 Heather Murdock, ‘Nigeria’s Boko Haram Threatens Oil Refineries, Muslim Clerics’, , http://www.voanews.com/content/nigerias-boko-haram-threatens-oil-refineries-muslim-clerics/1855574.html, last modified 20 February 2014. 21 ‘Boko Haram threatens Jonathan’, Vanguard, http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/04/boko-haram-threatens- jonathan/, last modified 13 April 2012. 22 Zachary Elkaim, ‘Boko Haram leader releases video on Maiduguru attack, threatens US’, The Long War Journal, http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2013/12/shekau_strikes_back.php, December 13, 2013. 23 Friday Olokor, ‘Boko Haram stops 15,000 pupils from schooling… destroys 200 schools’, The Punch, http://www.punchng.com/education/boko-haram-stops-15000-pupils-from-schooling-destroys-200-schools/, 28 February 2014. 24 in , ‘Nigerian state closes schools amid fears of Boko Haram attacks’, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/18/nigeria-state-closes-schools-fears-boko-haram, last modified 18 March 2014. 25 David Lewis, ‘Niger fears contagion from Nigeria's Boko Haram Islamists’, Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/19/us-niger-bokoharam-insight-idUSBREA2I16720140319, last modified 19 March 2014. 26 Office of the Spokesperson, ‘Terrorist Designations of Boko Haram and Ansaru’, U.S. Department of State, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2013/11/217509.htm, last modified 13 November 2013. 27 ‘Jama’atu Ansarul Muslimina fi Biladis Sudan’, TRAC, http://www.trackingterrorism.org/group/jama%E2%80%99atu-ansarul-muslimina-fi-biladis-sudan-jamusbis-ansaru, last accessed 28 March 2014. 28 ‘Jama’atu Ansarul Muslimina fi Biladis Sudan’, TRAC.

9 frequent targeting of civilians. The group is rather small and far less active than Boko Haram, however, with only a handful of attacks attributed to them.29 The United States offers training and support to the state of Nigeria in order to deal with these groups. The ties between the United States and Nigeria go further than cooperation on counterterrorism. The two states have had strong ties for some time, but especially since the instalment of Nigeria’s fourth republic in 1999 following 16 years of military rule.30 The countries meet under the U.S.-Nigeria Binational Commission, which organizes talks around five main themes: “good governance, transparency, and integrity; energy and investment; regional security; Niger Delta; and agriculture and food security.”31 Against the background of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the following announcement of the U.S. ‘war on terror’ quickly thereafter, United States-Nigeria relations have intensified, in particular in the field of counterterrorism. In recent years, for the United States concerns about radical have been one of the most prominent points on the agenda towards Nigeria. These concerns focus on violent groups like Boko Haram and its splinter cells.32 The governments of both countries cooperate on counterterrorism, in Nigeria as well as in the wider region — consider for example the Trans Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership.33 Paradoxically, since the increased cooperation on counterterrorism there has been a rise in acts of terrorism in Nigeria. U.S. government officials and experts, when asked by Foreign Policy, expressed growing sectarian violence in Nigeria as one of their worries for 2014.34 The earlier mentioned attacks by Boko Haram are the prime example of this. And so far, 2014 is characterized by a lot of violence by Boko Haram.

29 Ibid. 30 ‘Nigeria’, United States Africa Command, http://www.africom.mil/about-africa/west-africa/Nigeria, last accessed 9 May 2014. 31 Ibid. 32 Office of the Spokesperson, ‘Terrorist Designations of Boko Haram and Ansaru’. 33 ‘Trans Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership’, GlobalSecurity.org, last modified January 24, 2013. 34 Micah Zenko, ‘Cloudy With a Chance of Conflict’, Foreign Policy, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/12/24/cloudy_with_a_chance_of_conflict, last modified 24 December 2013.

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Research question

The time of Boko Haram’s arise is controversial. It is most commonly dated back to 2002, but the roots of the organization are thought to lie in the mid-nineties, in the Ahlulsunna wal’jama’ah hijra or Shabaab group (Muslim Youth Organisation) led by Abubakar Lawan.35 In 2002 Mohamed Yusuf assumed leadership and the group slowly morphed into Boko Haram as it is known today. While the group was slightly more violent under Yusuf, they still were relatively secluded until an incident in 2009 in which Yusuf and many other members of Boko Haram were killed.36 The group had reorganized in mid- 2010, this time under the leadership of Abubakar Shekau, and launched its larger scale campaign of terror that lasts until today.37 It is interesting to see how this situation of increased and seemingly still increasing terrorist activity, while the United States and Nigeria have started cooperating more strongly to combat it, can be explained. This leads to the following research question:

How can the increase of Islamist violence in Nigeria, focusing on the case of Boko Haram, be explained in part against the background of intensified U.S.-Nigerian cooperation concerning counterterrorism?

Looking into the increase of radical Islamic violence in Nigeria is relevant, since the campaign of terror that Boko Haram is carrying out causes a lot of suffering, as was set out above. Similarly, as discussed, the following actions by government forces and the fighting between the two parties only add to the sorrow. Assessing the case of Boko Haram helps to understand the dynamics of the arise of terror and violence. Also, it looks into how effective counterterrorism methods actually are and how they may affect existing dynamics. This is relevant since the world has seen a rise in terrorist activity not just in Nigeria, but throughout large parts of the Arab world, too, since the United States started its ‘war on terror’.38 Scientifically, the topic of this study offers insight into the dynamics of combating terrorism. It does so particularly with regard to bilateral relations between the United States and an African state concerning this matter, which is a study that may add to the more common literature about the United States’ counterterrorism cooperation with states in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

35 Freedom C. Onuoha (2012) ‘(Un)Willing to Die: Boko Haram and Suicide Terrorism in Nigeria’, AlJazeera Center for Studies, http://studies.aljazeera.net/en/reports/2012/12/2012122491416595337.htm, last modified 30 December 2012. 36 Walker (2012), 4. 37 Ibid. 38 ‘War on Terrorism’, Global Policy Forum, http://www.globalpolicy.org/war-on-terrorism.html, last accessed 23 April 2014.

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Layout

In order to look into the above research question and test the hypotheses, first a review of the literature available on the subject is given. Then, a theoretical framework is established with which to conduct the analysis. Chapter III sets out the research design. Chapter IV looks into the history of Nigeria since its independence, in order to provide some background and shed light on the environment and circumstances in which the rise of Boko Haram is to be seen. Specifically its political history and the nature of the Nigerian political system are assessed. Chapter V focuses on Boko Haram. Its origins, history and ideas are set out in more detail. Chapter VI looks at United States-Nigeria relations considering counterterrorism, and specifically measures directed at Boko Haram. After these aspects are all discussed, chapter VII features looking into the increase of Islamist violence using a political process perspective. Chapter VIII does the same, but from a relative deprivation outlook. Chapter IX views the events from a resource mobilization point of view, while finally chapter X provides a look into the influence of culture and framing, especially interaction between the United States and Boko Haram. Chapter XI presents the conclusion.

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II. Theoretical framework & literature review

The objective of this thesis is to look into the rise of Boko Haram and specifically its turn to and increasing use of violence. There are many factors that may play a role in the rise of insurgent groups, and different theoretical approaches choose to focus on a range of these factors. Below a wide range of factors that are looked into for understanding the rise of Boko Haram, and the accompanying literature, are discussed.

Understanding the rise of Boko Haram

A field that presents an oversight of a lot of these factors is that of social movement theory. It is appealing to look at this field of study because it is difficult to define Boko Haram. Should it be viewed primarily as a religious organization, or as a political one? This question cannot be easily answered, and an unambiguous answer does not exist. Boko Haram is an Islamist organization, which means that one of their goals is to install an Islamic state. Next to a religious group, this inherently makes them a political group as well. Because this is the case, and because it seems wise not to treat them as a very specific category based solely on their religious character — as may have been one of the pitfalls of the United States in its ‘war on terror’ — in this study Boko Haram is perceived as a type of political opposition group. This is also sensible since there are persistent rumours that Boko Haram receives part of its resources from Nigerian politicians from oppositional parties.39 A former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell, asserts that Boko Haram is several things. It is a grassroots movement, it is a group seeking vengeance for their leader Yusuf’s death, and it also shows signs of an Islamic sect with a personality cult.40 Because the nature of Boko Haram is so difficult to define, and ideology and do play a role, they are certainly not cast aside. Literature specifically on radical Islam is also reviewed, but it is important not to pin a definition of for example ‘radical Islamic terrorist organization’ or ‘international terrorist organization’ too soon, because this is a rather narrow definition which in part determines the outcome of the research. Therefore, first and foremost, Boko Haram’s rise and dynamics are addressed by making use of social movement theory.

An overview of the evolution of social movement theory: structure versus agency

Social movement theory (SMT) does not present a single clear, ready-made theory. Therefore, some elaboration on its evolvement, the discussions within it, and how it is put to use, is necessary.

39 See for example this supposed confession of a former Boko Haram member: ‘A Confession From A Boko Haram Member Turned Born Again’, Nairaland, http://www.nairaland.com/863111/confession-boko-haram-member- turned, 4 February 2012. There is no telling whether there is any truth in it- especially since the source is somewhat unclear- or whether this entire transcript is again- however, at the least, it presents a good example of the type of rumours that exist. 40 Walker (2012), 9.

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In its earlier days, SMT was rather structuralist.41 Kurzman (2003) illustrates this by giving some quotes by leading scholars within SMT, which are all more or less structuralist. An example is Goldstone’s “continued pressure from the international system, conjoined with certain structural characteristics, precipitates revolution”42, or Skocpol’s “an adequate understanding of social revolutions requires that the analyst take a nonvoluntarist, structural perspective on their causes and processes”.43 It seems this kind of outlook does not explain why in cases with similar characteristics social movement action (in this case revolution) does happen in some of these cases, and does not happen in others. However, the quote of Klandermans and Tarrow almost ten years later already seems more moderate in its structuralism: “[t]hese findings suggest that it may be primarily the conditions of national politics and not factors internal to social movements that determine their careers”.44 While still not giving much credit to the agency of social movements, at least they state that more structural factors may be primarily, responsible, so not only. In the nineties, the above quoted authors changed their tone and gave more room for agency.45 This meant new lines of study within social movement theory came up. The trouble is that when the clear idea of structure and political environment dictating the outcome did not suffice anymore, more and more variables came up that also seemed to matter when studying social movements. This is, one could say, the time in which the word ‘theory’ in social movement theory became kind of odd. As is often the case, the more of the complicated social world is tried to be explained at once, the less clear theory actually becomes. Suddenly, everything mattered. As Kurzman phrased it, “causal factors accumulate like Occam’s stubble […]: states matter, culture matters, social structure matters, accidents of history matter — everything matters!”46 While his chapter does seem like a bit of an immodest personal account, the point he makes is quite clear, and the trouble with the developments within SMT is obvious. However, all the different causal factors that one can look at in explaining social movements, to some extent correspond with some of the bigger IR theories. Realists still focus on more structural factors, and where actors are considered, they are perceived as rational. Constructivists focus more on the role of culture, ideas, and framing, both as causes for the social movement to arise, as methods used by these movements in order to mobilize. Institutionalists focus on organizational structures of social

41 Structuralism is one outlook on the structure-agency debate. This is an ontological debate within social sciences, which questions whether the structure or the agent has primacy in determining outcomes. Structuralism favours structure, leaving little room for agency. 42 Jack Goldstone (1980) ‘Theories of Revolution: The Third Generation’ in World Politics 32 (3) 449. 43 Theda Skocpol (1979) States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of , Russia and China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 14. 44 Bert Klandermans and Sidney Tarrow (1988) ‘Mobilization into Social Movements’ in Bert Klandermans, Hanspeter Kriesi, and Sidney Tarrow (eds.) International Social Movement Research 1, 17. Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI. 45 Charles Kurzman (2004) ‘The Poststructuralist Consensus in Social Movement Theory’ in Rethinking Social Movements. Structure, Meaning, and Emotion, USA: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 111, 113. 46 Idem, 113.

14 movements to reach an understanding for their dynamics. So it is not, perhaps, the case that “everything matters”, at least not to everyone. A whole range of theories actually arose within the study of social movements, all giving primacy to something else. Below, all these different ‘categories’ of theory are discussed, and some specific, useful theories within them are assessed.

The different ‘tastes’ of social movement theory

Psychology-based explanations: collective behaviour

While SMT has known a large structure-agency debate, which was mentioned above, before SMT even existed as a field of study under this name, the focus was largely on collective behaviour. These studies were characterized by socio-psychological lines of thinking, and do still exist today. In the first half of the 1900s, these kinds of studies focused mainly on individuals, and saw social movements as a sort of accumulation of personal grievances. While this idea is largely outdated, it seems likely that these kinds of emotional individual factors still matter (and among scholars this idea has become more popular again47), but it is not feasible to research this here. Besides, this paper is not a psychological study. In the second half of the 20th century, the field of studying social movements became more populated by sociologists and political scientists, for whom the focus is not on the individual psyche, but more on group dynamics. McCauley and Moskalenko (2008) provide a clear oversight of twelve psychological processes that lead to radicalization.48 They describe ‘common’ psychological processes, and do not carry out the ‘Bush-style’ demonization of terrorists — which is what their study focuses on. Radicalization can be an individual process (for example a single member of Boko Haram), a group process (a Boko Haram cell) or there can be mass radicalization (in which case a bigger political group or for example Hausa and Fulani ethnic groups radicalize in conflict with the state or other groups).49 As said, there are some obvious practical difficulties with looking into individual radicalization for this study. This is also the case for group radicalization, since studying that accurately would require group access. These objections apply less to the point of mass radicalization, which is in fact rather interesting. Did the colonial history of Nigeria, with its accompanying demographics and group grievances, help radicalize certain groups in the north, and bring more popular support to groups such as Boko Haram? Even though these kinds of automatic radicalization processes are likely to be a part of understanding the radicalization of Boko Haram, for the outlook of this paper it is not the most relevant and at best provides a small part of the explanation. If these sort of automatic radicalization processes

47 Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper and Francesca Polletta (2001) ‘Introduction: Why Emotions Matter’ in Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper and Francesca Polletta (eds.), Passionate Politics. Emotions and Social Movements. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 48 Clark McCauley and Sophia Moskalenko (2008) ‘Mechanisms of Political Radicalization: Pathways Toward Terrorism’ in Terrorism and Political Violence, 20:3, 418. 49 McCauley and Moskalenko (2008), 416-418.

15 tend to happen when certain people are put together, they do not explain how this relates to the broader environment that the radicalizing group exists in, and at the specific characteristics of the case of Boko Haram. Plus, as Borum aptly states: “A focus on radicalization […] risks implying that radical beliefs are a proxy—or at least a necessary precursor—for terrorism. We know this not to be true. Most people who hold radical ideas do not engage in terrorism, and many terrorists—even those who lay claim to a "cause"—are not deeply ideological and may not "radicalize" in any traditional sense.”50 So while this is not a study that focuses on the psychology of radicalization, and while radical ideas are not a proxy for actions as taken by Boko Haram,51 it is interesting to mention some of the twelve mechanisms for radicalization that McCauley and Moskalenko set out, because they relate to other theoretical stances and points made later on. The first is “group radicalization under isolation and threat”, which asserts that groups are more likely to radicalize when they are cut off from other parts of society (with other ideas). They are not challenged by alternative ideas anymore, and can only trust each other — a trust that is easier established if everyone is exactly on the same page.52 The second is “group radicalization in competition with state power”, which is also very relevant here: this is something SMT, and particularly the branches of political opportunity structure or political process framework, which will be looked into more deeply below, study.53 It concerns a cycle of reaction and counterreaction between the group and the state which leads to its radicalization — and, as is also assessed later, may enhance its legitimacy and resources. The third is “mass radicalization in conflict with an outgroup- jujitsu politics”, in which conflict with an outgroup strengthens the ingroup’s identity. Prompting a fierce reaction by the outgroup, for example the state’s security forces which mostly comprise of another ethno-religious background, or the United States, is used as a tactic for increasing legitimacy and support.54 The final mechanism of radicalization worth mentioning is “mass radicalization in conflict with an outgroup- hate”, in which victims are dehumanized.55 This also happens in the case of Boko Haram, where the boundaries of who could be possible victims of the group were stretched over the last years. In the above, social movements mostly arose because of people’s irrational impulses, or because of psychological processes that happened more or less automatically, subconsciously. McCauley and Moskalenko do take a next step, however, and mention that these processes are also something that

50 Randy Borum (2011) ‘Radicalization into Violent Extremism I: A Review Of Social Science Theories’ in Journal of Strategic Security, 4:4, 8. 51 Consider the earlier mentioned difficulties with defining Boko Haram. It is difficult to establish what Boko Haram’s ideas actually are, and in how far they act out of radical beliefs and in how far they have a clear, rationalized view and plan and simply use radical beliefs to their advantage. 52 McCauley and Moskalenko (2008), 423-424. 53 Idem, 425. 54 McCauley and Moskalenko (2008), 426-427. 55 Idem, 427.

16 groups can consciously make use off. Also, they mention grievances that lie at the roots of some of the discussed radicalization mechanisms.

Relative deprivation

Relative deprivation (RD) is about grievances that lie at the root of mass mobilization, radicalization and insurgency. It was widely used by social movement theorists from the 1960s.56 It thus sort of followed the psychology-based explanations but looks specifically at the role of relative deprivation in mobilization, both of social movements as leading to insurgency or civil war. RD focuses more on the root causes of violence. It seeks to explain what sort of grievances may actually lead to social mobilization. The term relative deprivation implies that merely being deprived, so for example being poor, does not necessarily lead to movement formation. It is about people feeling they are poorer than others, or poorer than they expected to be: hence of course the word ‘relative’. Theorists within RD do not fully agree on this; what they have in common, though, is that relative deprivation is about perceived inequality.57 It also needs to be established what is meant by the perceived inequality that RD focuses on. This is something that is not always clearly identified, but in general definitions are broad, with preconditions merely being “wanting what one does not have, and feeling that one deserves whatever it is one wants but does not have”, which can then contain all kinds of economic, social and political inequalities.58 In Nigeria, there is large income inequality between the northern and southern parts of the country,59 and large income inequality in general.60 These kinds of inequalities, especially if they also exist along religious or ethnic lines, lead to grievances. RD may actually encompass a lot of issues, including ethno-religious strife. While it is not difficult to believe that a situation of (perceived) inequality provides fertile soil for a social movement or uprising to spring to life, there is also criticism on RD theory precisely because of these words ‘fertile soil’. These kinds of “socioeconomic and psychosocial theories of social movements […] mechanistically link grievances generated by economic deprivation or alienation to collective action”.61 The existence of relative deprivation alone cannot explain the rise of Boko Haram, because in some cases with these characteristics insurgency does happen, while in others it does not. There seems to be something missing from the equation.

56 Joan Neff Gurney and Kathleen J. Tierney (1982) ‘Relative Deprivation and Social Movements: A Critical Look at Twenty Years of Theory and Research’ in The Sociological Quarterly, 23:1, 34. 57 Ibid. 58 Iain Walker and Heather J. Smith (2002) ‘Fifty Years of Relative Deprivation Research’ in Relative Deprivation. Specification, Development and Integration, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2. 59 Sustainable Development Solutions Network. 60 GINI index, . Via: Via: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?page=. 61 Mohammed M. Hafez (2004) ‘From Marginalization to Massacres. A Political Process Explanation of GIA Violence in Algeria’ in Quintan Wiktorowicz (ed.) Islamic Activism. A Social Movement Theory Approach, 39.

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What RD is also essentially about, as said, is the perceived inequality. This could help shed light on the above issue. Walker and Smith write that RD is actually quite good at explaining certain paradoxes, situations in which one would assume there are grievances — they name as an example the fact that women in the same jobs as men often earn a lot less, yet do not seem terribly angry about this — and thus there is no mobilization. The answer RD gives is that “people’s reactions to objective circumstances depend on their subjective comparisons”.62 Therefore, it is how people feel about the circumstances they are in that is vital in understanding how relative deprivation can lead to mobilization of any kind, in this case of the group of Boko Haram arising. Also, while relative deprivation may be important in the case of Boko Haram, it is difficult to measure whether this is truly one of the roots for the violence. As said, groups may also use narratives of grievances to legitimate their actions. This does not mean that they actually act because of those grievances. Furthermore, the relative deprivation approach is not the most likely candidate to shed light on the research question. The existence of grievances does not say much about why certain movements become violent, as said, and also not about when — so about the patterns of violence. However, looking into relative deprivation and related grievances is necessary for gaining an extensive understanding of the situation in northern Nigeria and the fertile soil that it has created for groups such as Boko Haram. Within terrorism studies, very roughly, there are two main lines of thinking when considering the root causes of Islamic terrorism. The first is that the causes are to be found within ideology, the second is that the causes lie in poverty and inequality.63 That second explanation is in line with relative deprivation theory. The first is discussed later on. The idea that the rise of groups such as Boko Haram lies in poverty and inequality mostly concerns global inequality, so not between (groups of) Nigerians but of Islamic societies feeling aggrieved versus the West.64 Thus the ‘fertile soil’ for insurgency or radical can relate to global inequality or to inequality on a national or more local scale.

Political opportunity/process

The political opportunity or political process approach partly developed as a response against the above. It insists that the existence of grievances is not enough to explain large scale insurgency: not in all societies where similar grievances exist, mass mobilization occurs. The political environment in which a movement operates shapes its behaviour. The ‘old school’ version of political opportunity would be political opportunity structure, which is the structural version of SMT that has lost popularity today. For some time now, it has been more about political processes, in which political opportunity plays a role, but may change swiftly (which is why the word ‘structure’ tends to be misleading), and in which interaction

62 Walker and Smith (2002), 1. 63 James A. Piazza (2006) ‘Rooted in Poverty?: Terrorism, Poor Economic Development, and Social Cleavages’ in Terrorism and Political Violence, 18, 159. 64 Piazza (2006).

18 within the political environment also plays a role, bringing agency into the picture. As said above: the political environment shapes a movement’s behaviour, it does not determine it. And political opportunity, as stated, is not a fixed structure, but may be altered by agents. In 2004 a book on applying SMT to Islamic activism was published. It contains several case studies contributed by different well-known scholars in the area of social movement studies. What this book does, is very interesting for this study. Where scholars of social movement theory and of terrorism studies and Islamic activism studied much of the same matter, and faced much of the same theoretical discussions in their field, the fields largely developed separate from each other.65 This book has tried to change that and bring the fields together: “[T]he dynamics, process, and organization of Islamic activism can be understood as important elements of contention that transcend the specificity of “Islam” as a system of meaning, identity, and basis of collective action. Though the ideational components and inspiration of Islam as an ideological worldview differentiate Islamic activism of other examples of contention, the collective action itself and concomitant mechanisms demonstrate consistency across movement-types. In other words, Islamic activism is not sui generis. Despite these similarities, the study of Islamic activism has, for the most part, remained isolated from the plethora of theoretical and conceptual developments that have emerged from research on social movements and contentious politics.”66 The first couple of chapters of the book, by Hafez and Wiktorowicz, give primacy to political opportunity and political process frameworks for understanding Islamic activism. The chapter by Hafez deals with massacres against civilians carried out by the Groupe Islamique Armé, or GIA, in 1997 and some years thereafter.67 In Algeria, at the time, there was large scale Islamist insurgency, which targeted security forces and government officials, but also civilians, including those in “Islamist strongholds”.68 This situation shows similarities to the situation in northeast Nigeria, in which Boko Haram attacks soldiers, policemen, other state personnel and civilians, be they Christian or Muslim. Hafez proposes an answer to the question of why such a movement radicalizes and turns to extreme violence — in his study, particularly violence directed at civilians. Grievances and ideology do matter, but to reach the stage wherein indiscriminate violence is perceived as legitimate, there needs to be a radicalization process. Hafez asserts that this is “intimately connected to the broader political process of violent contention”.69 Massacres such as those in Algeria are more likely to occur, he states, when three conditions concerning repression exist: “(1) state repression creates a political environment of bifurcation

65 Quintan Wiktorowicz (2004) ‘Introduction’ in Islamic Activism. A Social Movement Theory Approach. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1-36. 66 Wiktorowicz (2004). 67 Hafez (2004), 37. 68 Ibid. 69 Idem, 38.

19 and brutality; (2) insurgents create exclusive organizations to shield themselves from repression; and (3) rebels promote antisystem frames to motivate violent collective action to overthrow agents of repression.”70 This falls under political process theory, but it focuses on the interplay between a variety of variables such as the political environment, organizational structures and framing. While it is good to keep Tilly’s criticism on political process theory in mind, in starting with state repression that creates a certain environment there is considerable room for agency, since the interaction between the state agent and the insurgent group agent is central. The difference with structuralism is this: political opportunity is not perceived as a structure, but as a variable. As Kurzman aptly states, “opportunity, ultimately, is what people make of it”; therefore, it does not determine the outcome.71 This also makes it harder to study movements in a way as to deduct certain laws that could predict the outcome. This is not an issue here, since this study is not in the business of predicting. It only seeks an understanding of what has happened so far. An issue with the political process framework, as Hafez dubbed it, is that it focuses on the process, as the name suggests. While the argument posed by Hafez is central to explaining the increase of violence by radical Islamic groups in Nigeria, the roots of the violence cannot be traced back to it. Therefore, more historicist approaches are valuable for providing the necessary background before turning to the analysis. However, in another chapter, Hafez and Wiktorowicz make a crucial point on this matter: “Deprivation has created a legion of disaffected recruits who seek culturally acceptable explanations that address their marginalization and social anomie. […] Although such studies point to the general conditions that give rise to Islamic movements, they do not effectively explain the emergence and proliferation of violence in repertoires of contention.”72 It is explaining Boko Harams turn to violence and the increase in violence that is at the centre of attention in this study. Hafez and Wiktorowicz start by stating that the turn to violence of some Islamic groups is rather interesting since these are the kind of groups that already have a lot of options for contention.73 So why do some of these groups turn violent? Hafez and Wiktorowicz assert that two factors of the political opportunity structure are particularly important in shaping a movement’s decision whether to turn to violence. The first is access to institutionalized politics. The more exclusive a regime is, the more likely it is for movements to turn to extreme measures such as violence, because other ways of influencing the state are closed off, and because the regime is seen as “unreformable or an instrument of a narrow class

70 Ibid. 71 Kurzman (2004), 117. 72 Mohammed M. Hafez and Quintan Wiktorowicz (2004) ‘Violence as Contention in the Egyptian Islamic Movement’ in Quintan Wiktorowicz (ed.) Islamic Activism. A Social Movement Theory Approach. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 63. 73 Idem, 61.

20 or clique [which] (accordingly) needs to be overhauled”.74 Second, the nature of state repression influences movement behaviour. Here, it is about the timing of the repression — is it preemptive or reactive — and the targeting of it – selective or indiscriminate.75 Preemptive means that the government intervened before the group got well-organized and built a strong identity. Reactive is that the government intervenes after these factors are already established, which means that the group is better equipped to effectively evade the intervention and go underground, while their strong group cohesion and identity make chances of defection lower and the feeling of unfair treatment higher, rising motivation for battle or revenge against the state. Concerning the targeting of state repression, selective targeting means only group members are targeted. In this case only “trouble-makers” are punished and there is less of a chance that supporters and sympathizers of the group will be drawn towards the group more.76 The state does not lose any more of its legitimacy in the eyes of these supporters: selective repression therefore limits mass support for a group such as Boko Haram, which consequently also limits its resources.77 Indiscriminate repression may lead to more of an “us versus them” feeling among the population, in which the state is the big oppressor. So while preemptive and selective repression may hinder movement formation, reactive and indiscriminate repression may stimulate its turn to violence.78 Testing their theory on the Egyptian Islamic movement’s turn to more violent measures, Hafez and Wiktorowicz conclude that “violent contention […] became an increasingly acceptable protest repertoire in the 1990s due to three developments relating to the political opportunity structure.”79 These were the deliberalization of the political system, the reactive repression of militant Islamists, and the indiscriminatory nature of state repression.80 It is interesting to see whether these developments have also been present in Nigeria, and whether their effects were similar there. Singerman remarks that while Islamic activist movements do show similar dynamics as other types of social movements, there is in fact something specific about them: “what is specific to Islamic movements is the political context in which they operate. Many regimes in the Middle East rely upon political exclusion and repression to maintain rule”.81 Even though Nigeria is not part of the Middle East, political exclusion and repression are common here as well, which is why the theories by Hafez & Wiktorowicz are of importance here. Clearly, a political environment like that can have effects on the possibilities for resource mobilization of groups as Boko Haram.

74 Idem, 66. 75 Ibid. 76 Idem, 70. 77 Hafez and Wiktorowicz (2004,) 70. 78 Idem, 68. 79 Idem, 80. 80 Ibid. 81 Diane Singerman (2004) ‘The Networked World of Islamist Social Movements’ in Quintan Wiktorowicz (ed.) Islamic Activism. A Social Movement Theory Approach. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 143.

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Resource mobilization

Just as with political opportunity, the focus is on factors that lie outside of the movement itself — more on structure — and which in part determine movement behaviour — as opposed to the first two categories within SMT (collective behaviour and relative deprivation) that focused more on factors within the psyche of the movement or movement’s individual members. Grievances certainly are important, but without any resources a group is not able to actually carry out its activities. So while grievances may explain why people wish to organize, for an understanding of the dynamic of a group turning violent looking into their possibilities for resource mobilization is vital as well. Cress and Snow (1996) phrase it as follows: “Its central premise is that the principal antecedent task to collective action is resource aggregation and that fluctuation in the level of discretionary resources accounts, in large part, for variation in the activity levels of social movements”.82 As is hinted at above, resources need not merely be available, but movements also need to be able to put them to use to organize themselves — hence the term resource mobilization.83 Edwards and McCarthy state that “[r]esource mobilization theory is at root aimed at better understanding how groups are able to overcome prevailing patterns of resource inequality in their efforts to pursue social change goals”.84 This is of course interesting in relation to Boko Haram, because they only represent a relatively small segment of the population and one in the impoverished northeast of Nigeria, a peripheral zone, which could indicate that they do not automatically have a lot of resources at their disposal.85 More relevant, however, is not the variation of resource availability (and accessibility) over space, but over time: has the resource availability for Boko Haram increased in recent years, and can that explain the increase in the violence it carried out? This is something to look into. So resources are unevenly distributed over space, time and constituency. Social movements themselves can try to gain more resources, but there can also be individuals and organizations from other sectors, both state and non-state actors, that try to increase the resources of a given social movement organization.86 As Edwards and McCarthy state, “[s]uch […] actors are motivated by a number of factors, including altruism, enlightened self-interest, compassion, religious conviction, or ideological commitment.

82 Daniel M. Cress and David A. Snow (1996) ‘Mobilization at the Margins: Resources, Benefactors, and the Viability of Homeless Social Movement Organizations’ in American Sociological Review, 61:6, 1090. 83 Bob Edwards and John D. McCarthy (2004) ‘Resources and Social Movement Mobilization’ in David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, Hanspeter Kriesi (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 116. 84 Idem, 118. 85 Idem, 119. 86 Idem, 120.

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Others may be motivated by the desire to co-opt and thereby to control to some extent the goals and tactics of a movement.”87 There is a wide range of aspects that are covered by the resource mobilization perspective. Cress and Snow distinguish material, moral, human and informational resources.88 Or alternatively and more simply put: “money, legitimacy, people, and occasionally expertise”.89 They inductively derived their categories from looking at fifteen social movement organizations of homeless in the United States, which I obviously quite a different field than that of groups such as Boko Haram. While it has been said that different types of social movements all follow similar dynamics, it is also interesting to look at Edwards and McCarthy. They have synthesized previous work, including that of Cress and Snow but also that which based its typology on other types of social movements — which may therefore be more generalizable and more applicable to Boko Haram. Edwards and McCarthy provide roughly the same categories as Cress and Snow, except the fact that they divide informational resources into cultural resources and social- organizational resources, leading to a fivefold typology.90 So there are material, moral, human, cultural and social-organizational resources. Material resources encompass monetary resources, property, equipment and supplies.91 In the case of Boko Haram one can think of money, food, hide-outs, communication devices, and of course very importantly, weapons. If Boko Haram cannot mobilize these kinds of resources, they cannot carry out their attacks. Of the moral resources the most theorized is legitimacy. Closely linked is support.92 Legitimacy can be created by the social movement organization itself (consider successful framing), but this is difficult and more often it originates from outside the movement and can be “bestowed [upon them] by an external source known to possess [moral resources]”.93 Human resources include “labor, experience, skills, and expertise”, plus leadership, which is a combination of these factors.94 This type of resources is about experience and skills in individuals who can bring these to the group. The categories social-organizational and cultural resources are about resources that are present in the structure of the group.95 While these categories relate to a movement’s “capacity to deploy personnel”, for example, individual resources concern individuals willing to cooperate.96 This is shaped in part by the legitimacy of the organization, but also for example by other obligations or commitments an individual has.97 However, as stated, not only

87 Idem, 120-121. 88 Cress and Snow (1996), 1095. 89 Ibid. 90 Edwards and McCarthy (2004), 117. 91 Idem, 128. 92 Idem, 125-126. 93 Idem, 126. 94 Idem, 127. 95 Ibid. 96 Idem, 127-128. 97 Ibid.

23 labour is important, but also experience, skills, and expertise: human capital. In the case of Boko Haram, a ‘random’ angry youth that wants to join them impacts the chances of mobilization far less than if someone who can make IED’s joins them. Cultural resources link to the earlier mentioned moral resources and especially to framing. It may prove hard for a group to create legitimacy for itself, but if the group knows how to make use of a tactical repertoire of organizing protests, running meetings, surfing the web and making productions such as videos, this may “facilitate the recruitment and socialization of new adherents and help movements maintain their readiness and capacity for collective action”.98 This resource category includes the group’s specific teachings, ideas and frames. Finally, social-organizational resources feature organizational structures and networks that can be used by the social movement organization. These can be both intentional — specifically created to further the movement’s goals — or appropriable — for example pre-existing social networks of Boko Haram members.99 These resources all have certain characteristics which influence the “use-value to social movements”.100 These are the fungibility and proprietarity of resources. Fungibility means that a resource is context independent — the opposite is idiosyncratic, very context dependent.101 Proprietarity relates to the degree to which access to a certain resources can be controlled.102 As an example, money is highly fungible — it is relatively context independent, it usually keeps around the same value and can be used similarly by different actors, and it is also proprietary, since access to it can be restrained by those who have it.103 Finally, there are different mechanisms of getting access to the mentioned resource-types. Obviously, some types of resources require other measures to attain them than others, both because of the different types there are and the different degrees of fungibility and proprietarity they have. These mechanisms include aggregation, self-production, co-optation/appropriation and patronage. Aggregation is about turning individual resources into collective ones, so that they can be used for group goals.104 Self- production concerns, as the name implies, creating resources within an organization, or adding value to resources that were gained through one of the other mechanisms.105 Co-optation and appropriation both concern using or borrowing a certain resource from another social organization. In the case of co- optation, this is with permission, and in the case of Boko Haram one could think of using networks of affiliated mosques. In the case of appropriation, the other organization did not give its permission, and

98 Idem, 126. 99 Edwards and McCarthy (2004), 127. 100 Ibid. 101 Idem, 128. 102 Idem, 130. 103 Ibid. 104 Idem, 131. 105 Idem, 134.

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Boko Haram might for example go to some social organizations where many youths are gathered to recruit these youths, without the organization’s board knowledge or approval. With looking into Boko Haram using resource mobilization theory, one needs to keep in mind that some aspects of this line of thinking as set out in the discussed articles apply more to ‘standard’ social movements. That is, ones that do not have terrorist attacks in their tactical repertoire. This is important since carrying out these kinds of attacks certainly takes resources, but still relatively little is needed to have an enormous impact on society — this is one of the characteristics of terrorism. However, organizing so many attacks for multiple years while constantly evading, and attacking, the security forces does of course require considerable resources.

Framing

The concept of framing plays a role in earlier mentioned approaches and theories. In Hafez’ theory on the occurrence of massacres, one of the conditions was that rebels promoted anti-system frames.106 Framing also plays a role in the resource mobilization perspective: successful frames may help a group to gain more resources. There is also a large body of scholarly work that focuses solely on the concept of framing and since it is central to understanding these other approaches as well, it deserves to receive some more attention here. Framing is an important part of the social world. Very basically, framing means “to produce (something written or spoken)”, and also to shape or construct.107 It is a way of constructing reality, giving it meaning and shaping it, through language. That is, at least, if one considers an objective reality to exist; otherwise these different frameworks all provide different realities. Studying framing means that “social movements are not viewed merely as carriers of extant ideas and meanings that grow automatically out of structural arrangements, unanticipated events, or existing ideologies”, but that movement actors are “signifying agents actively engaged in the production and maintenance of meaning for constituents, antagonists, and bystanders or observers”.108 Successful frames need to align with cultural understandings present in the proposed ‘recipient’ of the frame.109 If one is able to create and spread a successful frame, one can influence the thinking and behaviour of others. A frame, then, is defined as “schemata of interpretation” that enable individuals to “locate, perceive, identify, and label” events or phenomena in the world around them.110

106 Hafez (2004), 38. 107 Merriam-Webster. 108 Robert D. Benford and David A. Snow (2000) ‘Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment’ in Annual Review of , 26, 613. 109 Idem, 624. 110 Erving Goffman (1974) Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of the Experience. New York: Harper Colophon, 21.

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Framing has played an important role in social movement theory. As Benford and Snow state, “framing processes have come to be regarded, alongside resource mobilization and political opportunity processes, as a central dynamic in understanding the character and course of social movements”.111 Social movements and other actors present in the context they operate in, such as the state, local governments and the media, all participate in framing, giving meaning to reality, signifying it and sometimes ‘spinning’ it to reflect a certain reality.112 There are various types of framings that movements and movement organizations may use: diagnostic, prognostic and motivational frames.113 Diagnostic frames may refer to ‘injustice frames’, which concerns how movements “identify the “victims” of a given situation and amplify their victimization”.114 Next to clarifying who the victims of the injustice are, the agent responsible for the injustice also needs to be established and then the wrongdoings of this agent can also be amplified.115 For example, Boko Haram often states that Nigeria is ruled by a group of false Muslims and other unbelievers and essentially all Nigerians are victims of that, especially the true believers who are now being ruled by unbelievers.116 Another aspect is something that can be called ‘boundary framing’ or ‘adversarial framing’, with which the social movement organization is portrayed as ‘good’ and the agent that has been attributed with doing the injustice as ‘bad’.117 The fact that Boko Haram does have a religious component gives extra rise to these kinds of frames, it can be assumed, since religious thinking usually aligns with these kinds of frames rather well. Prognostic frames involve “the articulation of a proposed solution to the problem, or at least a plan of attack, and the strategies for carrying out the plan”.118 Some research suggests it is likely there is a connection between diagnostic and prognostic frames. In the case of Boko Haram, if they engaged in a lot of boundary and adversarial framing, prognostic frames are likely not to include ideas about talking to the government to jointly find a solution. Rather, the proposed solution would be to overthrow the government of unbelievers and create a new state.119 Counter framing, which means that framing on the same subject is done by another actor, can affect the framings of a movement, and if it affects prognostic frames, it may also alter their modus operandi.120 A movement’s framing activities, as said above, do not stand on its own. The third and final category of framings is motivational framing, which involves “the construction of appropriate vocabularies of motive”.121 This motive is

111 Benford and Snow (2000), 613. 112 Ibid. 113 Benford and Snow (2000), 615. 114 Ibid. 115 Idem, 616. 116 Walker (2012), 2. 117 Benford and Snow (2000), 616. 118 Ibid. 119 Walker (2012), 2. 120 Benford and Snow (2000), 617. 121 Ibid.

26 already enclosed within the diagnostic (there is a problem and we are the victims, so we must mobilize) and prognostic (this is what we can do about it) frames. However, SMT framing scholars do add this final category of motivational framing which includes vocabularies of severity, urgency, efficacy and propriety.122 These are frames adding further to the motivation, one could say added vocabularies full of ‘sweeping language’ to help people over the threshold of participating and keep participating — also when perhaps, in the case of Boko Haram, participation is (increasingly) dangerous. It depends on the situation and on the other frame categories which of these four types are the most effective.123 For example, if Boko Haram would try to motivate people stressing the urgency of the problem, that would mean that the government would have to be overthrown as soon as possible, which does not appear realistic. Features of frames that are interesting to look into are their flexibility/rigidity and inclusivity/exclusivity, and their interpretative scope and influence. This concerns whether frames can perhaps appeal to a broader group of people and become a ‘master frame’, or whether they are only effective for the group using them.124 In the case of Boko Haram, one could hypothesize that their frames have become more exclusive over time and becoming so radical in for example its prognostic frames that the scope and influence of the frames decreases — their frames are movement-specific.125 This relates to the aspect of resonance — how well frames resonate within its cultural context, which is something that was mentioned earlier in this section. It relates to the effectiveness of the used frames in the sense of its potency for mobilization. Of course, with many of these characteristics, dynamics may be a bit different for Boko Haram than for a social movement in a more ‘traditional’ sense: because of the nature and ideas of Boko Haram their objective may not be to create frames that result in mass mobilization. Next to the role of framing in some of the previous approaches, in the framing section later on the objective is to look into framing only and thoroughly assess the type of frames that Boko Haram uses. Specifically the interaction between frames by the United States and Boko Haram is looked into in that section, in order to see whether the involvement of the United States has influenced the frames used by Boko Haram and with that the dynamics of violence. Movement organizations, such as Boko Haram, generate “interpretive frames that not only differ from existing ones but that may also challenge them. The question is whether U.S. involvement and counter framing has led to an increased mentioning of the United States in for example the injustice frames.

122 Ibid. 123 Benford and Snow (2000), 617. 124 Idem, 618-619. 125 Idem, 619.

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In the next section, the relevant literature by scholars of Islamic activism and Islamism or political Islam is reviewed. These approaches developed alongside that of SMT and the difference is that they would not look at a group as Boko Haram through something as SMT, which focuses on all kinds of movements, but only at Islamic or Islamist movements, considering it to represent a distinct category with different dynamics. As has been argued, that is not how Boko Haram is viewed here, but there are some important points that are made by political Islam theorists as well. They are useful to keep in mind when considering the framing perspective later, especially when viewing the possible clashes between the United States and Boko Haram.

Political Islam and Islamist activism

As said, for the purpose of this study Boko Haram is perceived as a social or political opposition movement, and a mostly rational actor at that. Rather than setting groups as Boko Haram aside as a completely different category — something that has been done by many scholars when it comes to studying politics in Muslim societies — it seems more interesting, and perhaps more valuable, to normalize the political dynamics in Nigeria. However, as also became clear in the above discussion on SMT, identity does play a role in ‘general’ social movements as well — according to some strands of SMT a rather important one.126 The assertion is that this is likely to strongly be the case for an Islamic organization like Boko Haram, because “identity is how individuals and groups define themselves and their relations to others”, and Islam, as a religion by which to lead all aspects of life, Islamic identity is a strong form of identity.127 It is a clear identity with which to define oneself, and through which to view the world. Religion as an identity is important since “identities manifested in routine practices trump identities determined at birth” and tend to have a lot of traditions and daily routine practices.128 Therefore some attention is given to literature on Islamic identity and the specifics of Islamic activism (instead of more ‘general’ activism, as illustrated by SMT) as well, which can add to the understanding of the culture and framing perspective offered by SMT. So whereas SMT focuses on opposition movements in society in general, which may include Islamic movements, there are also fields of study in which the focus is specifically on Islamic movements. Especially scholarly work looking into political Islam or Islamism are relevant here. Islamism is politicized Islam. In the literature on the matter, there are many different definitions for political Islam and Islamism. Tibi, for example, feels that Islamism is politicized Islam, and therefore

126 See for example Alberto Melucci (1995) ‘The Process of Collective Identity’ in Hank Johnston (ed.) Social Movements And Culture. Oxford: Routledge, 41-63. 127 Jillian Schwedler (2001) ‘Islamic Identity. Myth, Menace, or Mobilizer?’ in SAIS Review, 21:2, 2. 128 Ibid.

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Islamism and political Islam describe the same.129 Islamism means wanting to achieve an Islamic state; there is to be no separation between church — or mosque — and state. There are many different strands of Islamists, some of which are violent, while others attempt to reach their goal through the political system, which mostly has meant through using democratic methods, even though their goal may be to replace democracy with something else.130 Fuller also sees many different types of Islamists, and the definition that links them all is “the belief that the Koran and the Hadith […] have something important to say about the way society and governance should be ordered”.131 Within this broad definition, many different types of Islamists exist, Fuller says: “radical or moderate, political or apolitical, violent or quietist, traditional or modernist, democratic132 or authoritarian”.133 Clearly, his definition, in including apolitical Islamists, does not see Islamism as interchangeable to political Islam. However, with his definition, it does remain politicized Islam. Roy feels that Islamist movements are “groups who see in Islam as much a political ideology as a religion”.134 In this study, the term Islamism is seen as interchangeable with political Islam. Fuller also states: “Neither Islam nor Islamism says much about concrete state institutions, and frankly nobody knows exactly what a modern Islamic state should look like-since few have ever existed and none provides a good model. But Islamists today use general Islamic ideals as a touchstone for criticizing, attacking, or even trying to overthrow what are perceived as authoritarian, corrupt, incompetent, and illegitimate regimes.”135 Boko Haram clearly does this. They are the type of Islamists who are trying to achieve their goal of an Islamic state through violence (radical, violent Islamists), and the political process approach already gave suggestions for why groups may choose this road instead of a less violent approach. The thesis of Kepel’s book on radical Islamism, ‘Jihad’ is that “radical Islamism had seen its heyday and had in fact declined”136. He suggested that the battle at home, to create an Islamic state, had been lost, and therefore attention of radical Islamists had shifted to the international realm, explaining attacks in for example the United States and Madrid.137 However, the Arab Spring has brought the idea of an Islamic state back to the fore throughout the Middle East, and recently there has been an increase in

129 Bassam Tibi (2013) ‘Introduction. Will the state be the outcome? The Arab Spring and the hope for democratization’ in The Sharia State. Arab Spring and Democratization, Oxford: Routledge, 1-26. 130 Tibi (2013), 1-26. 131 Graham A. Fuller (2002) ‘The Future of Political Islam’ in Foreign Affairs, 81:2, 49. 132 According to Tibi, however, democratic Islamism does not exist at the moment. See Bassam Tibi (2013) ‘Introduction. Will the sharia state be the outcome? The Arab Spring and the hope for democratization’ in The Sharia State. Arab Spring and Democratization, Oxford: Routledge 1-26. 133 Fuller (2002), 49. 134 Olivier Roy (1994),The Failure of Political Islam, Cambridge (USA): Harvard University Press, vii. 135 Fuller (2002), 50. 136 Gilles Kepel (2006) Jihad. The Trail of Political Islam. : I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, vi. 137 Ibid.

29 radical Islamism in sub-Sahara Africa. And while Boko Haram is making threats to the United States and other western countries nowadays, and has bombed UN headquarters in Abuja, besides that their actions were almost completely focused on Nigeria itself, as were their stated goals (creating an Islamic state in the whole of or otherwise at least northeast Nigeria). It is precisely this increase in nationally or locally focused radical Islamism in Nigeria, which seems contrary to Kepel’s thesis, that is what is to be understood here. Perhaps indeed scholars of Islamic activism and Islamism find it difficult to explain this increase and social movement theories can help shed some light. So as explained, Islam is important when considering Boko Haram, because it is a strong identity. It does not seem far-fetched to assume that the Islamic identity and the feeling that it is being threatened or challenged plays a role in the contestation of both the state of Nigeria and the United States, and the west more in general. So identity matters, but Islamic identity is not entirely different from other forms of identity, in that it knows similar dynamics to movements with other strong identities. Next to Islam shaping the beliefs and goals of Boko Haram to some extent (but not necessarily influencing the dynamics of violence), Islam is also used by the group to legitimize their actions and to mobilize public support. This is common practice to all kinds of oppositional movements, as was also already discussed above in the case of framing. Still, for example Schwedler provides an interesting account on Islamic identity and how it is perhaps different than some other forms of identity. While the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis of Huntington is now discarded by many, it still is important. Consider the Bush doctrine and the accompanying rhetoric, and similarly the rhetoric used by many Islamist activists. Months before 9/11, an article by Schwedler was published in which it becomes clear that worries about “Islamic rogues and radicals who threaten the security and values of liberal democracy and global capitalism” were already on the rise then.138 This being the concern from ‘the west’, it is only a small step to consider as the concerns of many Muslims the infiltration of their culture by liberal democratic, secular and capitalist values. A famous article in this direction is ‘The Roots of Muslim Rage’ by Lewis, in which he asserts that Muslims struggle mainly against the enemies of secularism and modernism, two primarily western inventions.139 In his vision, it is the spread of western culture and ideas that has many Muslims feeling threatened and leads to mobilization — sometimes violent.140 Boko Haram’s threats against the United States and France could be in line with this thinking, and the whole meaning of the groups ‘nickname’ is against western influences. These ideas are in line with Huntingtons well-known clash of civilizations thesis.141 These ideas as posited by Lewis and Huntington also resonate in Bush’s ‘war on terror’ vocabulary. However, this line of thinking is discarded by many now. One of the major faults in it is aptly phrased in the New Yorker:

138 Schwedler (2001), 1. 139 Bernard Lewis (1990) ‘The Roots of Muslim Rage’ in The Atlantic, 266:3, 47-60. 140 Ibid. 141 Samuel P. Huntington (1996) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York: Simon & Schuster.

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“[T]he notion that a generalized Muslim anger about Western ideas could explain violence or politics from Indonesia to Bangladesh, from Iran to Senegal, seemed deficient. It was like arguing that authoritarian strains in could explain , Argentine juntas, and the rise of Vladimir Putin.”142 Clearly, there is an oversimplification here. The idea that Islam means something similar and leads to similar feelings and outcomes in different timeframes, different countries and societies, and to different schools of Islam and different individuals, is incorrect. Also, as stated before, it is difficult to assess in how far Boko Haram is guided by religious motives and in how far political motives or for instance greed are relevant. Therefore, there is not too much emphasis on these grand ideas about Islamic identity and Islamism when studying Boko Haram.

Hypotheses

The above has given a general oversight of a lot of different approaches and focus points that exist for studying the rise of Boko Haram. It presented quite a lot of different aspects to take into mind and not all of them can be analysed thoroughly. Now, how the approaches are taken together to present a clear framework for the study of the rise of Boko Haram, and which parts are discarded from analysis and why, are discussed. Some of the explanations for Boko Haram’s violence are already partly discarded here. The first of those are the socio-psychological explanations. First, these explanations do explain the dynamics within a certain group but do not necessarily explain why they sometimes do lead to radicalization and the turn to violence, and why at other times they do not. Second, there are practical issues with studying the motivations and internal group processes of Boko Haram. This does not mean that psychosocial factors are completely cast aside, but they are not analyzed thoroughly. The earlier mentioned mechanisms of radicalization “group radicalization under isolation and threat”, “group radicalization in competition with state power”, “mass radicalization in conflict with an outgroup- jujitsu politics” and “mass radicalization in conflict with an outgroup- hate” are linked to the other discussed theories. The second category of explanations that is discarded, and this time completely, is that of Islamic exceptionalism and the logic that violent is inherent to Islam. Islamism could also be non-violent and may in many cases be better suited to reach the goal of an Islamic state than carrying out a campaign of terror. Also, it is difficult to define Boko Haram clearly and state that it is to be seen solely as an Islamist organization. Finally, these types of organizations have been shown, for example by SMT, to have many of the same dynamics as non-Islamic organizations.

142 Steve Coll, ‘Days of Rage’, The New Yorker, http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2012/10/01/121001taco_talk_coll, 1 October 2012.

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This does leave a number of other explanations to look into when trying to uncover the increase of violence by Boko Haram. The first is that of political opportunity and political process. To assess this, the theories by Hafez and Wiktorowicz are used. The first asserted that massacres such as those in Algeria are more likely to occur, he states, when three conditions concerning repression exist: “(1) state repression creates a political environment of bifurcation and brutality; (2) insurgents create exclusive organizations to shield themselves from repression; and (3) rebels promote antisystem frames to motivate violent collective action to overthrow agents of repression.”143 The second argued that a lack of access to institutionalized politics and reactive and selective state repression make a turn to violence by a social movement more likely.144 The second explanation lies in relative deprivation. A point to make here is that Boko Haram opposes the Nigerian government, which includes people from within their own ethnic and religious groups. While the north of the country is generally poorer, Hausa and Fulani ethnic groups have politically been dominant since Nigeria’s independence.145 Current president Goodluck Jonathan is from the Ijaw ethnic group, which originates in the oil rich regions of Nigeria.146 However, Boko Haram opposes everyone who is not considered radical enough, which includes large parts of the Islamic communities as well. Boko Haram also does not distinguish between its victims so much in its actual attacks and kills Muslims, Christians, Hausa, Fulani, Igbo and people from whichever other ethnic group alike. This would indicate that relative deprivation may to some extent explain the root causes of the issue with Boko Haram, but not along the lines of ethnic grievances per se. The relative deprivation exists along different lines, of the elite versus the rest and the north versus the south, but while Christian versus Muslim cleavages certainly do exist economically they are much less straightforward. While essentially the relative deprivation exists versus the elite, corruption, the lack of a fair political system and the lack of access to institutionalized politics are important. To test the idea of relative deprivation, both global inequality, inequality in Nigeria and between different groups and regions within Nigeria need to be assessed, as well as how Nigerians perceive these inequalities. A third explanation can be found in resource mobilization theory. They are analysed using the resource types and different ways of gaining access to them as set out by Edwards and McCarthy.147 The methods of gaining access that apply to Boko Haram are looked into further in order to see how successful they are at them, and whether that appears to have changed in recent years.

143 Hafez (2004), 37-60. 144 Hafez and Wiktorowicz (2004), 61-88. 145 ‘Ethnicity in Nigeria’, PBS , http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/africa-jan-june07-ethnic_04-05/, 5 April 2007. 146 Ibid. 147 Edwards and McCarthy (2004), 116-152.

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The fourth explanation lies in the role of framing. Framing already plays a part in the earlier mentioned explanations too, because it is a cultural resource that may help to achieve more of other resource-types, for example. This fourth explanation focuses only on the role of the United States, however, and the interaction between the United States and Boko Haram. The question here is whether the involvement of the United States in the issue with Boko Haram has changed the dynamics of violence, perhaps adding to Boko Haram’s legitimacy or strengthening group identity or group ideals. In November 2013, the United States have designated Boko Haram a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).148 The statement from the U.S. Department of State mentions links with groups as Al-Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and says that Boko Haram “also conducted attacks against international targets”, such as their 2011 attack on the UN Headquarters in Abuja.149 With this, they focus greatly on the international aspects of Boko Haram, which legitimizes the United States’ involvement since it then quickly becomes an issue of international security and even of U.S. homeland security. This is illustrated by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Homeland Security report titled ‘Boko Haram. Growing Threat to the U.S. Homeland’.150 It is interesting to look into these frames and what they mean for the dynamics of the conflict with Boko Haram. Therefore, the frames used by Boko Haram are also assessed, looking into how they frame their actions, what they claim as their goals and legitimation, and what role of the United States plays in that. This is done by looking at the use of injustice frames, boundary or adversarial frames, prognostic frames and motivational frames.

The above leads to the following four hypotheses. H1: The increase of violence can be explained by the nature of state repression and the lack of access to institutionalized politics (political factors) H2: The increase of violence by Boko Haram can be explained by relative deprivation (economic factors) H3: The increase of violence by Boko Haram can be explained by the group’s increased access to resources (material factors) H4: The increase of violence by Boko Haram can be explained by the use of framing and reframing by both the United States vis-à-vis Boko Haram and by Boko Haram itself (immaterial factors)

148 ‘Terrorist Designations of Boko Haram and Ansaru’, U.S. Department of State. 149 Ibid. 150 U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security, Boko Haram. Growing Threat to the U.S. Homeland, 13 September 2013. Via: http://homeland.house.gov/sites/homeland.house.gov/files/documents/09-13- 13-Boko-Haram-Report.pdf.

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III. Methodology

Variables

This is a qualitative study. It studies the increase of Islamist violence by Boko Haram in detail. This is the dependent variable. Studying a secretive group in a state that faces a lot of problems and is characterized by bad governance means that often, hard data on the subject are not available. This means that a lot of different types of sources, such as reports by NGO’s, government organizations, newspaper articles and so on are used. With the use of a wide array of these kinds of sources, a comprehensive view of the cascade into violence is given. As was shown in the theoretical framework, there are four different outlooks on the turn to violence by Boko Haram to be tested. These all encompass different independent variables. Independent variables concerned with looking into the political process are state repression and access to institutionalized politics. Independent variables for analyzing the influence of relative deprivation are economic equality, which is measured by income equality, and social equality, which is measured by access to health care, unemployment, and literacy rates. Concerning resource mobilization, there are numerous variables: material resources (money and weapons), human resources (recruits and skills), moral resources (legitimacy), social-organizational resources (organizational structure and networks) and cultural resources (ideas and frames) all need to be measured. Finally, the independent variables for the framing perspective are diagnostic, prognostic and motivational frames.

Methodological issues

Reliability of data

There are various difficulties concerned with carrying out the research. One of the most important issues is the lack of (reliable) information. The various websites of the Nigerian federal government, state governments, ministries and the national assembly do offer some information, but many pages are still under construction or appear to be missing otherwise. Reports and statements are not easy to find in the wide range of unclear and half-built websites. So from these sources there is a lack of information. When information is there, it is likely to be biased. The Nigerian government and its agencies have a tendency to downplay the actions by Boko Haram, or to exaggerate their own capabilities in battling them. This is why in many cases media sources are used. Also in the case of government statements, sometimes media reports quoting statements by police, military, or local or federal government are used because they are not properly available through these actors directly. Here, the issue lies with the independence of the media from politics and the general freedom of press. In the World Press Freedom Index of 2013, Nigeria ranked 115th of 180 reviewed countries and in 2014 Nigeria ranks 112th of 180, scoring respectively 23.08 and 34.24 points, with 100 points presenting the worst possible outcome and 0 points presenting the best

34 possible outcome.151 Reporters Without Borders point to “the activities of guerrillas and terrorist groups […] prevent[ing] any significant improvement in [its] ranking”.152 Because of these limits on freedom of press, and of some sources perhaps being politically biased, it was always checked if information could be verified by other media. Of course, it is difficult to assess whether the other medium is more reliable. It therefore remains difficult to judge how reliable the information is, but online media reports still were the best sources of information available. And while Nigeria’s score on the World Press Freedom Index is definitely worrisome, the score still indicates a relatively large amount of freedom of press. Also, a lot of points are received because of Boko Haram attacks on and threats against journalists.153 While this does make it more difficult for journalists to report on the actions by Boko Haram, it can be assumed that many of them who usually operate from outside the group’s direct sphere of influence are relatively free to report on the situation, and also to criticize the government — since most restrictions on the freedom of press do not come from there. There are in fact countless of negative accounts on Boko Haram and on government tactics in battling them to be found throughout Nigerian media. Another methodological issue is that some of the approaches focus more on the individual level, while others focus more on the societal level. For example resource mobilization looks in part at individual motives for joining a social movement, while political process approaches focus more on the dynamic between the society, certain groups within it, and the state. However, in the analysis, all approaches feature some of both, with the emphasis being on societal-level explanations.

Operationalization

Below it is set out how the variables pertaining to all the different social movement approaches are measured.

Violence by Boko Haram

First of all, there are a lot of practical issues with looking into the violence by Boko Haram. They all concern the unreliability of the information available, as was already pointed out above. As an illustration of the matter, official statements by Nigerian security forces on Boko Haram attacks tend to state a lot less deaths among security forces and a lot more deaths among insurgents than eyewitness accounts do.154 Both Boko Haram and Nigerian security forces and politics are actively framing, portraying their

151 ‘World Press Freedom Index 2014’, Reporters Without Borders, 4. Via: http://rsf.org/index2014/data/index2014_en.pdf. 152 Ibid. 153 ‘Daily Abuses Suffered by Nigeria’s Journalists’, Reporters Without Borders, http://en.rsf.org/nigeria-daily-abuses- suffered-by-nigeria-s-07-05-2012,42570.html, 7 May 2012. 154 For example, in the April abductions of 200+ school girls, government sources claimed lower numbers of girls abducted than locals did, and claimed larger numbers of abducted girls had returned than the number given by parents of the missing girls: Ndahi Marama, ‘Abducted School Girls Latest: What we saw in Sambisa forest- Parents’,

35 side as doing well while the other is suffering and is bound to be defeated soon.155 These accounts are therefore not quite neutral. Another difficulty with trying to establish the scale of the issue with Boko Haram is that it remains unclear who actually are Boko Haram. There are a lot of different factions or splinter cells that have the same goals and the same methods as Boko Haram. They are therefore considered as Boko Haram by both the Nigerian security forces and most of the Nigerian people. However, the cell-like structure of Boko Haram leads to a lack of clarity as to whether some attacks that are ascribed to Boko Haram have actually been carried out by them. Adding to the confusion, next to groups that seem to be a part of Boko Haram, or at least are somewhat linked and subscribe to their ideas, there are a lot of other violent incidents in northeast Nigeria. There is a lot of communal violence, for instance. Often, violent events of this kind tend to be quite different from Boko Haram attacks. Sometimes it has been alleged, though, both by security forces and civilians, that Boko Haram purposely makes some attacks seem as if it is not them. For example, in March 2014 Vanguard reported 74 people killed in two separate incidents in Borno. One, an attack by gunmen, featured Fulani herdsmen attacking a village inhabited by another ethnic group at 4 in the morning.156 The other, a suicide bomber, was attributed to Boko Haram.157 Rumours arose immediately that the first attack was actually also carried out by Boko Haram — they are known to raid villages with gunmen in the early morning — who posed as Fulani herdsmen.158 Next to Boko Haram members posing as others, it also happens the other way around: groups of bandits pretend to be Boko Haram as to deflect attention from themselves. For the purpose of this study it is not necessary to look into every attack that has happened over the past few years in detail, and in general simply all attacks that are widely considered as carried out by Boko Haram are included. However, the above shows that it can already be quite challenging to get a general idea of the magnitude of the issue over time. To measure the violence used by Boko Haram, an oversight of all the attacks attributed to them from 2002 until April 2014 is given. The appendix shows all the attacks by the group, including

Vanguard, http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/04/abducted-school-girls-latest-saw-sambisa-forest-parents/, 22 April 2014. 155 For example, in December 2012 President Goodluck Jonathan already said that Boko Haram would be defeated, that appropriate actions were taken, that these already yielded good results and that 2013 was going to be a good year. See: Vincent Ikuomola, ‘We shall defeat Boko Haram, says Jonathan’, The Nation, http://thenationonlineng.net/new/we-shall-defeat-boko-haram-says-jonathan/, 31 December 2012. Also consider the numerous times in which Shekau was reported dead by Nigerian security forces, which was next vehemently denied by Boko Haram. See for example: ‘Boko Haram: Shekau’s ‘Am Alive’ Video is Fake, Says Security Analysis’, THISDAY, http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/boko-haram-shekau-s-am-alive-video-is-fake-says-security- analysis/161110/, 9 October 2013. 156 Kingsley Omonobi, Peter Duru & Ndahi Marama, ’74 killed in fresh Benue, Borno Mayhem’, Vanguard, http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/03/74-killed-fresh-benue-borno-mayhem/, 26 March 2014. 157 Ndahi Marama, ‘Boko Haram: 5 policemen, 3 others killed in suicide car bomb in Borno’, Vanguard, http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/03/boko-haram-5-policemen-3-others-killed-suicide-car-bomb-attack-borno/, 25 March 2014. 158 Kingsley Omonobi, Peter Duru & Ndahi Marama, ’74 killed in fresh Benue, Borno Mayhem’.

36 information on the type of attack, the target, and the (estimated) number of deaths, and injuries, if available. There are some partial overviews available on this, of which the most comprehensive one is by IRIN, which cover attacks from the conception of Boko Haram until mid-December 2013.159 They are combined and checked with the help of news reports, sometimes from international but mostly from Nigerian newspapers. There have been a lot of attacks over the years and many of them stay unreported outside of Nigeria. National and local Nigerian newspapers are therefore vital for information. These newspaper articles are used to add to and improve the list of attacks. This does not mean that the list is exhaustive: as stated above, there are so many difficulties with both the situation on the ground as the information available on it that exhaustiveness cannot be claimed. It is also not always possible to be sure about the circumstances of an attack because accounts on them differ. However, combining the available information and crosschecking it across different sources leads to a more comprehensive oversight of the violence than is available now and gives insight into the larger trends considering attacks by Boko Haram.

State repression

What needs to be measured considering state repression is primarily whether it is reactive and indiscriminate. For this, data on military operations against Boko Haram is needed. Official statements and reports by Nigeria — sometimes through Nigerian media, since the first-hand statements are hard to come by — are used. Also U.S. reports such as those by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security feature some information about the Nigerian counteroffensive against Boko Haram. Furthermore, reports by the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) and the NGO’s Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the International Crisis Group are used. These organizations provide relatively neutral and recent reports on the actions by Nigerian armed forces in the battle against Boko Haram. The information is completed by news reports on the matter, using onlinenewspapers.com. Using these documents a thick description of the nature of state repression is given. Showing the level of reactiveness is relatively easy; here the history of Boko Haram and that of government actions directed against them are laid out next to each other. Showing the level of indiscrimination and whether this has evolved is somewhat more difficult. For this, the abovementioned sources are used, and incidents of indiscrimination are viewed next to the evolvement of Boko Haram. A complicating factor is the interference by the civilian JTF since 2013. They fight Boko Haram and undertake actions such as setting up road blocks and carrying out several typical police and military

159 ‘Timeline of Boko Haram attacks and related violence’, IRIN, http://www.irinnews.org/fr/report/94691/nigeria- timeline-of-boko-haram-attacks-and-related-violence, 20 January 2012. Also see: ‘Timeline of Boko Haram and related violence in Nigeria’, IRIN, http://www.irinnews.org/report/97527/timeline-of-boko-haram-and-related-violence-in-nigeria, 22 February 2013. ‘Updated timeline of Boko Haram attacks and related violence’, IRIN, http://www.irinnews.org/report/99319/updated-timeline-of-boko-haram-attacks-and-related-violence, 12 December 2013.

37 tasks.160 However, their involvement only started in the spring of 2013 and it is relatively small. Civilian JTF youths seem to be operating in Maiduguri only.161

Access to institutionalized politics

Another part of the theory on political process is the access to institutionalized politics. The idea is that when access is low, movements are more likely to turn to extreme measures. To value the access to institutionalized politics, it needs to be established how open Nigeria’s political system is. This is done both by a thick description of the political climate in Nigeria using various academic sources, NGO reports, and news reports. Next to this, a look is taken at Democracy Indexes, because of the assumption that higher scores on democracy means more access to institutionalized politics — which is of course a key trademark of democracy. Used are The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy index 2012162 and Freedom House’s Freedom in the World, in which they measure political rights.163

Relative deprivation: income inequality

As relative deprivation is about perceived inequality, it could even be argued that “there need not be an objective referent corresponding to the perception”164, and that it needs to be kept in mind that “people’s reactions to objective circumstances depend on their subjective comparisons”165. Therefore, relative deprivation is mostly operationalized by measuring people’s (dis)satisfaction with certain things, which would mean doing interviews or surveys.166 Unfortunately, that is not feasible for this study. Measuring perceived inequality is hard, because in order to do this large-scale interviews with inhabitants of different regions of Nigeria, with different backgrounds, are needed. This is not viable for this study, both due to cost, time, and possible safety considerations. So here, first of all the assumption is that there is an objective relative deprivation to be measured and that the existence of this objective inequality also says something about the likelihood of people feeling relatively deprived. Relative deprivation therefore is measured first by using data on income in Nigeria versus the world, and of income equality across Nigeria. Data on income inequality in general (so between the elite and the masses), of income inequality between regions, and of income inequality along ethnic and religious lines are relevant. The GINI coefficient and GDP per capita in different regions are used. These data are provided by the World Bank, Index Mundi and the United Nations.

160 ‘Civilian JTF’, TRAC, http://www.trackingterrorism.org/group/civilian-jtf, last accessed 15 April 2014. 161 Ibid. 162 ‘Democracy index 2012. Democracy at a standstill.’, The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2013. Via: https://portoncv.gov.cv/dhub/porton.por_global.open_file?p_doc_id=1034 163 ‘Freedom in the World 2013’, Freedom House, via http://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom- world/2013/nigeria#.U2ygvvmSx8E, last accessed 14 May 2014. 164 Gurney and Tierney (1982), 34. 165 Walker and Smith (2002). 166 See Walker and Smith (2002) 58, 62, 137, 305 for operationalization examples.

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Relative deprivation: social inequality

Relative deprivation does not only concern income inequality but also social inequality. Here, this is measured by looking at health and human development statistics in Nigeria. Nigeria has a National Bureau of Statistics which provides a lot of thematic maps on issues such as health care, unemployment, literacy rates and other indicators of well-being.167 Because of their usage of maps the differences between various regions in Nigeria are clear and therefore these data are fitting for looking into relative deprivation across the country. The assumption behind using access to health care indicators is that health care is something that is very important to people since it is about matters of life and death and touches upon the quality of life of people quite directly. Therefore it is an important indicator of social inequality and perhaps of relative deprivation concerning it. Next to access to health care, school enrolment and literacy rates are also used to measure social inequality, because they are good measures for human development. Finally, unemployment rates also touch at the basis of things that are important for human development and welfare: healthcare, education and jobs. It would have been good to include some data on how Nigerians judge their own well-being, so the subjective judgement they have of their objective circumstances. Unfortunately, this was not possible. Inquiries were made at a Nigerian polling agency named NOI polls, who have developed the Personal Well-Being Index (PWBI) for which they have randomly sampled 1,000 phone-owning Nigerians representing different regions of the country for interviews. Unfortunately they could not present their raw data and had no analyst available to look into the spatial distribution of feelings of well-being. Also, the International Youth Foundation has the Global Youth Wellbeing Index for which they combined data from the World Bank, UNESCO, International Telecommunications Union and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. They have data on 30 countries including Nigeria, but looking into their data sources, it turned out these data were only available on a national level, not a regional one, and how they were mostly on more objective circumstances again. Finally, the World Happiness Report of 2013 also provides some insight into the feelings of well-being among Nigerians. They have received their datasets from Gallup. Inquiry at Gallup learned that unfortunately, their sample sizes are not large enough to report on a regional level. Therefore data on feelings of well-being were not available in any form more specified than country-level. This means that for this study, it was necessary to rely on the measurements for actual relative deprivation instead of the perception of this. As explained earlier, it is difficult to measure the link between relative deprivation and the increase of radical Islamist violence. They cannot be mechanistically linked to each other.168 Therefore,

167 ‘Nigeria Statistical Data Portal’, National Bureau of Statistics, http://nigeria.prognoz.com/. 168 Hafez (2004), 39.

39 the presence of relative deprivation is to be viewed more as an accommodating circumstance for an organization such as Boko Haram to arise.

Resource mobilization

Measuring Boko Haram’s access to and ability to use resources is one of the biggest challenges for this study. Concrete data on Boko Haram’s resources are not available, so this study largely relies on accounts from a wide range of eyewitnesses, people who are close to Boko Haram, and government and NGO reports. These include a lot of newspaper reports from Nigerian local and national newspapers which are accessed through onlinenewspapers.com or directly via the newspaper websites, plus reports from the United States Institute for Peace and the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security.

Material resources

For the material resources the focus is on money and weapons, since they are highly important for Boko Haram’s actions to succeed. It is, however, extremely difficult to measure these, which makes sense since Boko Haram is an outlawed and highly secretive group. Therefore, to a large extent it is necessary to rely on reports and expert takes on the matter. TRAC, the Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium, also provides some insight into how Boko Haram gets its material resources.169 While these sources go into how Boko Haram is funded and receives weapons, and while there even are gross estimates of the amount of money Boko Haram has had at its disposal170, measures of these are not quite precise and do not exist for shorter windows of time. It is, therefore, not possible to link the increase or decrease in the availability of material resources to Boko Haram directly to an increase or decrease in its attacks.

Human resources

As discussed earlier, the category of human resources comprises of “labor, experience, skills, and expertise”, plus leadership.171 So to measure Boko Haram’s human resources the roles of their previous leader Mohammed Yusuf and of their current leader Abubakar Shekau need to be assessed. For this, accounts by previous members or family members of members and by journalists and other people close to the group, are used. These are already quite rare and other ways of measuring their influence are not available. Measuring the other factors is a challenge. Since human resources concerns the willingness of any individual to join a movement, the perspectives that these individuals have need to be assessed — do they have other obligations or options, or not, and do they have many grievances. Here, some of the

169 ‘Boko Haram’s Funding Operations’, TRAC, http://www.trackingterrorism.org/article/boko-haram%E2%80%99s- funding-operations, last accessed 20 June 2014. 170 Jide Ajani, ‘Boko Haram got N11bn to kill, maim’, Vanguard, http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/05/boko- haram-got-n11bn-kill-maim/, 4 May 2014. 171 Edwards and McCarthy (2004) , 127.

40 same data that were used for relative deprivation may be used again, such as the Global Youth Well- Being Index, again supplemented by various reports and personal accounts on the matter.

Moral resources

It is also difficult to measure support for Boko Haram’s goals. There are statements that there is substantial support in the populace, which has declined recently, but it is difficult to measure whether that is really the case, to what extent, and how that has changed over time. There have been some surveys on support for organizations such as Al Qaeda, for example.172 And since moral resources are often bestowed upon an actor by individuals or organizations it is aligned with, to measure moral resources there is also emphasis on Boko Haram’s network.

Social-organizational resources

There are various reports available that describe the organizational structure of Boko Haram. These reports are used to assess the social-organizational resources. Examples are an USIP report173, an International Crisis Group report174, and a Joint Special Operations University report175. These reports, plus various news reports, also provide information about linkages of Boko Haram with other Islamist and terrorist organizations, as well as with members of Nigeria’s political (and business) elite.

Cultural resources

This category is about the group’s ideas, teachings, and frames. An insight into their ideas and teachings is given by looking into both written statements and video messages brought out by Boko Haram, as well as (academic) articles on the matter. The measurement of frames is mentioned below. While in the framing perspective the focus is on the interaction between frames by the United States and by Boko Haram, for looking into frames as cultural resources of course only the usage of frames by Boko Haram itself is relevant.

Frames

In order to assess the effect of intensified American presence in Nigeria concerning counterterrorism, discourse analysis is used. A thick description is given of the frames of U.S.-Nigerian relations and of Boko Haram by the United States and the interaction of these frames with those of Boko Haram concerning the United States and their role in the conflict. Data used to do this are (reports and statements U.S.) and videos brought out by Boko Haram. These videos, which feature group leader Abubakar Shekau, are the

172 Pew Research Global Attitudes Project. 173 Walker (2012). 174 ‘Curbing Violence in Nigeria (II): The ’, International Crisis Group, 3 April 2014. 175 James J.F. Forest (2012) ‘Confronting the Terrorism of Boko Haram in Nigeria’, Joint Special Operations University Report.

41 most reliable material available on Boko Haram considering their use of framing vis-à-vis the United States. This is the case because in the past it has been found that often people who claimed to be a spokesperson of Boko Haram only seemed to represent a certain cell or part of the group and not the council176 or core group.177 In these videos, the focus is on recognizing the usage of diagnostic, prognostic and motivational frames. The decision to only use these videos limits the amount of data on Boko Haram frames greatly, even more so since not all of the videos can be found online in its entirety, and not all of them have subtitles or transcripts available — Shekau usually speaks in a mixture of local languages, mostly Hausa, and Arab. Quotes by Shekau, taken from these videos and presented in newspaper articles, can provide some added information. Finally, for the United States it is also looked into how various U.S. media report on Boko Haram.

176 Reportedly Boko Haram is led by a 30 member council, see Walker (2012), 8. 177 Walker (2012), 11, 12.

42

IV. Background of Nigeria

This chapter presents a short political history of Nigeria since its independence, insights into its political system and government, and characteristics of society in terms of different religions and ethnicities.

Independence: a divided Nigeria

Up until 1960, Nigeria was a British colony. It became an independent state on 1 October 1960, as a federation of three regions: the north, the southwest, and the southeast.178 Before that, there had been talks between the British and the leaders of the three main political parties (corresponding to the three regions) of Nigeria to ensure a smooth transition of power.179 These political parties all came into existence in the late 1940s and early 1950s and were already active under colonial rule.180 For example, the head of the NPC party, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, who formed a coalition with Nnamdi Azikiwe’s NCNC as the first government of independent Nigeria, had been served in the federal government since 1952 and had already been prime minister before independence.181

Figure 1. Source: author. When Nigeria was divided in three and later four regions in the 1960s, this meant splitting up the southern part. The large northern region remained intact.

178 Forest (2012), 19. 179 Michael Crowder (1987) ‘Whose Dream was It Anyway? Twenty-Five Years of African Independence’ in African Affairs, 86: 342, 7. 180 Helen Chapin Metz (1991) (ed.) ‘The First Republic’ in Nigeria: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress. Via: http://countrystudies.us/nigeria/68.htm. 181 ‘Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa’, Encylopaedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/50151/Sir- Abubakar-Tafawa-Balewa, last accessed 7 May 2014.

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To understand the balance of power in the period in which Nigeria became independent, one needs to take a look into the three main political parties at the time: the NPC, the NCNC and the AG.182 The NPC is the Northern People’s Congress, which, as the name states, represented the northern region of Nigeria and derives most of its support from the main ethnic groups in that region, the Hausa and Fulani. The AG stands for the Action Group and represents the (south-)western part of the country, and accordingly, the Yoruba. Finally, the NCNC is the National Council of Nigerian Citizens, which, as its name suggests, started off as a nationalist party for all Nigerians, but was forced into the model of regionalism and morphed into a party mainly representing the (south-)eastern and mid-western parts of the country, which are home to a lot of Yoruba.183 The first government of independent Nigeria was ruled by the NPC and the NCNC together — since none of the three biggest parties was able to reach an absolute majority. The NPC’s Balewa was the prime-minister and NCNC’s Azikiwe the governor general — and in 1963, when Nigeria became a republic, president.184 When Nigeria became a republic, it was split up in four regions, and the premiers for each of them came from the corresponding parties.185 As is also illustrated clearly by the maps, the NCNC and AG are the two ‘southern’ parties, versus the NPC as the ‘northern’ one — the today much referred to divide and tensions between the northern and southern parts of Nigeria were already present at the early days of its existence as a country. The NPC represented the most populous region — according to a census in 1963, the north held 29,758,975 people out of the total population of 55,620,268 — while the south, represented by the AG and NCNC had an advantage with economic resources, having most agriculture and oil reserves.186 The census was highly important, since the population size of the various regions would determine the amount of seats each of the regions (and its corresponding parties) would get, and also for allocating revenues from the federal level. It would thus establish the balance of power in the First Republic, which would be effective from 1 October 1963, to a great extent.187 The above story presents a simplification, for Nigeria is home to over 250 ethnic groups,188 while there are between 250 and 400 languages spoken.189 As Forest puts it clearly: “It is important to recognize […] that in addition to three main ethnic identities […], there are hundreds of ethno-linguistic entities throughout Nigeria […] who have at times been historically marginalized and underrepresented among the political and economic elite.”190

182 Metz (1991). 183 Ibid. 184 Ibid. 185 Ibid. 186 Ibid. 187 Ibid. 188 ‘The World Factbook’, CIA, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ni.html, last modified 23 April 2014. 189 Helen Chapin Metz (1991) (ed.) ‘Government’ in Nigeria: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress. Via: http://countrystudies.us/nigeria/67.htm.

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However, what at first seems an oversimplification is in fact a rather accurate portrayal of the political and social balance in Nigeria: “ Despite the cultural diversity, according to Abdul Raufa Mustapha, “the tendency of many minority groups to cluster- politically, linguistically, and culturally- round the big three has given Nigeria a tripolar ethnic structure which forms the main context for ethnic mobilization and contestation. Finally, approximately half the population is Muslim, and most of the other half is Christian, contributing a powerful religious dimension to Nigeria’s tremendous ethnic and social diversity. […] [T]he fact that northerners are mostly Muslim and southerners are mostly Christian contributes to our understanding of Nigeria’s security challenges”.191

The Second Republic and years of military rule

Within this de facto tripolar ethnic structure, intensified by a religious divide, power struggles were not only fought within the boundaries of democracy. The search for political power also led to many coups, of which the first was in January 1966.192 This coup “was seen by many northerners as an attempt by the of the east to dominate the federation.”193 This feeling was fed by the fact that nearly everyone that was killed after the coup was from the northern part of Nigeria, while only one Igbo was killed.194 After this, the new government initiated to install a unitary system in Nigeria, instead of the federal one, which was likely to disadvantage the north.195 Six months later northern soldiers staged a countercoup to retake control (the northerners are the majority) and most high-ranking Igbo officers were killed, as well as many Igbo’s living in the northern parts of the country.196 Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon, who was a Christian from the middle belt of Nigeria, became the new head of state. He faced a civil war when the Igbo region claimed independence as the Republic of Biafra. The war lasted until 12 January 1970 and led to 1 to 3 million deaths.197 Gowon was overthrown in 1975, after which Murtala , who was a Hausa from the north, ruled.198 Gowon ruled for almost a decade, in which he, as a Christian from the middle belt, represented the mostly Muslim north, but now he was replaced by a Muslim Hausa from the north. This was mainly due to the fact that he postponed the return

190 Forest (2012), 19. 191 Ibid. 192 Helen Chapin Metz (1991) (ed.) ‘The 1966 Coups, Civil War, and Gowon's Government’, in Nigeria: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress. Via: http://countrystudies.us/nigeria/70.htm. 193 Ibid. 194 Ibid. 195 Ibid. 196 Forest (2012), 21. 197 Estimates differ. Forest (2012, 22) states 2 Million, Africom states 1-3 Million, see: ‘Nigeria’, United States Africa Command, http://www.africom.mil/africa/west-africa/Nigeria, last accessed 9 May 2014. 198 Metz (1991) ‘The 1966 Coups, Civil War, and Gowon's Government’.

45 to civilian rule, not to religious or ethnic issues.199 In February 1976 a group of officers from the middle belt tried to take over again, at which they failed. They did kill Muhammad, however, who was then succeeded by his second in command, Olusegun Obasanjo, who was a Yoruba from the south.200 All this shows that power kept shifting hands between different religious and ethnic groups, and that different ethnic groups did also rule together (as Muhammad and Obasanjo’s example shows). The different military rules of this period had all been taking steps towards handing back power to a civilian government and this finally happened in 1979. For this Second Republic, “[t]o avoid the pitfalls of the First Republic, the new constitution was designed to eliminate political competition based on a system of winner-takes-all [and] broaden consensus politics to a national base.”201 Another important aspect was “[t]he federal- character principle, which sought to prevent the domination of power by one or a few states, ethnic groups, or sections at the federal center, and by one or more groups in the states and local government areas. The principle required that the composition of the cabinet, boards, and other executive bodies, as well as appointments to top government positions, should reflect the federal character or diversity of the country at the particular level of government. This principle also applied to the composition of the armed forces. The principle was extended to the distribution of national resources, such as the siting of schools and industries.”202 It was not allowed anymore for political parties to have certain religious or ethnic connotations in their name, logo, and motto, membership was to be open to any Nigerian regardless of his or her ethnic or religious background, and the headquarters were to be in the federal capital.203 The new political parties that arose in this environment, which were the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), the Nigerian People’s Party (NPP), the United Party of Nigeria (UPN), the Great Nigeria People’s Party (GNPP), the People’s Redemption Party (PRP) and the Nigeria Advance Party (NAP), despite their names again were mostly regional parties, except for the NPN, which won the presidency in the 1979 elections.204 In addition to these rules, the federal character of the country was to be reflected in the cabinet; an independent judiciary was to be established as well as corrective institutions.”205 There were several issues with this too, however, such as the wish for many Muslims to see sharia law reflected in the judiciary, which was vehemently opposed by most Christians. With the 1983 elections, violence erupted and election results were contested in court, after which the military intervened, meaning the end of the Second Republic. The new leader was Major General , who was a Hausa/Fulani northerner, who had previously been a member of the Supreme Military Council (SMC) under Muhammad and Obasanjo, and the second in command was

199 Forest (2012), 22. 200 Metz (1991) ‘The 1966 Coups, Civil War, and Gowon's Government’. 201 Ibid. 202 Ibid. 203 Ibid. 204 Ibid. 205 Ibid.

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General Tunde Idiagbon,206 a Muslim from the middle belt.207 While they were popular at first, their reign did not last long: in 1985 General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, a Muslim from the middle belt, staged a coup.208 He stayed in power until 1992, when power was handed back to a civilian government again.209 Babangida remains a powerful businessman with many contacts in the Nigerian government until today.210 For the Third Republic, there was to be a two party system, and these two parties had to draw from a national constituency so as to remove the risk of these parties becoming one northern Muslim one and one southern Christian one, further aggravating tensions.211 Another aspect of the transition programme directed at diminishing chances of returning to a situation like in the First and Second Republics, was that all politicians that had been active then were banned from doing so now. Hopes were that corruption and partisanship would be limited by only allowing ‘untainted’ politicians to run.212 Only politicians cleared by the Federal Elective Commission could participate, and ideologically and religiously more radical people were opposed to by the government and therefore mostly left out.213 When several parties applied for registration and all of these were found to be affiliated with banned politicians, the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC)214 formed two parties: the National Republican Convention (NRC) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP), which represented a stance a little right from centre, and a little left from centre.215 They were both financed by the state, and the National Electoral Commission was to write both the parties’ programs.216 These measures show just how much the AFRC wanted to keep the situation under control and prevent regionalism and partisanship. However, when Moshood Abiola, a Yoruba from the south, won in the 1993 presidential elections, elections that were deemed Nigeria’s fairest,217 “Hausa-supported military leader Babangida annulled the vote and the country was plunged into political turmoil”.218 The Third Republic, therefore, never really existed. In November 1993

206 Metz (1991) ‘The 1966 Coups, Civil War, and Gowon's Government’. 207 Chido Nwangu, ‘General Tunde Idiagbon: A nationalist, an iron-surgeon departs’, USAfricaonline, http://www.usafricaonline.com/IdiagbonDeparts.html, last accessed 7 May 2014. 208 ‘General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida’, Africa Confidential, http://www.africa-confidential.com/whos-who- profile/id/2609/Ibrahim_Babangida, last accessed 7 May 2014. Also see: Helen Chapin Metz (1991) (ed.) ‘The Babangida Government’, in Nigeria: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress. Via: http://countrystudies.us/nigeria/73.htm. 209 Ibid. 210 ‘General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida’, Africa Confidential. 211 Helen Chapin Metz (1991) (ed.) ‘The Third Republic’, in Nigeria: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress. Via: http://countrystudies.us/nigeria/76.htm. 212 Ibid. 213 Ibid. 214 The AFRC was the lawmaking body under Babangida. 215 Helen Chapin Metz (1991) ‘The Third Republic’. 216 Ibid. 217 ‘The 3rd Republic’, Nigeria BusinessFile, http://www.nigeriabusinessfile.com/information/history/the-3rd- republic, last accessed 7 May 2014. 218 Forest (2012), 24.

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General Sani Abacha, a Kanuri from the north,219 seized power, and stayed in power until he died in 1998. Abdulsalam Abubakar, a Hausa from the middle belt, took over and organized the already planned — but delayed by Abacha — return to civilian rule. Presidential elections were held in January 1999 and former military leader Obasanjo was sworn in on May 29 that same year.220

The Fourth Republic

From 1999 onwards Nigeria has had a civilian government. The number of states had been expanded several times and there are currently 36 states and one territory.221 The present Nigeria is a Federal Republic with a bicameral structure; the two chambers are the House of Representatives and the Senate.222 The President is head of state, head of government and the commander-in-chief of the army.223 Quickly after the instalment of the Fourth Republic, 12 northern states established sharia law.224 As was mentioned, the first president of the Fourth Republic was Olusegun Obasanjo, a Christian Yoruba from the People’s Democratic Party, who had been imprisoned under Abacha’s rule.225 He was re- elected in 2003 with over 60% of the vote — although “irregularities” were reported — and remained president until 2007.226 A plot to overthrow him was discovered in 2004. It was organized by mostly Hausa officials, showing that ethnic divides and struggles had not gone away.227 The period under Obasanjo is looked back at mostly positively, and his successor Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, a Hausa from the north of Nigeria, also from the People’s Democratic Party, continued many of Obasanjo’s policies.228 The current president is Goodluck Jonathan, again from the People’s Democratic Party, who started in 2010 after Yar’Adua fell ill, and was elected as president in 2011, in elections that were widely regarded as fair.229 He is an Ijaw, and a Christian, from the southeast of Nigeria.230 In line with this, most of the southern states of the country voted for him, while none of the northern states did. This has put a strain on his legitimacy in the north, adding to the already slim state legitimacy in that area.

219 The Kanuri are a Muslim people living in the most northeastern part of Nigeria as well as in Chad, Cameroon, and Niger. 220 ‘Abdusalam Abubakar’, Encyclopaedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/2391/Abdusalam-Abubakar, last accessed 7 May 2014. 221 The World Factbook’, CIA, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ni.html, last modified 23 April 2014. 222 The National Assembly of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Website, http://www.nassnig.org/, last accessed 7 May 2014. 223 ‘The President of Nigeria’, Open Mind Foundation, via http://www.openmindfoundation.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/08/The_President.pdf, last accessed 7 May 2014. 224 Ekwtosi Collyer, ‘Law and disorder in Nigeria’s sharia states’, Radio Netherlands Worldwide, http://www.rnw.nl/africa/article/law-and-disorder-nigeria%E2%80%99s-sharia-states-0, 23 December 2011. 225 Forest (2012), 25. 226 Idem, 26. 227 Ibid. 228 Forest (2012), 26. 229 Idem, 27. 230 Ibid.

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As Forest states, “the north has higher rates of poverty and illiteracy; the northeast, where Boko Haram and other Islamist extremist groups have taken root, is the poorest in Nigeria. Several states there are governed by the opposition All Nigeria People’s Party. The region yields little national political power and has never produced a head of state. In essence, as Alex Thurston recently observed, state legitimacy is at its weakest in the northeast.”231 Also, while there is democracy now, there is still “civilian authoritarianism”, Nigeria remains “one of the leading corrupt countries in the world”, politics and the military remain entangled, and there is general economic and infrastructural decay, which is strongly linked to the corruptness of the regime.232 The People’s Democratic Party (PDP), to which all presidents of the Fourth Republic belonged, had a clear majority in parliament, as well as more governors (heads of the various states) than its main opposition, the All Progressive Congress (APC). This party was formed out of the four main opposition parties in early 2013, to create a strong block against the reign of the PDP.233 Also, with the defection of several PDP governors and several members of the House of Representatives to the APC, the PDP now governs 18 states while the APC does so in 16.234 The PDP currently has 60 of the 109 seats in the Senate and 169 of 360 in the House of Representatives. The states in which the PDP rules are in the central north, the middle belt and the southeast. The north-eastern states — the region in which Boko Haram is most active — is controlled by the APC, as is the south-west (see figure 2). Thus at this point, there is a sort of two party system in Nigeria. This also shows that parties that previously represented different ethnic and religious groups and different regions in the country have been willing to cooperate in order to challenge the reign of the PDP, meaning that a struggle for power can in fact be more important than are ethnic and religious considerations. The fact that five PDP governors defected to the APC also illustrates this.235 In this situation, there are still attempts to create some system of power-sharing: “The contest for power between north and south that has broadly defined Nigeria’s modern political history can be traced, in part, to administrative divisions instituted during Britain’s colonial administration. Northern military leaders dominated Nigerian politics from independence until the transition to democracy just over a decade ago. Today, the predominantly Muslim Hausa remain

231 Ibid. 232 Leke Oke (2010) ‘Democracy and Governance in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic’ in African Research Review, 4, 34-37. 233 ‘About APC’, All Progressives Congress Website, http://apc.com.ng/index.php/about-apc/about-apc, last accessed 7 May 2014. 234 Accounts differ on the number of senators that defected, and where their alliances lie now. See: Lagun Akinloye, ‘Nigeria: Welcome to a Two-Party State’, Think Africa Press, http://thinkafricapress.com/nigeria/npdp-apc-merger, 5 December 2012. Also see: ‘Nigerian PDP governors defect to opposition APC’, BBC, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa- 25109513, 26 November 2013. 235 Kunle Olasanmi, ‘Defection: PDP Accuses 5 APC Governors of Evading Court Summons’, Leadership, http://leadership.ng/news/343702/defection-pdp-accuses-5-apc-governors-of-evading-court-summons, 7 February 2014.

49 dominant in the military and the federal government, but have lost power in many state governments.

Since the election of President Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999, there has been a de facto power sharing arrangement referred to as “zoning” between the country’s geopolitical zones, through which the presidency is expected to rotate among the regions every two terms.”236 However, when President Umaru Yar’Adua, who was the northern predecessor to Obasanjo, died, Goodluck Jonathan took over, and he was a southerner.237 Clearly, the situation remains volatile and complex.

Figure 2. Source: author.

This chapter has made clear which issues and divides are present in Nigeria, and how persistent and anchored in Nigeria’s history these are. There is a situation in which the state of Nigeria does not have power over all its territory, in which a tripolar ethnic structure and a religious divide, corruption and political patronage complicate the matter, and so far the government has not been capable of dealing with Boko Haram in an effective manner. The next chapter focuses on the various radical Islamic groups that existed in this environment and how Boko Haram arose amidst of this.

236 Lauren Ploch (2011) ‘Nigeria: Elections and Issues for Congress’, Congressional Research Service, 2. Via: http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL33964_20110401.pdf. 237 Ploch (2011), 2.

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V. The rise and evolution of Boko Haram

Something that has to be kept in mind when studying Boko Haram is that information about the group and its motives is scarce and contradictory and that which cells are part of the organization remains controversial today. This chapter sets out to establish some facts about the origins and evolution of Boko Haram, using various reports and articles drafted by experts on the group.

Origins

The northern states of Nigeria were once part of an Islamic caliphate, and with the arrival of the fourth republic many of them implemented sharia.238 Within this religious environment, history contains a multitude of Islamist groups being active in the region.239 Nigeria also has a long history of religious conflict, and especially after its independence there was increased polarization along religious lines.240 Islamic radicalism has been on the rise in the northern part of the country since the 1980s.241 An important player in this was Ibrahim al-Zakzaky, who led the Muslim Brothers, also called Yan Brothers, a Shiite group that was inspired by the Iranian revolution.242 Mohammed Yusuf, who would later lead Boko Haram, was a member of the group.243 In that same period, in the early eighties, there was a series of uprisings by the Maitatsine group: “The Maitatsine movement, led by Muhammadu Marwa, a Cameroonian with a long period of residence in , had as its professed objective the purification of Islam. Maitatsine is a Hausa word meaning ‘the one who damns’; it is derived from the regular cursing or swearing of Marwa and alluded to his frequent, bitter public condemnation of the Nigerian state […]. His declaration of himself as a prophet and his abhorrence of Western technology and its products marked him out […].”244 Clearly, Boko Haram’s idea that the Nigerian state and its elite, including most of the Muslim elite, are bad and need to be fought, was not entirely new, but was an idea that already had support earlier. There are more similarities between the two: “Maitatsine's doctrine was rather idiosyncratic, to say the least. […] [Marwa] also denounced the use of watches, radios, bicycles, and cars. […] Fired by his preaching, Maitatsine's students,

238 ‘Nigeria Profile’, BBC, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13951696, 27 November 2013. 239 See for example Ahmad Murtada (2013) ‘“Boko Haram” in Nigeria: Its Beginnings, Principles and Activities in Nigeria’, SalafiManhaj. 240 Abimbola O. Adesoji (2011) ‘Between Maitatsine and Boko Haram: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Response of the Nigerian State’ in Africa Today, 57:4, 100. 241 Ibid. 242 Ramzi Ben Amara () ‘’We Introduced Sharia’- The Izala Movement in Nigeria’ in John A. Chesworth & Franz Kogelmann (eds.) Shari’a in Africa Today: Reactions and Responses. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 141-142. 243 Murtada (2013), 5. 244 Adesoji (2011), 101.

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thought to number several thousand, ratcheted up their verbal and, increasingly, physical assaults on what they saw as the corruption of within the Muslim community of Kano. Things came to a head in December 1980 when [the group’s] attacks on other religious figures as well as the police led the Nigerian army to intervene directly against the mallam. The subsequent armed clashes – the students proved to be remarkably well armed – resulted in the deaths of around five thousand people, including Maitatsine himself. […] In October 1982, riots broke out near Maiduguri and , two other northern cities to which Yan Tatsine members had moved after the military crackdown, killing over three thousand people. Later still, in February and March 1984, more violence took place in Yola […]. More than a thousand people died as the city was convulsed by a rampage that ultimately left half of its 60,000 inhabitants homeless. […] Rioting broke out in April 1985, killing several hundred more people.”245 After this, there was a period of relative quiet, but the ideas that were behind the uprisings had not disappeared. There were still a lot of radical Islamic groups in the region, of which Nigerian scholar Murtada gives a partial overview, and in which Mohammed Yusuf stayed active.246 It is within this environment, and from some of these earlier groups’ ashes, that Boko Haram arose. Something that there is general agreement on is that Boko Haram originated in Borno state in northeast Nigeria.247 At first sight, however, there is no consensus about when the group was founded. At a closer look, the difference in dates of origin can be explained by differences in the level of detail the author or organization has chosen for looking into the matter. Dates range from the mid-nineties to 2002 and this difference also stems from different stances being taken as to from when the group can be clearly identified as being Boko Haram — or often as being the group that would later become known as Boko Haram. There were various Islamic groups, mostly containing youths, active in the north-eastern region of Nigeria throughout this period. The general idea is that the origins of Boko Haram can be found in a confluence on some of them around the turn of the century. Connell mentions Boko Haram derived from a group founded in 1995 by Abubakah Lawan, an organization called Ahlulsunna wal’jama’ah hijra,248 which is also stated by Onuoha.249 The somewhat more vague remarks on the origins of the group going back to the ‘mid-nineties’ in various U.S. reports seem to correspond to this.250 This idea

245 J. Peter Pham, ‘In Nigeria False Prophets Are Real Problems’, World Defense Review, 19 October 2006. Via: http://worlddefensereview.com/pham101906.shtml. 246 Murtada (2013), 4-5. 247 Walker (2012), 3. 248 Shannon Connell (2012) ‘To Be Or Not To Be: Is Boko Haram A Foreign Terrorist Organization’ in Global Security Studies, 3:3, 88. 249 Onuoha (2012), 2. 250 Walker (2012), 3. Also see: U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security, Boko Haram. Growing Threat to the U.S. Homeland, 13 September 2013, 7.

52 is also found among the Nigerian security forces251 and among various Nigerian journalists.252 Next to this, there is a general consensus that the year of 2002, which is often mentioned as the year in which Boko Haram was founded by the media,253 was the year in which Mohammed Yusuf actually established the group.254

Boko Haram under Mohammed Yusuf

Mohammed Yusuf had created his own group under the name of Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal- Jihad, which is Boko Haram’s actual name up until today, in 2002. Murtada dates the name of the group back to this year, when Yusuf and his students formed it after a series of splits from other Islamist groups.255 As stated, there were several Islamist groups active in north-eastern Nigeria at the time. During the years 2002-2004 various groups known as the Nigerian Taliban,256 Sahaba,257 the Yusufiyyah sect258 — after the leader Mohammed Yusuf259 — and youths from the Ndimi mosque,260 all (to a considerably degree) merged with Yusufs group. His group continued to be called Nigerian Taliban or mostly the Yusufiyyah sect, because of the “cult-like following of Muhammad Yusuf”.261 Some of these groups, such as the Nigerian Taliban, got into a conflict with locals in 2003 which appears to have led to a confrontation between the group and Nigerian police, in which the group’s leader Mohammed Ali was

251 Julian Taiwo and Michael Olugbode, ‘Boko Haram Leader Killed’, THISDAY, http://allafrica.com/stories/200907310001.html, 31 July 2009. 252 Isioma Madike, ‘Boko Haram: Rise of a deadly sect’, National Mirror, http://nationalmirroronline.net/sunday- mirror/big_read/14548.html, 19 June 2011. Also see: Emma Ujah et al., ‘Yar’Auda Orders Probe of Boko Haram’s Leader’s Killing’, Vanguard, http://vanguardngr.com/2009/08/yarauda-orders-probe-of-boko-haram-leaders-killing/, 4 August 2009. 253 Farouk Chothia, ‘Who Are Nigeria’s Boko Haram Islamists’, BBC, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa- 13809501, 11 January 2012. 254 Onuoha (2012). It is also the year of the riots, in which over 200 people died in fights between Muslims and Christians after an article in Christian newspaper THISDAY. This is another illustration of religious tensions, radicalism and organization of these groups. See: ‘2002: Riots force Miss World out of Nigeria’, BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/23/newsid_3226000/3226740.stm, 23 November 2002. Others say it was not so much about religion as it was about politics- another illustration of just how intertwined these two are in Nigeria. See: James Astill, ‘The truth behind the ’, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/30/jamesastill, 30 November 2002 . 255 Murtada (2013), 4-5. 256 Walker (2012), 3. Also see: Obadiah Mailafia D. Phil (2012) ‘Conflict and Insurgency in Nigeria: Impact on Development Prospects and Nationhood’, http://www.nigeriacalabash.com/content/conflict-and-insurgency- nigeria, 66. 257 Isioma Madike, ‘Boko Haram: Rise of a deadly sect’, National Mirror, http://nationalmirroronline.net/sunday- mirror/big_read/14548.html, 19 June 2011. 258 Onuoha (2010), 55-56. 259 Murtada (2013), 4. 260 Walker (2012), 3. 261 Murtada (2013), 4.

53 killed.262 Later on, the Yobe-based group attacked several police stations and public buildings in towns in that state, hoisting Taliban flags. 263 This led to a shootout which killed 18 of the group’s members and after this the surviving members moved elsewhere — some of them back to Borno state, where they are said to have joined Mohammed Yusuf.264 In 2004, there was a Borno attack on police stations in which several police officers were killed led to a raid on the group’s hideout by security forces, killing 27.265 Perhaps because Yusuf disapproved of these violent actions, these were the last notable violent incident that is related to Boko Haram until 2007.266 On land owned by his father-in-law, Yusuf established a new mosque, the Ibn Taimiyyah Masjid.267 Many of the group’s members studied at schools across Borno and Yobe states and dropped out to follow lessons on the Quran with Yusuf.268 In the first couple of years under Yusuf, “[o]bservers say the group constructed a “state within a state,” with a cabinet, its own religious police, and a large farm. It attracted more and more people under its roof by offering welfare handouts, food, and shelter. Many of the people the group attracted were refugees from the wars over the border in Chad and jobless Nigerian youths.” Since there were few incidents in this period, and the group mostly lived their lives relatively secluded in the “state within a state” they created, they received little attention until 2007.269 The group’s unofficial name of Boko Haram means ‘western education is sinful’. This name was given to them by neighbours of the group’s new headquarters in Maiduguri.270 The names ‘Nigerian Taliban’ and ‘Boko Haram’ were used as mocking names.271 However, the name does refer to one of the key points of the group which is inspired by Mohammed Yusuf’s teachings. It is known, for example from an interview Yusuf gave to the BBC Hausa service shortly before his death, that he believed that the earth was flat, while rain was a creation of god and not something to do with evaporation.272 Western education contradicts these statements, which led Yusuf to state that this kind of education “spoils the belief in one God”.273 Yusuf was of the Salafist tradition. As the wide variety of radical Islamic and Islamist groups in northern Nigeria — of which the groups mentioned above are only a small portion — illustrate, radical

262 Walker (2012), 3. 263 Freedom C. Onuoha (2010) ‘The Islamist Challenge: Nigeria’s Boko Haram Crisis Explained’ in African Security Review, 19:2, 55. 264 ‘Nigeria: Security forces kill 27 “Taliban” militants, says police’, IRIN. 265 Ibid. 266 Murtada (2013), 6. 267 Walker (2012), 3. 268 Onuoha (2010), 55-56. 269 Onuoha (2010), 56. 270 Joe Boyle, ‘Nigeria’s ‘Taliban’ Enigma’, BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8172270.stm, 31 July 2009. 271 Ibid. 272 Ibid. 273 Ibid.

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Islamic traditions were widespread and popular in the area. With Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999, multiple northern states adopted Islamic Sharia law. This included Maiduguri, “but it was not enforced strictly enough for the conservative Yusuf. […] He preached that it was necessary to engage in active jihad in order to defend the ummah (global community of Muslims) and spread the faith, and that a leader who does not enforce Sharia law completely, and wage active jihad against infidels, is unfit to rule.”274 This line of thinking clearly presents a basis for seeing the ruling Muslim elite as bad, and after years of relative silence, in which Boko Haram grew but mainly stayed on its own land, Sheikh Ja’afar Mahmoud Adam was murdered in 2007.275 He was a prominent cleric at the Ndimi mosque — of which radical youths had split off in 2002, establishing both Ali’s and Yusuf’s groups.276 While it was not known at the time that Boko Haram was behind it, it was later acknowledged that Yusuf himself had given the order to eliminate Sheikh Ja’afar for his criticism of the group’s hardline ideology.277 Importantly, “[t]he killing is now seen by some as a key point in the development of Boko Haram, because there was no longer the possibility of turning Yusuf and his followers back to the mainstream of the northern Islamic establishment.”278 Then, “[i]n July 2009, the group came into conflict with the authorities in a strikingly similar way to the events of six years before. Traveling en masse to the funeral of a fellow member, the group was stopped by police traffic officers, who were enforcing a tightened restriction on motorcycle helmets, and an argument ensued. The circumstances are unclear, but a member of the group is reported to have fired on the police, injuring several officers. The group then attacked police stations in Bauchi and Yobe, killing scores of police officers. Yusuf released several video sermons in which he explicitly threatened the state and the police with violence. They were circulated on DVD and gained a widespread audience. These events led the Bauchi government to crack down on the group, arresting more than seven hundred members. In Maiduguri, the police surrounded the group’s mosque, but members of the sect managed to break out and for three days they had the run of the town. They roamed the city acting independently, fighting police when they came across them and killing Muslim and Christian civilians indiscriminately.”279 These events show similarities to the actions of the ‘Nigerian Taliban’ from 2002 until 2004 and to the Maitatsine uprisings. The police eventually regained control of the city and imprisoned and executed a lot of Boko Haram’s members, including Yusuf, who was killed in suspicious circumstances which led to the

274 Forest (2012), 62. 275 Walker (2012), 4. 276 Idem, 3-4. 277 Idem, 4. 278 Ibid. 279 Ibid.

55 widespread belief that he was simply executed without any form of process. Those members of Boko Haram who managed to escape arrest (and execution) fled, many of them abroad, with Islamist groups in and Algeria.280 The police confiscated their lands and other possessions.281

The birth of Boko Haram as it is known today

Abubakar Shekau, who had been Yusuf’s left hand, is thought to have stayed in north Cameroon after the 2009 events.282 He became the group’s new leader.283 He is a Kanuri — just as many of the group’s members284 — from a village in Yobe, near the border with Cameroon.285 The Kanuri are the largest ethnic group in the far northeast of Nigeria, and also in southeast Niger, western Chad, and northern Cameroon.286 Shekau moved to Maiduguri in 1990 where he studied the Quran with a traditional cleric and then proceeded to study at the Borno State College of Legal and Islamic Studies.287 He is said not to be as charismatic as Yusuf, but he is portrayed as having an “intense ideological commitment and ruthlessness”.288 His aggressiveness and radicalism are said to have been the main reasons why he was chosen as Yusuf’s predecessor.289 Shekau and Yusuf were both strict students of the Quran, but Shekau is said to be perhaps the most radical of them. Shekau is often called ‘imam’ by his followers, and he is both the group’s spiritual leader as their leader in battle. He is of the more militant wing of the group, and has stated in one of his videos that he enjoys killing.290 With Shekau being in charge of Boko Haram, therefore, there seems to be a fair chance of the group become more radical and ruthless.291 After nearly a year in hiding, the group reemerged and started its campaign of terror on a larger scale in mid-2010.292 They started with what appeared to be a quest for vengeance, assassinating policemen and local leaders who had cooperated with them against Boko Haram.293 From the end of 2010 they started widening their scope of possible targets.294 The amount of attacks attributed to the group from this period until 2014 is large and is included in the appendix. That timeline clearly illustrates how the targets of Boko Haram have changed over time.

280 Ibid. 281 Ibid. 282 Idem, 5. 283 Abdullahi Tasiu Abubakar, ‘Profile of Nigeria’s Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau’, BBC, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-18020349, 4 June 2013. 284 ‘Curbing Violence in Nigeria (II): The Boko Haram Insurgency’, International Crisis Group, 3 April 2014, 25. 285 ‘Curbing Violence in Nigeria (II): The Boko Haram Insurgency’, 19. 286 Toyin Falola and Mathew Heaton (2008) A History of Nigeria, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. chapters 1- 2. 287 Ibid. 288 Abubakar, ‘Profile of Nigeria’s Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau’. 289 ‘Curbing Violence in Nigeria (II): The Boko Haram Insurgency’, 19. 290 Abubakar, ‘Profile of Nigeria’s Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau’. 291 ‘Curbing Violence in Nigeria (II): The Boko Haram Insurgency’, 19. 292 Abubakar, ‘Profile of Nigeria’s Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau’. 293 Abubakar, ‘Profile of Nigeria’s Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau’. 294 Ibid.

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Organizational structure

Boko Haram is continuously being referred to as a group, and it does exist as a group. However, there is some discussion on how tight this group is. The faction that is most active and most known is the one based mostly in the Borno area, of which Abubakar Shekau is the leader. Various sources mention that there is a Shura, a council, which is the highest body for decision making within Boko Haram.295 Shekau, the commander in chief or amir-ul-aam, needs approval from the Shura.296 In various towns and cities, there is a local amir in charge, who sometimes is a Shura member as well.297 The Shura members do not stay in one place, and operate different cells — it is now a cell-like organization.298 These factions operate relatively autonomously, which is one of the reasons that negotiating with Boko Haram is difficult. The group is quite diffuse and Shekau and the Shura are thought to not control every faction, since not necessarily every local amir is in the Shura, too. Shekau is the head of the most significant faction and the Shura at least, which makes him a very influential person within Boko Haram nonetheless, and he is widely regarded as the whole group’s leader.299 Also, even though the Shura has some power, too, the power of Shekau must not be underestimated. There have been reports from inside Boko Haram’s ranks that people that have proposed negotiating with the government, or using less violent tactics, were killed on Shekau’s orders.300 He reportedly also does not pass every decision he makes by the council.301 One of the reasons for this might be that the Shura has been enlarged from containing eleven members to 37, which limits its quick decision-making capabilities.302 According to the International Crisis Group, as of early 2014 there are six main factions of Boko Haram. The one in the northeast, led by Shekau, is indeed the largest.303 Another faction is said to be led by Mamman Nur, who just as Shekau was one of the most important Boko Haram members under Mohammed Yusuf. These factions appear to have regular contact with each other, and the faction is also under Shekau’s final leadership.304 There is also reportedly still a faction active in Kaduna, also under the leadership of an old acquaintance of Shekau, but it has kept a low profile.305 In 2012, however, there

295 ‘Curbing Violence in Nigeria (II): The Boko Haram Insurgency’, International Crisis Group, 21. Also see: Walker (2012), 8. 296 Ibid. 297 ‘Curbing Violence in Nigeria (II): The Boko Haram Insurgency’, International Crisis Group, 21. 298 Walker (2012), 8. 299 ‘Curbing Violence in Nigeria (II): The Boko Haram Insurgency’, International Crisis Group, 19. 300 Idem, 21. 301 Walker (2012), 8. 302 ‘Curbing Violence in Nigeria (II): The Boko Haram Insurgency’, International Crisis Group, 21. 303 Idem, 22. 304 ‘Curbing Violence in Nigeria (II): The Boko Haram Insurgency’, International Crisis Group. 305 Ibid.

57 were attacks Kaduna, as the timeline of Boko Haram attacks in the appendix shows.306 The International Crisis Group also counts Ansaru as a faction of Boko Haram, but it has generally been seen as independent, since they did not agree with Boko Haram’s tactics anymore.307 However, several of Ansaru’s commanders reportedly returned to Boko Haram over 2013, so it does appear that there are still important linkages between the groups.308 Perhaps Ansaru can be seen as just another faction of Boko Haram that operates semi-independently. Another faction is led by Mohammed Marwan,309 who is one of the Boko Haram commanders that has suggested dialogue with Nigerian authorities — which opportunity for dialogue was then later denied by Shekau.310 According to the International Crisis Group, there was a final faction in Bauchi, but there has been a conflict with the leader of that.311 So that leads to there being four or five major factions, of which the one in northeast Nigeria led by Shekau is by far the largest. This faction itself is split up in different smaller cells, too, at least in the sense that the subgroups are not staying in one place, as is something that becomes apparent when looking at the timeline of Boko Haram attacks in the appendix. As this timeline also shows, while there was an almost non-stop flow of attacks since Boko Haram returned in September 2010, it altered in which area it was, and thus which faction was responsible for it. In 2010 and 2011 the large majority of attacks took place in Borno, especially in Maiduguri. This changed late 2011 and from 2012 onwards Boko Haram activity is much more geographically dispersed. This indicates that around that time the group had successfully established factions in these areas. After this the overview features periods in which a certain faction shows increased activity. For example, in January and February of 2012 there were a lot of attacks in Kano. There was also a lot of activity in Yobe state, especially in Potiskum, that year, most notably in May and also in October. The timeline also shows how Boko Haram turns more and more deadly over time.

306 Also see ‘SaharaReporters Was Right About Boko Haram Cell In Rigasa Neighborhood In Kaduna’, SaharaReporters, http://saharareporters.com/news-page/saharareporters-was-right-about-boko-haram-cell-rigasa- neighborhood-kaduna, 22 April 2012. 307 Ibid. 308 Jacob Zenn (2014) ‘Nigerian al-Qaedaism’ in Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, 16, http://www.hudson.org/research/10172-nigerian-al-qaedaism-, 11 March 2014. 309 Ibid. 310 ‘Nigeria says in peace talks with Boko Haram Islamists amid doubts’, FOX News, http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/07/10/nigeria-says-in-peace-talks-with-boko-haram-islamists-amid-doubts/, 10 July 2013. 311 ‘Curbing Violence in Nigeria (II): The Boko Haram Insurgency’, International Crisis Group, 22.

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VI. United States- Nigerian cooperation concerning counterterrorism

While Boko Haram seems to be a mainly domestic issue, there are transnational aspects about it and there are international players involved. One of these is the United States. To assess the role of the United States later, it is important to establish its relations with Nigeria and its involvement in the country. Therefore, in this chapter, relations between the United States and Nigeria, especially concerning counterterrorism, are assessed.

In 1960, immediately after Nigeria’s independence, the United States established diplomatic relations with the country. These quickly came to a halt, however, as from 1966 onwards there was a long period of coups and military rulers. The strong relations that the United States and Nigeria have today, started in 1999 at Nigeria’s return to civilian rule with the Fourth Republic.312 There are several terrains on which the two countries cooperate. For example, the U.S.-Nigeria Binational Commission holds talks on five key areas, which are “good governance, transparency, and integrity; energy and investment; regional security; Niger Delta; and agriculture and food security”.313 On most of these areas, the United States provides assistance to Nigeria.314 This also means that U.S. governmental development programmes are carried out in Nigeria, such as those by USAID.315 Furthermore, Nigeria is the United States’ biggest sub-Sahara Africa trading partner, which is mostly because the United States imports a lot of petroleum from Nigeria.316 American imports from Nigeria amounted to 11.7 Billion Dollar in 2013, of which 11.6 Billion Dollar is oil.317 The United States is also the largest source of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Nigeria.318 The two countries have signed a Trade & Investment Agreement in 2000.319 What this adds up to, is that Nigeria is an important partner of the United States. As the U.S. Department of State puts it: “Nigeria is a key strategic partner in Africa. Nigeria has the continent’s largest population and largest economy, and it plays a vital role in efforts to resolve crises and promote stability and prosperity in and beyond. […]Given Nigeria’s importance as a regional political and economic leader, the U.S. has a vital interest in helping to strengthen Nigeria’s democratic institutions, boost Nigeria’s prosperity and security, and ensure opportunity for all of its citizens.

312 ‘Nigeria’, United States Africa Command. 313 Ibid. 314 ‘U.S. Relations With Nigeria’, Bureau of African Affairs, U.S. Department of State, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2836.htm, 28 August 2013. 315 ‘Nigeria’, USAID, http://www.usaid.gov/nigeria, last modified 19 March 2014. 316 Ibid. 317 ‘Nigeria’, Office of the United States Trade Representative, http://www.ustr.gov/countries-regions/africa/west- africa/nigeria, 1 May 2014 318 ‘Nigeria’, USAID. 319 ‘Nigeria’, Office of the United States Trade Representative.

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The U.S. and Nigeria also work closely together in multilateral fora, including the UN Security Council, where Nigeria is serving a term as a non-permanent member for 2014-2015.”320 This quote shows an emphasis on security cooperation, and in this area, Islamist violence is of special concern to the United States. Below, the cooperation concerning counterterrorism, and the United States’ role in dealing with Boko Haram, are assessed.

The role of the United States in the conflict with Boko Haram

The United States have security interests in West Africa that have to do with a range of factors from concerns for stable conditions for trade, for example regarding global oil markets,321 to concerns with Islamic radicalism and terrorism.322 Especially since 2006 security assistance from the United States to Nigeria has increased.323 The security cooperation ‘landscape’ is a complicated one, comprising of many different programmes, some regional, some specifically aimed at Nigeria. The United States’ concerns for the wider West-African region led to the African Partnership Station that was started by the navy in 2007.324 The State Department has an African Coastal and Border Security programme, since there are also issues such as piracy and smuggling in West-Africa.325 Drug trafficking has greatly increased in the area in recent years.326 Nigeria is an important partner to the United States when it comes to fighting terrorism regionally. Nigeria is a member of the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) and of the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP), the latter of which is funded by the United States.327 The other member states of the latter are Algeria, , Cameroon, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, and , and Nigeria is one of the key members. “TSCTP provides counter-IED and civil- military operations training to the Nigerian military, and crisis management and border security training to Nigerian law enforcement agencies.”328 Since the states in the region often have porous borders329, the United States focuses on border controls and training a lot.

320 ‘Boko Haram and U.S. Counterterrorism Assistance to Nigeria’, U.S. Department of State, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2014/05/226072.htm, 14 May 2014. 321 Ploch (2011), summary. 322 Ploch (2011), 15-16. 323 Patrick Meehan & Jackie Spreier, ‘Boko Haram. Emerging Threat to the U.S. Homeland’, U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security, 30 November 2011, 23. 324 Ibid. 325 ‘Security Assistance in Africa’, U.S. Department of State, http://www.state.gov/t/pm/c17671.htm, last accessed 28 May 2014. 326 Joe Bavier, ‘West Africa cocaine, methamphetamine smuggling on the rise- U.N.’, Reuters, http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/02/25/uk-west-africa-drugs-idUKBRE91O14P20130225, 25 February 2013. 327 ‘Boko Haram and U.S. Counterterrorism Assistance to Nigeria’, U.S. Department of State. 328 ‘Boko Haram and U.S. Counterterrorism Assistance to Nigeria’, U.S. Department of State. 329 ‘Cameroon blames Boko Haram in French priest’s kidnapping’, CNN, http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/15/world/africa/cameroon-boko-haram-priest-kidnapping/, 15 November 2013.

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In Nigeria itself, specifically, the United States is active in the training of military personnel. What stands out here, is that training is given specifically in proper intelligence, using modern technology. The idea is to create more high-tech, professional organizations, that comprise of people different specialisms and parts of the security apparatus, and effectively uses all sorts of sources of information.330 A U.S. organization that deals with this is the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications.331 One of the programmes of the United States in Nigeria is the State Department’s Antiterrorism Assistance (ATA), which cooperates with the Nigerian Police Force, Customs Service, Immigration Service, and the National Emergency Management Agency. In the training of the Nigerian Police Force the ATA curriculum has been integrated. It focuses on the detection and investigation of terrorist threats, and on prevention.332 The ATA particularly trains Nigerian security forces in how to deal with IED’s, which are sometimes used by Boko Haram. Cooperation with customs and immigration is also part of the counterterrorism approach, since Boko Haram has connections to groups from neighbouring countries, and they recruit from these countries/ some of its members are from these countries as well.333 As this shows, ATA has some overlap with the goals and practices of TSCTP. There also is an approach aimed particularly at impeding Boko Haram funding: the State Department’s Counterterrorism Finance (CTF) programme. This approach, again, trains Nigerian security personnel, in this case so that they can carry out investigations into Boko Haram funding.334 Most of these programmes do not seem to target Boko Haram directly, but train Nigerian authorities to do so. But the final programme to be mentioned here, the Countering violent extremism (CVE) programmes are about a war for the ‘hearts and minds’ of the people, and consider the active use of framing by the United States to “build[…] resilience among communities most at risk of recruitment and radicalization to violence” and to “counter[…] [Boko Haram] narratives and messaging”, and finally, to “build[…] the CVE capacity of government and civil society”.335 So for this, the United States has civil society projects and tries to engage local nongovernmental actors.336 Therefore another important difference with the earlier mentioned programmes is that this is not so much a security forces and ‘hard power’ operation, but an approach that focusses much more on the various causes for violent extremism, and dealing with those grassroots factors.337 This also makes it more of a preventive and long-term

330 ‘Boko Haram and U.S. Counterterrorism Assistance to Nigeria’, U.S. Department of State. 331 Ibid. 332 Ibid. 333 Ibid. 334 Ibid. 335 ‘Boko Haram and U.S. Counterterrorism Assistance to Nigeria’, U.S. Department of State. 336 Holmer (2013) ‘Countering Violent Extremism: A Peacebuilding Perspective’, United States Institute for Peace, 4-6. 337 Idem, 1-2.

61 approach, which, as it matured over the last decade, shifted into the realm of peacebuilding.338 It is based on scholarly work on radicalization, such as has been discussed in the theoretical framework as well: on push factors such as poverty and grievances such as a lack of political representation or access to the political process, on individual psychological characteristics, on group dynamics, and finally the pull of active recruitment, often containing an extremist violent message.339 Of course, it depends on the relative importance of each of these factors in relation to each other what type of policy is the most likely to be effective. If the United States would consider an extremist ideology not to be a very important mobilization factor in Nigeria, as opposed to the push factor of for example political grievances, counter narrative strategies would not make much sense.340 Since one of the three aspects of the U.S. CVE programme concerning Boko Haram is the counter narrative strategy, the United States apparently consider ideology to be an issue. With the previous chapter, which described the Islamist revival in the north-eastern region of Nigeria, this makes sense. Next to training, the Nigerian army has also received funds from the United States’ Department of Defense, which amounted to 8.4 million Dollar specifically for counterterrorism purposes.341 General Ham, the Commander of the U.S. Africa Command, stated in 2011 that the rise of Boko Haram was altering the relationship between Nigeria and the United States, bringing the two closer.342 As was mentioned, one of the five key areas that the Binational Commission of the United States and Nigeria focuses on is regional security. Some of the Regional Security working groups focus specifically on Boko Haram, and on finding a “holistic approach to countering the group”.343

The above shows that the United States have a wide array of programmes directed at combating terrorism in Nigeria and in the Sahel region. Most of these measures involve the training of Nigerian officials. This way Nigerian authorities are trained to be able to deal with the security problems themselves, which would ideally make them capable of handling these issues independently. To the United States, this is preferable because it means fewer personnel has to be deployed to the area, and they also face less risks. Particularly since the war, many U.S. nationals would probably not be overly enthusiastic about U.S. soldiers being deployed there and being at risk. Of course, involvement in the sense of training Nigerian officials instead of taking over their tasks also comes off better in terms of

338 Georgia Holmer (2013) ‘Countering Violent Extremism: A Peacebuilding Perspective’, United States Institute for Peace, 2. 339 Ibid. 340 Idem, 4. 341 Meehan & Spreier (2011), 24. 342 ‘General Carter F. Ham, Commander, U.S. Africa Command,’ Center for Strategic and International Studies Military Strategy Forum, http://csis.org/event/military-strategyforum-general-carter-f-ham-commander-us-africa- command, October 4, 2011. 343 ‘Boko Haram and U.S. Counterterrorism Assistance to Nigeria’, U.S. Department of State.

62 accusations of neo-colonialism or imperialism, or simply disrespect for state sovereignty. Since one of the key issues in the U.S. foreign policy is combating terrorism, they would still want to exert a considerable degree of influence in Nigeria. The fact that the United States also aids Nigeria’s development, and that the two countries have economic ties, means that it has good access to do this.

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VII. A political process perspective

In this chapter, the following hypothesis is tested: H1: The increase of violence can be explained by the nature of state repression and the lack of access to institutionalized politics (political factors). This hypothesis was inspired by the theories that Hafez344 and Hafez and Wiktorowicz345 laid out as a social movement theory approach of political process, and which they tested on Algerian and Egyptian radical Islamic movements. To test this hypothesis, reports on the actions of the Nigerian state versus Boko Haram are used. These are reports by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security, USIP, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the International Crisis Group. Also, chapter IV on the history and politics of Nigeria needs to be kept in mind for this analysis, especially for assessing the accessibility of institutionalized politics.

Access to institutionalized politics

The notion that a lack of access to institutionalized politics means that movements are more likely to turn to extreme measures is based on the fact that they cannot voice their problems or wishes through the ‘conventional’ channels, and therefore they are forced to do so otherwise. There are several indexes that rate countries on the level of democracy and the level of political rights for its civilians. One of these is the Freedom House Freedom in the World 2013 index. This rates Nigeria as ‘partly free’, giving it a score of 4.5 on a scale of 1 to 7 of which 1 is the best and 7 the worst possible score.346 This score is based on two other scores: 5 out of 7 points for civil liberties and 4 out of 7 points for political rights.347 So whereas the score on political rights is slightly better than that for civil liberties, they are both low. The ‘political rights’ category is made up of three subcategories, which are electoral process, political pluralism and participation, and functioning of government.348 The second category is particularly interesting here, since it connects directly to the access to institutionalized politics. Questions that Freedom House has asked here, are, for example: “Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system open to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings?”, “Is there a significant opposition vote and a realistic possibility for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? “ and “Do cultural, ethnic, religious, or other minority groups

344 Hafez (2004). 345 Hafez and Wiktorowicz (2004). 346 ‘Freedom in the World 2013’, Freedom House, http://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom- world/2013/nigeria#.U2ygvvmSx8E, last accessed 14 May 2014. 347 Ibid. 348‘Checklist Questions and Guidelines’, Freedom House, http://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world- 2013/checklist-questions-and-guidelines#.U3M2fPmSx8E, last accessed 14 May 2014

64 have full political rights and electoral opportunities? “.349 Depending on the answer to each of these questions a country is assigned a number of points through analysis, which are then used to establish the final Freedom index.350 The analysis by Freedom House corresponds to the image of Nigeria as was given in chapter IV, which discussed Nigeria’s political history. After such a long period of coups and military rule there may be democracy now, but most elections have been marred by electoral violence.351 This has often been fuelled by politicians who wish to disrupt the proceedings in order to influence the outcome — for example by deterring people from voting.352 This is an illustration of the lack of openness of Nigeria’s political system. The fact that there are high levels of patronage and strong ties of certain ethnic groups with certain political elites and parties — as Freedom House puts it, some parties “derive much of their support from regional strongholds”353 — means that the political system and the balance of power are rather inflexible, and that there is not much room for new initiatives. Since Boko Haram deems close to all Nigerian politicians to be corrupt, unbelievers, or ‘false Muslims’ they cannot voice their grievances or their ideas through existing parties and politicians, and there does not seem to be much room to create a new political group. In Nigeria, there is a rather closed off elite. This comprises both the political and business elite, which are closely intertwined. For example, many former businessmen turned politician, and the other way around.354 The existence of such an elite, which is effectively a class of its own, and the fact that they tend to have their networks of support and patronage, means that the political system is inflexible and not very accessible to outsiders. An important aspect that helps determine the accessibility of institutionalized politics is the opportunities that exist for organizing politically. Freedom House notes that freedoms of assembly and association are largely respected. However, this is not the case when it comes to protests, which are often met with police or military violence.355 In The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy index 2012 Nigeria gets a score of 3.77 out of 10.356 The total score is the mean of five subcategories: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties.357 Of these, particularly electoral

349 Ibid. 350 ‘Methodology’, Freedom House, http://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world- 2013/methodology#.U3M2NPmSx8E, last accessed 14 May 2014. 351 ‘Freedom in the World 2013’, Freedom House. 352 Ibid. 353 Ibid. 354 For example consider General Babangida, who is now a wealthy, influential businessmen: ‘General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida’, Africa Confidential, http://www.africa-confidential.com/whos-who- profile/id/2609/Ibrahim_Babangida, last accessed 7 May 2014. Another example is Borno governor Shettima, who was a banker until 2007: ‘Hon. Kashim Shettima’, Nigeria Governors’ Forum, http://nggovernorsforum.com/governors-items/hon-kashim-shettima/#.U3NEs_mSx8E, last accessed 14 May 2014. 355 ‘Freedom in the World 2013’, Freedom House. 356 ‘Democracy index 2012. Democracy at a standstill.’, The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2013, 7. 357 Ibid.

65 process and pluralism is of interest when assessing the access to institutionalized politics. It contains questions on the freeness and fairness of elections, equal campaigning opportunities and freedom to form political parties, on access to public offices, and the freedom to form political and civic organizations, all of which are vital for the accessibility of institutionalized politics.358 It is the subcategory on which Nigeria gets the highest score of all five categories: 5.67 points.359 This is still only little over half of the points that can be earned, though, meaning that pluralism in Nigerian politics is far from perfect. In comparison, Botswana and South Africa, two countries that are also former British colonies that became independent in the 1960s, receive scores of respectively 9.17 and 8.75 points, considerably higher.360 Countries such as Senegal, and Niger, states in the same region as Nigeria, also score higher, with respectively 7.92, 8.33 and 7.5 points.361 This shows that Nigeria’s score is quite low compared to somewhat similar states. In addition, political participation says something about the legitimacy of government or the amount of trust civilians have in their government. With the level of trust in government and its legitimacy also being low, chances increase that certain groups value their chance of reaching successful change through institutionalized politics to be low. This adds to the possibility that groups turn to other measures to voice their issues or achieve their goals. Also, one of the questions included in The Economist Intelligence Unit’s measure of political participation is whether authorities make a serious effort to promote participation, which also says something about the openness of the political system.362 In 2012, Nigeria scored 3.33 out of 10 points on political participation.363 Taking a look at Botswana and South Africa again, they score 6.67 and 7.22 here, again much higher.364 The West-African countries, however, all have low scores when it comes to political participation: Senegal scores 4.44, Ghana 5, and Niger 2.78.365 Nevertheless, just looking at Nigeria, their score of 3.33 out of 10 is obviously very low. The above has shown that, in general, accessibility of politics is low. It could also be the case that accessibility to politics is lower for some groups than it is for others. To look into whether this is the case, it is interesting to look back at chapter IV on Nigeria’s political history. There, it was explained that the political situation in Nigeria is highly complicated, with some parties and definitely individual politicians representing a certain region and/or ethnic group, while many parties also include members of different ethnic groups, and both Christians and Muslims, while politicians have been known to shift between

358 Idem, 29-31. Unfortunately, I was not able to get access to the scores on the different indicators, unless an amount of 5000 USD was paid for ‘further custom feed data’. 359 ‘Democracy index 2012. Democracy at a standstill.’, The Economist Intelligence Unit, 7. 360 Idem, 4. 361 Idem, 5-6. 362 Idem, 34. 363 Idem, 7. 364 ‘Democracy index 2012. Democracy at a standstill.’, The Economist Intelligence Unit, 4. 365 Idem, 5-6.

66 different parties, and if useful, people of different backgrounds have been willing to cooperate. Also, the main ethnic groups are all more or less represented in politics and government, while other ethnic groups have grouped around them. Finally, there is a sort of power sharing agreement, and different government bodies and security forces have a percentage of people from each (major) ethnic group that more or less reflects the ratio in society.366 While the south holds more power in terms of economic power (because of its oil and other factors such as coastline and waterways), the north holds more power in terms of the size of its population.367 These points all suggest that, leaving aside some small ethnic groups, larger groups are all represented. People from the predominantly Muslim north seem to have around the same access to institutionalized politics as those from the predominantly Christian south. Therefore, Boko Haram originated and grew in an environment in which there was low access to institutionalized politics in general — not specifically for a certain ethnic or religious group. Essentially, access to Nigerian politics and government is low for everyone that is not part of the political and business elite of the country. Another aspect of the access to institutionalized politics does not necessarily lie in having options for organizing oneself, but in feeling represented by an existing political party, group, or politician. If one is represented, and thus his or her interests are spoken for, one has access to institutionalized politics through his or her representative. Because of the high level of corruption and patronage, and many politicians’ inclination to strike deals with others that do not seem to hold the same ideas or represent the same interests, out of sheer self-interest, it seems that in this way access is also low. In the above, it has been established that access to institutionalized politics is relatively low in Nigeria. The question is, whether this has had an effect on the rise of Boko Haram and its turn to violence.

State repression

Another variable in H1 is that of state repression. The idea is that reactive and indiscriminate repression, as opposed to preemptive and selective repression, increases chances of a group turning violent. The nature of repression by the Nigerian authorities — both federal and state — and its security forces is assessed below. Essentially, the way that Nigeria has been dealing with the issue of Boko Haram has been almost entirely with its security forces. This has been the case since the earlier days of Boko Haram, in which the group had some major clashes with the police and this led to a violent counteroffensive against the group,368 up until now, with a state of emergency and crackdowns by the JTF defining policy vis-à-vis the group. There were other types of policies as well. There have been multiple attempts at negotiations with

366 Ploch (2011). 367 Metz (1991) ‘The First Republic’ in Nigeria: A Country Study. 368 Walker (2012), 4

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Boko Haram.369 This has proven to be very difficult, however, since it is difficult to establish whether a spokesman for the group actually speaks for the entire group.370 This seems almost impossible, because of the group’s cell-like structure.371 Therefore, negotiating deals could be a way of limiting the scope of the problem, eliminating some cells, but it seems difficult to quell the issue in its entirety this way. The mere fact that Boko Haram managed to grow to such an influence, and the above illustration of the actions that Nigerian authorities have taken every time only after public outrage of Boko Haram’s actions, of which the recent abduction of over 200 school girls is a prime example, already shows that state repression of the group is highly reactive instead of preemptive. Nigerian authorities got off to a wrong start when they let the group be and not engage with them from around 2003 until 2009, and then it turned out to have become a major problem.372 Instead of adopting policies to discourage the group, or people joining the group, authorities seem to be busy with ‘putting out fires’ and solving crises the entire time, constantly being one step behind Boko Haram. Here, a history of the state repression versus Boko Haram is given. Chapter V on the rise and evolution of Boko Haram provided some background for this. A key point in the conflict with Boko Haram is the extrajudicial killing of Mohammed Yusuf and several of the group’s members in 2009.373 The group’s headquarters were stormed by security forces in response to a clash that had taken place between the group and the police. Several of Boko Haram’s members managed to get away and went on a murder spree in Maiduguri.374 As the USIP report reads: “The police eventually regained control of Maiduguri, and then embarked on a bloody purge of the group’s members and anyone they suspected of being a Boko Haram supporter or sympathizer. Dozens of people were rounded up and executed without trial, including Yusuf’s father-in-law. Mohammed Yusuf was arrested by the army and handed over to the police, who killed him within hours. Police officials denied that he had been executed, saying he had been shot while trying to escape. Videos clearly showing the execution of young boys and other alleged Boko Haram members by the police, including Buji Foi, a former commissioner for religious affairs in the state government, have been posted on YouTube.”375 The above quote is a clear illustration not only of the reactiveness of state policy vis-à-vis Boko Haram, but especially of its indiscriminatory nature. As was mentioned in chapter V, possessions of those members that fled were confiscated, and also those of people (loosely) affiliated with the group. These

369 See for example: ‘Nigeria ‘ready for dialogue’ with Boko Haram’, AlJazeera, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2014/05/nigeria-ready-dialogue-with-boko-haram- 2014513172136558378.html, 13 May 2014. 370 Walker (2012), 11-12. 371 Walker (2012), 8. 372 Idem, 3-4. 373 Walker (2012), 4. 374 Ibid. 375 Ibid.

68 actions created a motive of vengeance amongst the part of the group that managed to flee, as well as legitimacy and new recruits for the group — because of the indiscriminatory nature of government actions. While they were partly selective, in that they did aim for Boko Haram’s members, people surrounding the group were also targeted, and the extrajudicial killings implicate that it was not properly verified whether targeted people were actually members of Boko Haram. With these repressive actions by Nigerian authorities, the remaining members of Boko Haram were effectively driven right into the hands of other radical Islamic groups, who were experienced with the use of violence.376 When Boko Haram returned in mid-2010, they were better equipped, sporting automatic weapons and quickly thereafter demonstrating they were able to create IED’s, most notably with the 2010 Christmas Eve bombings of Christian churches in northern Nigeria.377 This was the period in which Boko Haram’s insurgency began — after the remaining members had been driven away and forced to live in exile by Nigerian security forces. In the first months there were some attacks on civilians, such as the Christmas Eve bombings, but most attacks were on Nigeria’s security forces. The attacks were not large in number and also in scope, and many were targeted killings of individual security officials.378 This helps to create an atmosphere of violent conflict between the group and the security forces, leading to retaliatory actions and therefore reactive and often brutal state repression. Once engaged in a battle like this, it may be difficult to take a step back and change policy. As the timeline of Boko Haram attacks demonstrates, the next couple of years show a pattern of Boko Haram attacks on the military or the police, in which soldiers and policemen are often killed, after which sometimes follows a short-lived offensive against Boko Haram again, in which some of their members are arrested and/or killed. Unfortunately this conflict between Boko Haram and government forces has led to a lot of casualties. On 31 December 2011, president Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency for parts of the states of Plateau, Niger, Yobe, and Borno, which meant that there were even less restrictions on JTF actions.379 As a 2012 report by Human Rights Watch states: “In the name of ending the group’s threat to citizens, security forces comprising military, police, and intelligence personnel, known as the Joint Military Task Force (JTF), have killed hundreds of Boko Haram suspects and random members of communities where attacks have occurred. According to witnesses, the JTF has engaged in excessive use of force, physical abuse, secret

376 Idem, 4-5. 377 ‘Radical Islamist sect says it carried out Nigeria church attacks’, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/28/islamist-sect-responsibility-nigeria-attacks, 28 December 2010. 378 See the appendix: timeline of Boko Haram attacks. 379 Nick Squires, ‘Nigeria’s president declares state of emergency after Christmas attacks’, The Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/nigeria/8987229/Nigerias-president-declares- state-of-emergency-after-Christmas-attacks.html, 1 January 2012.

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detentions, extortion, burning of houses, stealing money during raids, and extrajudicial killings of suspects.”380 The state of emergency clearly led to an increased lawlessness, in which Nigerian authorities “kept Boko Haram suspects in detention often incommunicado without charge or trial for months or even years and [have] failed to register arrests or inform relatives about the whereabouts of detainees. In the northern cities of Maiduguri and Kano, for example, Human Rights Watch found that the authorities no longer even bring formal charges against Boko Haram suspects. The fate of many of these individuals after their arrest remains unclear.”381 These harsh measures also did not help to quell the Boko Haram issue. In fact, Boko Haram “carried out more attacks and killed more people during this six-month period than in all of 2010 and 2011 combined”, Human Rights Watch says.382 According to the report at least 85 people were killed from Boko Haram’s return in July 2010 until December of that year, 550 people were killed by the group’s attacks in 2011, and in January until September of 2012 at least 815 people died because of Boko Haram attacks.383 Looking at the timeline in the appendix, there are 64 attacks in 2010 and 2011, while there are around 100 in the first six months of 2012. Concerning the number of deaths from Boko Haram attacks in 2010 and 2011 the overview in the appendix counts 550 deaths, while during the state of emergency in 2012 there are over 700. Of course, this is not to say that Boko Haram became more active and more deadly because of the state of emergency, but it does show that it does not seem to have the desired effect. On 18 July 2012 the state of emergency is lifted.384 However, fierce battles between Boko Haram and the army continue. They also keep causing civilian casualties, such as dozens of children and elderly people that had died in their burning houses in Baga; these fires were reportedly lit by soldiers.385 According to Human Rights Watch, there were over 2,000 houses destroyed in this area.386 Interestingly, after the state of emergency is lifter, there are actually less Boko Haram attacks. There are also actually more clashes between security forces and the group, and more of the group’s members are killed and arrested, especially in September 2012.387 This complicates measuring the influence of the state of

380 ‘Spiraling Violence. Boko Haram Attacks and Security Forces Abuses in Nigeria’, Human Rights Watch, October 2012, 9. Via: http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/nigeria1012webwcover.pdf. 381 Idem, 9-10. 382 Idem, 9. 383 Idem, 40. 384 Muhammad Bello, ‘Nigeria: Jonathan Lifts State of Emergency in Borno, Others’, THISDAY, http://allafrica.com/stories/201207190080.html, 18 July 2012. 385 ‘185 killed in Borno town, Baga, as soldiers, Boko Haram fight’, Premium Times, http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/130680-185-killed-in-borno-town-baga-as-soldiers-boko-haram-fight.html, 22 April 2013. 386 ‘Nigeria: Massive Destruction, Deaths From Military Raid’, Human Rights Watch, http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/05/01/nigeria-massive-destruction-deaths-military-raid, 1 May 2013. 387 ‘Timeline of Boko Haram and Related Violence in Nigeria’, IRIN.

70 emergency, but also shows that perhaps whether there is a state of emergency or not does not make a lot of difference. Then, on 14 May 2013, president Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency again, in the three northeastern states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa.388 What this meant was that there was a military crackdown on these regions, and the security forces again faced fewer limitations — while they already did not have many before, in practice, as the above has shown. This yielded some success, at first, but a success that can hardly be described as such. For what the overview of attacks by Boko Haram shows, is that there were almost no attacks in the second half of May and the first half of June. When the attacks did start again, it looks as if the state of emergency policy had an interesting effect: in June, there were 7 attacks, and all of them caused civilian casualties.389 This indicates that perhaps the new policy did mean that Boko Haram needed to reorganize, and could not target security forces as well as before, but this only meant that the group changed to softer targets. Thus, the nature of state repression in this period seemed to lead to a greater number of civilian casualties. This links to Hafez’ theory on massacres of civilians, in which “state repression creates a political environment of bifurcation and brutality”.390 The brutality becomes clear from the previous. Bifurcation is something that has also been mentioned before in relation to Boko Haram: while it started as a clear group, residing in Maiduguri, now it consists of many splinter cells, some of which seem to operate quite independently.391 It makes sense that harsh state repression could create this sort of situation, because it becomes increasingly difficult and dangerous for different members and cells to communicate with each other. Therefore, state repression that does not effectively tackle the group, but is threatening enough to it, leads to a situation of bifurcation, which means that there is less coordination, which makes the conflict much more volatile. In the timeline of Boko Haram attacks, it is clear that there are cells active in different areas of the country, and that they even have different modi operandi in the same time period. For example, February and March show action in Borno and Kano mostly — in Borno, in February, there are two incidents involving (attempted) kidnapping of foreigners, and three attacks on the military, using explosives. In the first half of March in Kano, there are two incidents in which people are attacked by gunmen, and the targets are a judicial official and teachers at a primary school.392 Seemingly, around August Boko Haram started adjusting to the state of emergency, since they start attacking security forces goals again, with a MOPOL and JTF base being targeted. The months

388 Greg Botelho, ‘Nigerian president declares emergency in 3 states during ‘rebellion’’, CNN, http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/14/world/africa/nigeria-violence/, 14 May 2013. 389 See the appendix: timeline of Boko Haram attacks. 390 Hafez (2004), 38. 391 ‘Curbing Violence in Nigeria (II): The Boko Haram Insurgency’, International Crisis Group. 392 See the appendix: timeline of Boko Haram attacks.

71 thereafter show a large number of attacks by the group with mixed targets such as random civilians, Christians, civilian-JTF, police, military, Muslim clerics critical of Boko Haram, and growing numbers of school children. The conflict spiralled out of control even more in 2014, when over 1,500 people were killed in the first three months alone.393 Of these deaths, around half were caused by Boko Haram and the other half by government forces.394 State repression of Boko Haram here means that the state actively adds to the death toll and severely deteriorates the situation in the area: not only does the reactive and indiscriminate state repression not help to temper the violence, it actually does the exact opposite. This is the same situation as during the 2012 state of emergency. The high number of deaths caused by Nigeria’s security forces also does not comprise proven Boko Haram members only, which makes sense seeing the indiscriminatory nature of their actions, and the fact that people are often locked up for long periods of time without process, or are even executed without process. The 2012 Human Rights Watch report showed that this was already a problem then, and more recent reports have shown that it has only worsened since the most recent state of emergency has been in power. For example, in October 2013 Amnesty International issued a statement that in the first six months of that year, around 950 people, most of whom thought to have been held because they were suspected to have links with or be a member of Boko Haram, had died in police custody.395 This shows how large the scope of the harsh state repression is. The 2014 Amnesty International report also shows a pattern of Boko Haram attacks and military reprisals, both of which amount to civilian casualties.396 To further complicate things, “[t]he military accuses [Boko Haram] of wearing army uniform during civilian attacks”.397 This could of course be an excuse, but the claim has credibility seeing the fact that eyewitnesses of the kidnapping in Chibok said the attackers were posing as soldiers.398 So at this point there is an all-out violent conflict going on between security forces and Boko Haram, of which many civilians are victims. State repression has been reactive and on this scale it came late in the game, when, according to Hafez’ and Wictorowicz’ theory, chances are high that it will do more bad than good. It is also, as illustrated clearly by the reports brought out by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, brutal and not quite selective. The number of attacks by Boko Haram has not

393 ‘Nigeria: more than 1,500 killed in armed conflict in north-eastern Nigeria in early 2014’, Amnesty International. 394 Ibid. 395 ‘Nigeria: Death of hundreds of Boko Haram suspects in custody requires investigation’, Amnesty International, http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/nigeria-deaths-hundreds-boko-haram-suspects-custody-requires-investigation- 2013-10-15, 15 October 2013. 396 ‘Nigeria: more than 1,500 killed in armed conflict in north-eastern Nigeria in early 2014’, Amnesty International, 7-8. 397 ‘Updated timeline of Boko Haram attacks and related violence’, IRIN. 398 Henry Austin, ‘Nigerian Schoolgirl Abductors Pretended to be Soldiers’, NBC News, http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-nigeria-schoolgirls/nigerian-schoolgirl-abductors-pretended-be- soldiers-n81966, 16 April 2014.

72 lessened, and the death toll caused by them, and by government forces, has actually risen. Thus, it seems that state repression has indeed led to an environment of brutality.

Concluding, there is a strong case that the nature of state repression by Nigerian authorities vis-à-vis Boko Haram is highly reactive and indiscriminate, and that this is linked to the group’s turn to more violent measures and a general spiralling out of control of the conflict. Whether the lack of access to institutionalized politics is linked to this as well, is more difficult to establish. What the timeline of Boko Haram attacks in the appendix shows is that Nigerian authorities have had some level of success in their dealings with Boko Haram. In 2010 and especially 2011 their attacks were more dispersed throughout the country, while in 2013 attacks almost exclusively took place in the northeastern states. However, as the above has shown, while the conflict now appears to be contained spatially, the number of attacks and deaths has actually increased and a more brutal and volatile situation has been created. As figures 3 and 4 show, while there have been periods in which the number of attacks carried out or the number of deaths it caused were a lot higher or lower than in the previous period, there is a general trend of the number of attacks going up, as well as the number of deaths. Looking into it in a little more detail, in the last quarter of 2011 there was a steep rise of the number of attacks by the group — and in resulting deaths. This triggered the instalment of a state of emergency, after which, however, the number of attacks rose more and remained high for another half year. In the first quarter of 2012 the number of deaths caused by Boko Haram attacks was the highest it had been, and would remain the highest number until the final quarter of 2013, figure 4 shows. Of course this does not mean that the number of attacks rose because of the state of emergency, but it indicates that it did not help much. In the third quarter of 2012 the number of attacks was much lower than in the second quarter. However, it did not go back to levels as low as prior to the outburst of attacks. The number of attacks has been relatively steady ever since. Looking at the number of deaths, it becomes clear that this has been on the rise recently, except for a drop in the last quarter of 2013. The second state of emergency, as was imposed from May 2013, does not appear to have much effect if one looks at figures 3 and 4. Figure 4 confirms what was already discussed in this chapter: how the current crackdown tactics of state repression only lead to an environment of brutality and actually results in more deaths.

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VIII. A relative deprivation perspective

In this section the following hypothesis is tested: H2: The increase of violence by Boko Haram can be explained by relative deprivation (economic factors) Relative deprivation is about perceived inequality. Since unfortunately, as was stated in the methodology section, data on this were not available, the starting point is actual inequality. While perceived inequality can exist when the degree of actual inequality is low, and can be absent when there is a high degree of actual inequality, the assumption here is that the presence of actual inequality makes it more likely for there to be perceived inequality. In Nigeria, there is large income inequality between the northern and southern parts of the country.399 There is also large income inequality in general.400 The north is mostly home to different ethnic groups and tribes than is the south, so these inequalities also exist along ethnic lines. The north is mostly Muslim, whereas the south is mostly Christian, so the inequalities also exist along religious lines. Therefore, the relative deprivation outlook is also about ethno-religious grievances and strife. Furthermore, there is the issue of widespread corruption in Nigeria which adds to the relative deprivation of large segments of society. Corruption and a lack of political representation for large segments of society mean that the majority of the population is relatively deprived vis-à-vis the elite. The current situation in Nigeria is in part an effect of its past as a colonial state, so postcolonialism is also part of the explanation. Clearly, RD, which may or may not increase the likelihood of a group like Boko Haram to arise, is caused by a lot of different factors itself. Some of these factors mainly concern feelings of relative deprivation of Nigerians versus the world, others of internal issues of relative deprivation of some (groups of) Nigerians versus others. Below, the degree of inequality in Nigeria is measured — both in general, so between the elite and the majority of the population, and spatially. To measure the degree of inequality in Nigeria, first, income equality is measured. Then for social equality unemployment rates literacy rates and access to proper health care are measured.

Income equality

Before looking at the inequality within Nigeria in more detail, a short insight into global inequality is given, because some scholars assert that this matters for grievances felt by Muslims against the West.401 One could argue that globalization and technological advancements have changed who people compare

399 United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. 400 GINI index, World Bank. 401 James A. Piazza (2006), 159.

75 themselves to in assessing their relative wealth. While it makes sense to still think of inequality within a state, because the entity of the state still has considerable influence, people do not merely have compatriots to look to for comparison anymore, they can also look at the income of people on the other side of the world.402 Taking this into account, the question is what is more relevant: the income difference between different states as a whole (using GDP for example), for states but taking the size of the population into account (GDP per capita) or between individuals worldwide? Since the latter is quite difficult to establish, and the assumption here is that people still think in terms of nation-states a lot, that one is not discussed. The first one is also not relevant here, since Nigeria has a large population and would therefore score relatively high on GDP, while that income has to be divided among many people. GDP per capita is the most relevant measure here. According to the IMF, Nigeria is in 143th place of 187 in 2013.403 According to the World Bank, in 2013, it is on the 121th place of 182.404 According to the IMF, Nigeria scores 2.831, while the richest ten states measured by GDP per capita score 15 to 30 times higher.405 The World Bank reaches a GDP per capita of 5.535 for 2012, with the richest 10 states measured by GDP per capita scoring 10 to 25 times higher.406 Both of these show that there is large income inequality globally. Turning to look at Nigeria in more detail and assess the income inequality within the country, a first look shows that Nigeria scores a 9.2 out of 10 possible points for uneven economic development in the Failed States Index of 2013.407 To measure income equality in more detail a look is taken at the distribution of income in Nigeria by using data from the World Bank and Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics. While Nigeria’s growth rate has been positive from 1988, with 4.7% growth in 1986/1992 (look up), 6.6% in 2002/2004 (look up) and 6.24% in 2004/2006, the percentage of the population living in poverty has not declined as fast as this growth percentage combined with attention towards poverty reduction would suggest.408 It actually rose from 42.7 percent in 1992 to 65.6 percent in 1996. By 2010, 46% of the population lived below the poverty line.409

402 Branko Milanovic (2012) Global Income Inequality by the Numbers: in History and Now, The World Bank Development Research Group, Poverty and Inequality Team, 2. 403 ‘5. Report for Selected Countries and Subjects’, International Monetary Fund, via http://tinyurl.com/l8axjjl, 2013. 404 ‘GDP per capita, PPP’, World Bank, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?order=wbapi_data_value_2012+wbapi_data_value+wbap i_data_value-last&sort=desc, last accessed 28 May 2014. 405 ‘5. Report for Selected Countries and Subjects’, International Monetary Fund. 406 ‘GDP per capita, PPP’, World Bank. 407 ‘The Failed States Index 2013’, The Fund for Peace, http://ffp.statesindex.org/rankings-2013-sortable, last accessed 27 May 2014. 408 Ben E. Aigbokhan (2008) Growth, Inequality and Poverty in Nigeria, prepared for United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), 1. Via: http://www.uneca.org/sites/default/files/publications/growthinequalitypoverty.pdf. 409 GINI index, World Bank.

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The GINI coefficient of Nigeria is relatively high, which shows that there is great income inequality in the country. The coefficient can range from 0 to 100 in which 0 represents perfect income equality, meaning every 10% of the population receives 10% of the total income, while a score of 100 indicates perfect inequality, which would mean that one person would have 100% of the total income. The GINI coefficient in Nigeria was 38.7 in 1986, had grown to 45 by 1992 and 46.5 by 1996. By 2004 it had decreased somewhat and was 42.9, but in 2010, the most recent year of which the GINI coefficient is available for Nigeria, it was 48.8.410 This shows as a general trend that income inequality in Nigeria has grown during the last decades. The growth rate that Nigeria has seen in that period combined with a growing inequality and a non-declining percentage of the population living below the poverty line indicates that relative deprivation has grown during that time. Index Mundi provides added statistics on the distribution of income in Nigeria. Figure 5 presents the graph and the accompanying table with values on the percentage of the total income of Nigeria that is held by the richest 10% of the population. As is shown, the richest 10% of Nigeria’s population receives nearly 40% of the total income in 2010. It also shows how the income inequality in Nigeria has grown since 1986.

Year Value 1986 28.2 1992 31.5 1996 37.1 2004 32.4 2010 38.2

Figure 5. Source: Index Mundi Income share held by the highest 10%.

The poorest 10% of the country, on the contrary, receives a mere 1.75% of the total income in Nigeria. These statistics also show that the income gap in Nigeria has widened, with the poorest 10% still having 2.47% of the total income in 1986.

410 World Bank.

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Year Value 1986 2.4 1992 1.4 1996 1.9 2004 2.0 2010 1.8

Figure 6. Source: Index Mundi Income share held by the lowest 10%.

These numbers are not all that odd, but Nigeria’s GINI coefficient is a little high. In comparison, the United States, which is known to be relatively unequal concerning income, scores 40.81, so lower income inequality than Nigeria.411 Nigeria’s neighbouring countries also score lower (and thus better): Niger has 34.55, Cameron 38.91, Chad 39.78.412 However, as was shown above, the combination of recent economic growth in Nigeria combined with a non-declining percentage of people living in poverty and an increasing income inequality show that the situation in Nigeria has deteriorated in the last couple of decades when it comes to income equality. The fact that 46% of the people in Nigeria live below the poverty line as of 2010 also indicates an issue with absolute deprivation. As the above has shown, there also is an unequal distribution of income, so relative deprivation, but the inequality registered there does not differ much from the income inequality in many other countries that did not face mass mobilization or insurgency. There is an argument to be made for the idea that a combination of absolute and relative deprivation matters: if people are relatively deprived as opposed to others, but they still have a decent quality of life in which they can provide for themselves and their family, they may be less likely to mobilize. Whereas if people are relatively deprived and have great difficulty to get access to basic needs, they may have more incentive to mobilize, and feel more aggrieved — meaning both more rational or calculating and more emotional reasons for mobilization. This links to looking at actual inequality as a measure for perceived inequality: the assumption is that in the case that there is absolute deprivation combined with relative deprivation, chances for the presence of perceived inequality are higher.

411 GINI index, Index Mundi. 412 Ibid.

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While Boko Haram and its supporters are against the government in general — not distinguishing so much which ethnicity, tribe, or religion members of the government belong to, meaning that general income inequality is important — the differences between the mainly Muslim north and the mainly Christian south are also worth viewing. This is the case because Boko Haram may feel that many Muslim politicians and statesmen are bad as well, they still appear to feel more hatred against people from other backgrounds, as their dislike for president Goodluck Jonathan illustrates.413 More importantly, support among parts of the population in Boko Haram heartland in northeast Nigeria is perhaps bigger because of grievances following from relative deprivation compared to the south. Figures 7 and 8 show maps of the main ethno-linguistic groups in Nigeria per region and of the poverty per region.

Figure 7. Source: Perry-Castañeda Library, University of Texas.

413 See for example: ‘VIDEO: Boko Haram leader “Imam Abubakar Shekau” Message to President Jonathan’, SaharaReporters, http://saharareporters.com/video/video-boko-haram-leader-imam-abubakar-shekau-message- president-jonathan, 12 January 2012.

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Figure 8. Source: National Bureau of Statistics.

This shows that generally the north and the northeast are poorer than the south — with the exception of the far north-eastern Borno state, which is Boko Haram’s heartland. Of course, the rate of absolute poverty is still high, but relatively it is not doing that bad. Also, within Borno, income inequality does not seem as high as in other regions of the country: according to Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics, only 3.9% of Borno’s population is considered as ‘very poor’, which means it has one of the lowest scores in the country. Yobe and Adamawa states (the two other north-eastern states that have been under a state of emergency since May 2013) score considerably lower, with respectively 11 and 10.2% of the population being ‘very poor’.414 The percentage of people seen as ‘poor’ in Borno state is 41.7% which is quite average nationwide, while Yobe scores a bit less with 35.4% and Adamawa has a bit more with 46.6%.415 What stands out is the high percentage of people considered to have a moderate income in Borno: 51.3%.416 With this, it has twice the percentage of people with a moderate income as many of the south-eastern states.417 Yobe also scores high here, with 49.7%, and Adamawa considerably lower, with 39.2%.418 For people considered to be fairly rich, all three states score below 3.5%, while many states

414 ‘Nigeria Statistical Data Portal’, National Bureau of Statistics, http://nigeria.prognoz.com/. 415 Ibid. 416 Ibid. 417 Ibid. 418 Ibid.

80 score double this percentage.419 On the final category, ‘rich’, all three states score below 0.7%.420 Taking the ‘very poor’ and ‘poor’ categories together, the picture is that Borno has 45.6% poor people, Yobe has 46.4% poor people and Adamawa has 56.8% poor people. What these numbers show, at the least, is that with half of the population having below moderate incomes, there are high numbers of people living in poverty, and with that there are high numbers of potential recruits for Boko Haram, if one considers the role of grievances in this. Boko Haram also recruits in the far north of Cameroon, the south of Niger and the southwest of Chad.421 These states in general are also quite poor — Cameroon, Niger, and Chad all have lower GDP’s per capita than Nigeria.422 Since the regions in which Boko Haram recruit are traditional Islamic, and Boko Haram goes there with preachers, perhaps there is some truth in the idea that Muslims feeling deprived vis-à-vis the West. However, that is not looked into here. As was pointed out earlier in this chapter, Cameroon’s, Niger’s and Chad’s GINI coefficients are a little lower, pointing to a lower degree of inequality within the country. However, Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world, meaning that hardly anyone has got anything.423 And the isolated north of Cameroon is quite deprived on various terrains, which fuels radicalization in the area and makes it a good recruitment ground for Boko Haram.424

Social equality

Of course, there are other kinds of inequality that can make people feel relatively deprived than income inequality. The chances people have in live and the standard of living they have, are very important as well. Below, to assess inequality in Nigeria further, unemployment rates, health care, and literacy rates are taken into account.

Unemployment rates

Data on unemployment rates are available on state level since 1999, up until 2011. For this study, it is particularly interesting to look at these rates from 2002, when Boko Haram was established as a group. The table below shows the unemployment rates per state per year. There are some outliers, years in which unemployment rates rose suddenly rose or declined dramatically for a certain state. The reasons for these are not known, but the bigger trends over time and space do show from the table, and this is most important. To give a better insight into the spatial differences in unemployment rates, the states are

419 Ibid. 420 Ibid. 421 This is discussed in more detail in chapter IX under human resources. 422 IMF, World Bank. 423 ‘Bad harvests in south Niger’, GRID-Arendal, http://www.grida.no/graphicslib/detail/bad-harvests-in-south- niger_af0c, last accessed 28 May 2014. 424 Misha Hussain, ‘Isolation fuels radicalization in arid north Cameroon’, Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/29/us-cameroon-islamists-idUSBRE9AS09020131129, 29 November 2013.

81 ordered by region. Also, all percentages that are the same as or higher than the average of that year, have been highlighted — these are the states that are relatively more deprived than others.

Unemployment Rates by states in Nigeria 2002- 2011425 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Nigeria 12.6 14.8 13.4 11.9 13.7 14.6 19.7 19.7 21.5 23.9 FCT Abuja 14.4 5.3 5.9 6.5 16.4 16.4 21.5 21.5 23.5 21.1

North West: Jigawa 6.1 20.5 19.8 19.1 21.6 17.4 26.5 26.5 28.5 35.9 Kaduna 8.4 19.6 15.9 12.1 14.1 5.9 11.6 11.6 12.6 30.3 Kano 12.8 25.9 22.5 19.1 19.4 12.7 27.6 27.6 29.6 21.3 Katsina 10.4 20.3 22.1 23.8 19.3 5.8 37.3 37.3 39.3 28.1 Kebbi 12.3 19.8 19.9 19.9 15.2 11.8 12.0 12.0 13.0 25.3 4.1 4.9 4.5 4.1 6.4 12.1 22.4 22.4 24.4 17.9 Zamfara 46.4 71.5 61.3 51.1 50.8 12.8 13.3 13.3 14.3 42.6

North Central: Benue 8.2 4.8 11.7 18.6 10.8 67.4 8.5 8.5 9.5 14.2 Kogi 19.9 14.9 11.8 8.7 12.5 16.5 19.0 19.0 21.0 14.4 Kwara 8.8 5.4 4.2 2.9 7.5 16.4 11.0 11.0 12.0 7.1 Nasarawa 1.6 5.1 6.9 8.7 8.1 7.6 10.1 10.1 11.1 36.5 Niger 6.3 6.7 3.5 0.2 3.6 17.0 11.9 11.9 12.9 39.4 Plateau 11.8 0.4 1.6 2.8 2.9 8.7 7.1 7.1 8.1 25.3

North East: Adamawa 12.9 11.9 16.7 21.4 17.9 11.9 29.4 29.4 31.4 18.4 Bauchi 10.4 20.5 25.1 29.7 23.9 7.3 37.2 37.2 39.2 41.4 Borno 6.4 0.8 3.6 6.3 5.8 7.8 27.7 27.7 29.7 29.1 Gombe 13.4 7.6 15.2 22.8 15.6 10.5 32.1 32.1 34.1 38.7 Taraba 16.8 23.8 13.6 3.4 14.0 5.9 26.8 26.8 28.8 12.7 Yobe 15.0 12.1 10.7 8.0 13.6 19.9 27.3 27.3 29.3 35.6

South West: Ekiti 17.5 8.2 7.9 7.5 8.7 15.6 20.6 20.6 22.6 12.1 8.0 25.6 16.1 6.5 15.5 10.2 19.5 19.5 20.5 8.3 Ogun 9.2 1.3 1.9 2.5 2.3 3.9 8.5 8.5 9.5 22.9 Ondo 16.8 7.3 6.8 6.2 6.7 5.8 14.9 14.9 16.9 12.5 Osun 1.0 0.4 1.2 1.9 2.7 6.3 12.6 12.6 13.6 3.0 Oyo 7.0 0.8 3.1 5.3 4.3 6.5 14.9 14.9 15.9 8.9

South South: Akwa Ibom 12.3 14.4 14.4 14.4 15.3 13.5 34.1 34.1 36.1 18.4 Bayelsa 3.5 7.1 14.0 20.9 16.0 6.9 38.4 38.4 40.4 23.9 C/River 7.9 12.0 11.5 11.1 16.9 11.8 14.3 14.3 15.3 18.2 Delta 14.9 17.1 10.8 4.5 13.8 18.9 18.4 18.4 20.8 27.2 Edo 4.8 3.1 6.5 9.9 8.6 5.1 12.2 12.2 13.2 35.2

425 ‘Nigeria Statistical Data Portal’, National Bureau of Statistics.

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Rivers 6.6 15.3 11.2 7.0 25.0 4.7 27.9 27.9 29.9 25.5

South East: Abia 14.8 11.4 9.7 7.9 13.5 10.9 14.5 14.5 15.5 11.2 Anambra 6.6 9.1 9.5 9.8 10.8 11.1 16.8 16.8 17.8 12.2 Ebonyi 2.8 16.7 11.8 7.0 10.9 11.5 12.0 12.0 13.0 23.1 15.2 16.5 21.6 27.4 20.0 11.5 14.9 14.9 15.9 25.2 Imo 19.9 22.1 19.3 16.5 21.5 7.6 20.8 20.8 22.8 35.9

What stands out, is that the North West, North East, and South South regions have generally seen higher unemployment rates than the country average from 2002 until 2011. What is also interesting, is that most states seem to have suffered from the economic crisis starting in 2008, and unemployment rates have risen dramatically throughout the country. But, recently they have actually declined or gone back to 2002 levels in most south-western states, while in many other states, most notably throughout almost the entire north, and in South South, they remain very high. This means that in absolute figures, unemployment rates have increased strongly in the last couple of years, and differences in unemployment rates throughout the country have also risen, leading to a larger relative deprivation when looking at unemployment. As said, next to the South South region, the north is struggling with unemployment the most. Comparing the northern regions, North Central is doing better relative to theNorth West and North East regions. The high unemployment rates in north-eastern Nigeria are particularly interesting, since this is Boko Haram heartland — but the entire north is their working ground, of course. Looking at unemployment, it seems that many northerners are relatively deprived, which according to relative deprivation theorists could contribute to an insurgency such as is being led by Boko Haram.

Health care

Access to and good quality of health care are important measurements for social equality too. Adequate health care is an important precondition for having a certain quality of life. Figure 9 shows the number of health care facilities per state. Most health care facilities can be found in the north central region — which was also the region with the lowest unemployment rates of the north. Numbers of health care facilities are similar for the rest of the north (North West and North East) and the southern regions, so these numbers do not directly point to a huge underrepresentation of health care in the northern region as opposed to the south. However, as the map also shows, many of the northern states are much bigger than the southern ones. This includes the three north-eastern states of Yobe, Borno and Adamawa, which, according to their size, have relatively little public health care facilities.

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Figure 9. Source: National Bureau of Statistic Health care facilities, Total, Public, Nigeria, 2004. An illustration of the fact that medical care is in fact often far away in the north-eastern states is provided by the map in Figure 10, which shows the percentage of people that did not have post-natal care because it was not available. The states of Gombe, Borno, and Yobe represent the top three of Nigeria, with respectively 47.7, 32.7 and 22% of the people saying they did not have post-natal care for his reason.

Figure 10. Source: National Bureau of Statistics. Percentage Distribution of Reasons Given for not Using Post-natal Services, No health care available, Nigeria, 2009.

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But looking at the percentage of people that responded that they did not have post-natal care because health care was too far away, the picture becomes somewhat less clear (see figure 11). However, when adding the numbers of ‘no health care available’ and ‘too far away’, the north-eastern region of Nigeria is relatively deprived of good post-natal care as opposed to most other regions. The image is not always this clear, of course: for example, concerning post-natal care being too far away, Abuja Capital Territory and the southern state of Ebonyi receive the lowest scores by far. Of course there are exceptions, in two ways. Sometimes, most of a region scores bad or good at something, and one state stands out. And this is sometimes the case for all kinds of variables, and sometimes just for this one, and the big picture does not alter that much.

Figure 11. Source: National Bureau of Statistics. Percentage Distribution of Reasons Given for not Using Post-natal Services, Health care too far, Nigeria, 2009.

The above already shows the trouble with post-natal care in northeast Nigeria. This area of the country is actually notorious for the state of its maternal and child health.426 Perhaps, this is one of the most noticeable differences between the northern and southern regions of Nigeria — as is illustrated by figure 12. It shows the percentage of adequately fed infants per state as of 2007. This shows that not just the northeast, but the entire far north of Nigeria, which is about the part of the country which is mostly

426 ‘Maternal and child health’, UNICEF, http://www.unicef.org/nigeria/children_1926.html, last accessed 20 June 2014.

85 comprised of Muslims, and of Hausa and Fulani and Kanuri ethnic groups, is behind on the rest of the country with less than 10% of infants being fed properly.

Figure 12. Source: National Bureau of Statistics. Adequately fed infants, 0-11 months, percent, Nigeria, 2007.

Education

The final measurements that are used to establish (in)equality throughout Nigeria are the access to education and the literacy rate. First, the map in figure 13 shows the percentage of people that finished primary education per state. It is very clear that the north and especially the north-east are far behind on the southern region on this. In the north-eastern region in which Boko Haram is most active as little as 1.3 to 12.6 percent of people finished their primary education, whereas the figure is at least around 50 percent for most of the southern states. This shows a clear regional gap in level of education, something that the north and particularly the north-east is relatively deprived of.

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Figure 13. Source: Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Primary education completion rate by state, 2007.

Second, literacy rates are very insightful for giving an idea of the degree of education and human development. Looking into the percentage of literate adults shows a clear difference between the northern and southern states again. With the exception of Gombe in the northeast, which has 75.1% literates among adults, all northern states are below 75%, scoring as low as 29.6% in Katsina state, while all southern states have literacy rates above 70%.427 Borno and Yobe states have the second- and third-to-lowest scores nationwide, with 37 and 39.6% literacy.428 Figure 14 shows the literacy rates per state as of 2008.

427 ‘Nigeria Statistical Data Portal’, National Bureau of Statistics. 428 Ibid.

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Figure 14. Source: National Bureau of Statistics. Percentage of adult literacy in any language, total, Nigeria, 2008. As corresponds to the map on literacy rates, access to education in northern Nigeria is far below n national averages — which are already low, with 42% of children of primary school age being out of school.429 One of the reasons for the lower literacy rates and lower academic achievement in the northern states is that many children that go to school attend religious schools “where the focus is on learning the Quran and Islamic values with no training in basic reading and math skills.”430

In the above it has been established that there is relative deprivation of a large segment of Nigeria’s population, and that even though it differs per measure you take, the majority of this population lives in the northern part of the country, which is mostly comprised of Hausa and Fulani tribes and where the main religion is Islam. Next, it needs to be assessed whether there is a correlation between this and the increase in radical Islamist violence in Nigeria. There are signs that relative deprivation does lead to conflict in Nigeria, also in the region where Boko Haram originated. Looking at communal violence, a lot of violence has broken out because of fights over access to good grazing lands to provide for a livelihood. As Human Rights Watch states, “the main

429 ‘Increasing Access to Education in Northern Nigeria’, USAID, http://blog.usaid.gov/2013/04/increasing-access-to- education-in-northern-nigeria/comment-page-1/, 16 April 2013. 430 Ibid.

88 causes of the violence appear to include struggles around livelihood and identity, particularly between sedentary farmers and nomadic pastoralists over access to grazing lands”.431 With the issues of identity and a struggle for a livelihood being high on the agenda, it becomes more likely that the relative deprivation of the far north and particularly the north-east of Nigeria, regions that comprise mostly of the Hausa and Fulani in the first case, and Kanuri in the second, has something to do with the rise of Boko Haram. This role of a combination of identity and grievances is also mentioned by Adesoji: “Islamic fundamentalism is mostly restricted to northern Nigeria. Although this could be explained in terms of the dominance of Islam and its adherents in the region, it could imply the prevalence of factors and circumstances that made the region prone to extremism. Among such factors and circumstances are poverty and illiteracy, the existence and seeming proliferation of radical Islamic groups, and recurrent violent religious crises”.432 High unemployment rates and low literacy rates affect Boko Haram directly. First, because youths are more likely to join a group like Boko Haram when there is a lack of other options to provide an income — because of their low level of education and/or because of a lack of jobs. Second, because low levels of education and low literacy mean people have less access to information, which makes them an easier target to propaganda or indoctrination by Boko Haram. However, while these factors have an effect, relative deprivation alone cannot account for why Boko Haram turned violent. It cannot explain why similar events did not happen in other states where there is substantial relative deprivation. Also, even if Boko Haram members or people that are supportive of them would have narratives of grievance and of relative deprivation to explain their actions, one cannot be sure that these are the actual motives and that these are not merely useful frames. These points lead to the conclusion that, while it is difficult to establish the ‘direct’ influence of relative deprivation on the rise of Boko Haram, the existing inequality does make matters easier for the group. It does so because it makes gaining access to certain resources easier — there are narratives of grievance ready for the taking, which can be used to create for instance human and moral resources. Mobilizing people is of course easier when people have good reason to mobilize, and looking at the inequality concerning income, employment, health care, and education in Nigeria, there is good cause. So perhaps one could say that Boko Haram’s resource mobilization skills together with the existence of relative deprivation can explain the rise of the group and the increase of violence to a great extent. These methods for mobilizing resources are under assessment in the next chapter. However some final remarks on relative deprivation are in order first. As was stated in the theoretical framework, RD is

431 ‘Nigeria: Escalating Communal Violence’, Human Rights Watch, http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/04/15/nigeria- escalating-communal-violence, 15 April 2014. 432 Adesoji (2011), 100.

89 essentially about perceived inequality, and whether or not people feel like they receive less than others or less than they expected. As was explained, it was not possible to attain relevant data on people’s own judgement of their well-being. However, there have been scholars that looked into the matter. This chapter is concluded by sharing some of their takes on the matter. Forest feels that the emergence of groups such as Boko Haram can be seen in part as a response to feelings of insecurity to the Muslim community in the north- both about their spiritual as their socio- economic future.433 Elegbe, of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, stated that: “The increasing poverty in Nigeria is accompanied by increasing unemployment. Unemployment is higher in the north than in the south. Mix this situation with radical Islam, which promises a better life for martyrs, and you can understand the growing violence in the north. […] [Also,] the northern states have the highest proportion of uneducated persons. If you link [this] to a high male youth population, you can imagine that some areas are actually a breeding ground for terrorism”.434 Olojo, from the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, states that: “One significant factor that has stimulated the drive towards violent extremism, recruitment and support for Boko Haram is economic deprivation. Abject poverty and economic dislocation of livelihoods have drastically reduced the options of many young Nigerians in the northern region. […] Deducing from the structural violence paradigm, individual and group grievances, such as poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, discrimination, and economic marginalisation, can be used as mobilising instruments by sinister groups to find support and recruits for terrorist violence.”435 Finally, as has been mentioned, in Nigeria there is RD along geographical, ethnic, and religious lines. This is linked to a highly interesting point made by Seul: “Religion is not the cause of religious conflict; rather for many […] it frequently supplies the fault line along which intergroup identity and resource competition occurs”.436 Thus, religion is the identity that the people who are relatively deprived have in common, and thus forms the mobilizer in a conflict that could essentially be about relative deprivation. Most scholars seem to agree that it is the combination of the Muslims in the north being deprived as a group, the lack of perspective for this group, and the comfort that radical Islam can bring, that play an important role in the rise of Boko Haram.

433 Forest (2012). 434 Paul Rogers, ‘Nigeria: The generic context of the Boko Haram violence. Monthly Global Security Briefing’, Oxford Research Group, 30 April 2012, 4. 435 Akinola Olojo (2013) ‘Nigeria’s Troubled North: Interrogating the Drivers of Public Support for Boko Haram’, International Centre for Counter-Terrorism. Via: http://www.icct.nl/download/file/ICCT-Olojo-Nigerias-Troubled- North-October-2013.pdf, 6. 436 Jeffrey R. Seul (1999) ‘‘Ours is the Way of God’: Religion, Identity, And Intergroup Conflict’ in Journal of Peace Research, 36:5, 564.

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IX. A resource mobilization perspective

In this chapter, the access to and mobilization options for human, material, moral, social-organizational and cultural resources for Boko Haram are assessed over time. The hypothesis that is tested here is: H3: The increase of violence by Boko Haram can be explained by the group’s increased access to resources (material factors) First, the different categories of resources are discussed. Edwards and McCarthy provide a table of the different means of access that are available for different resource types, and what kind of actions can be thought of for gaining access to certain of these resource types.437 All the methods that apply to Boko Haram to some extent are taken from that table and discussed in more detail. The table is about social movements, since this is a social movement theory approach. While for this study Boko Haram is considered as such, there is of course a difference between for instance a women empowerment movement in the United States and its tactics for gaining resources, and a radical Islamist movement and its tactics for gaining resources. The simple factor of the illegality and secrecy of Boko Haram already precludes many of the means of getting access to resource types. In figure 15 features the ways of attaining resources that Boko Haram does use. They are all assessed and at the end of the chapter the key question whether the group’s access to resources has increased and whether this has an effect on its turn to more violent measures is dealt with.

437Edwards and McCarthy (2004), 132-133.

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Resource type Material Human Moral Social- Cultural organizational

Means of access Aggregation Recruiting Building networks constituents Self - Robbing Founding social Ideas production banks movement Frames Piracy organizations Tactical Smuggling, repertoires Kidnapping History Co-optation/ Networked Allying Gaining access to appropriation recruitment yourself with congregations for a well- solicitation respected Mesomobilization group Patronage Large Providing A widely donations technical respected assistance person or Providing organization staff recognizes a group

Figure 15. Source: Edwards and McCarthy (2004)/author.

Material resources

Patronage: large donations

To understand the issue with Boko Haram, in this study there has been attention for the way the group originated and evolved. The political/social climate in northern Nigeria, which has been that of radical Islamic revivalism from around the 1980s onwards, was discussed. This climate has meant that there have been certain administrators, politicians, scholars and so on that have donated to Boko Haram. In the climate of Islamic revivalism, many donated because of ideological agreement with the group. This was especially the case in the group’s early days, when they wanted to practice hijra and thus retreat from society, and they created a de facto state within a state.438 They were not yet as violent, and were highly religious young men of the Salafist tradition, and their devotion and linearity were things that were appreciated by other Muslims in this tradition.439 What is highly interesting in this regard, next to donations from Nigerians, are the links of the group with Islamists abroad. It is known that some of these groups are quite rich, and one of the best known examples of this is Al Qaeda under Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden actually took an interest in

438 Walker (2012), 3. 439 Idem, 3-4.

92 developing an Islamic state and installing sharia in northern Nigeria. As the International Crisis Group reports: “Between 2000 and 2002 Osama bin Laden issued two audio messages calling on Nigerian Muslims to wage jihad and establish an Islamic state. His interest dated from his 1992-1996 stay in Sudan, where he reportedly met Mohammed Ali, a Nigerian from Maiduguri studying at the Islamic University in Khartoum who became his disciple and trained in ; according to Boko Haram sources, Bin Laden asked him to organise a cell in Nigeria with a 300 million naira budget (approximately 3 million Dollar in 2000). Ali returned home in 2002 and began funding religious activities of Salafi groups that were unaware of the plan. Mohammed Yusuf and his group allegedly were the major beneficiaries.”440 2002 was the year in which Mohammed Yusuf formed Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal- Jihad, nowadays more known as Boko Haram.441 It was also around the time in which many other organizations such as the ‘Nigerian Taliban’, who are seen as organizations that later Boko Haram members stem from, were active.442 There was a climate of Islamic revivalism and especially of the Salafi tradition, and in this climate Islamists from abroad, such as most notably Bin Laden, saw opportunities and funded Nigerian Islamist groups. Of course, receiving, allegedly, the ‘major’ portion of 3 million Dollar, means the group got quite some start-up money. It is also reported that Yusuf took some trips to for hadj twice, during which he made Salafist contacts there who funded his organization.443 They also received the land they lived on for the first couple of years, from Yusuf’s father-in-law.444 So with these kinds of donations in material resources the group was able to establish and maintain itself. Next to donations, Boko Haram also received weaponry such as rocket-propelled grenades through jihadist smuggling networks, which includes groups from Mali and Libya.445 Concerning the remark on donations for tactical political reasons instead of ideological ones, there are persistent rumours that certain Nigerian politicians fund Boko Haram in order to create chaos and delegitimize their political opponents, such as towards former military ruler Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida.446 Logically, it is difficult to establish the scope of this, since it is all shrouded in secrecy. There

440 ‘Curbing Violence in Nigeria (II): The Boko Haram Insurgency’, International Crisis Group, 23. 441 Murtada (2013), 4-5. 442 Phil (2012), 66. 443 Walker (2012), 3. 444 Ibid. 445 ‘For Boko Haram, U.S. tries to handle with care; Nigerian Islamists tied to al Qaeda’, The Washington Times, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/28/for-boko-haram-us-tries-to-handle-with-care- nigeri/?page=all, 28 April 2013. 446 ‘A Confession From A Boko Haram Member Turned Born Again’, Nairaland.

93 have been certain incidents, such as the arrest of a high-profile Boko Haram member at a senator’s house in Maiduguri, that point to linkages between Nigerian politicians and the group.447 The United States’ Counterterrorism Finance (CTF) programme, which was mentioned earlier, is aimed at reducing the conflict by limiting the flow of material resources to Boko Haram. Since material resources, and especially money, are highly fungible, hitting Boko Haram there could have a huge effect. The high fungibility of money means that it can be easily used to gain other resources — such as other material resources including weapons, but also human resources, which is discussed in more detail in the section on these resources.

Self-production: robbing banks and security forces, kidnapping

Of course, a social movement or a group such as Boko Haram is not fully dependent on the goodwill of others. They are able to produce material resources for themselves. One of the ways in which Boko Haram attains its money is through kidnapping. While, as the timeline of their attacks in the appendix shows, they do not have an extensive list of kidnappings assigned to their name and kidnapping is not one of their main activities, it is still an important source of money since one kidnapping can already be very lucrative. It is rumoured, for example, that the kidnapping of a French family in Cameroon in 2013 earned Boko Haram around 3 million Dollar.448 In many of the group’s attacks on police stations, military bases and checkpoints, Boko Haram has stolen weaponry from these security forces.449 Sometimes the main goal of such an attack seems to have been attaining weapons, ammunition, and vehicles that could be used for later attacks.450 These types of self-production have made for relatively steady flows of material resources towards Boko Haram, since Nigerian authorities have not stepped up its security in a way that challenged the group greatly. This can be seen by looking at the timeline in the appendix; despite a wide range of similar attacks on military and policy especially in north-eastern Nigeria, in 2013 and 2014 most of the time the security forces were still not capable of successfully repelling the attack. A recent example of this is the kidnapping of over 200 school girls from Chibok. In this case, the soldiers that were there to protect the school, were outnumbered by far and could not do much — while other soldiers were apparently not willing to assist

447 ‘High-profile Boko Haram member arrested at senator’s home’, Vanguard, http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/10/high-profile-boko-haram-member-arrested-at-senators-home/, 19 October 2012. 448 Annelies van Erp, ‘Boko Haram is rijk, maar waar haalt de organisatie al dat geld?’, Knack.be, http://www.knack.be/nieuws/wereld/boko-haram-is-rijk-maar-waar-haalt-de-organisatie-al-dat-geld/article- normal-143241.html, 14 May 2014. 449 ‘Boko Haram Raids Police Armoury In Bauchi State As Authorities Declare Seven Soldiers Dead In Maiduguri Explosion’, SaharaReporters, http://saharareporters.com/news-page/boko-haram-raids-police-armoury-bauchi- state-authorities-declare-seven-soldiers-dead-maidu, 6 July 2011. 450 ‘Boko Haram Militants Showing Off Weapons “Captured” From an Army Barack Raid’, SaharaReporters, http://saharareporters.com/video/boko-haram-militants-showing-weapons-captured-army-barack-raid?page=1, 29 April 2013.

94 them.451 Boko Haram members also looted food — another important material resource — and of course could use the girls to gain more resources.452 Around 1.5 months later Boko Haram fighters returned to the area to steal food again.453 The timeline also shows Boko Haram has been robbing banks and bank transports, such as on 22 March, 17 May and 19 September 2013. With robbing banks or bank transports, the group effectively uses one type of material resources, weapons (next to human and social- organizational resources of course), to gain access to another type of material resources, money. Weapons are therefore also quite fungible. The group had reportedly stolen 200 million Naira, which is close to a million Euro, in May 2013.454 Finally, in the border area in the north-east of Nigeria, there are important routes for smuggling weapons, drugs, hostages, and so on.455

Concluding, while Boko Haram has mainly been a domestic problem for Nigeria, focusing on northern Nigeria, and they do not cooperate intensely with Islamist organizations from abroad in the sense that they discuss tactics, they have profited from material resources from organizations that fall under the Salafist bracket, both in neighbouring countries as in the wider Muslim world. They have also received these from various Nigerians, reportedly, including members of the political, economic, academic, and religious elites. Finally, Boko Haram has produced material resources for themselves through acts including kidnapping and robbery. Figure 16, provided by TRAC, sums up all of Boko Haram’s possibilities for gaining material resources, primarily money.

451 ‘How Nigerian military failed to stop kidnap of Chibok girls- Amnesty International’, Premium Times, http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/160469-bringbackourgirls-nigerian-military-failed-stop-kidnap-chibok- girls-amnesty-international.html, 9 May 2014. 452 Michelle Faul, ‘How Boko Haram kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls from Chibok’, Global News, http://globalnews.ca/news/1314505/how-boko-haram-kidnapped-hundreds-of-schoolgirls-from-chibok/, 6 May 2014. 453 AFP, ‘Dozens killed in twin Boko Haram attacks near Nigeria’s Chibok’, The Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/nigeria/10846150/Dozens-killed-in-twin-Boko- Haram-attacks-near-Nigerias-Chibok.html, 21 May 2014. 454 ‘Boko Haram Gunmen Cart Away Over N200 Million Naira From First Bank, Access Bank, Keystone Bank, Unity Bank In Daura Attack’, iReports, http://ireports-ng.com/2013/05/17/boko-haram-gunmen-cart-away-over-n200- million-from-first-bank-access-bank-keystone-bank-unity-bank-in-daura-attack/, 17 May 2013. 455 Sagir Musa, ‘How al-Qaeda, Boko Haram smuggle arms into Nigeria’, Vanguard, http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/05/how-al-qaeda-boko-haram-smuggle-arms-into-nigeria/, 11 May 2013.

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Figure 16. Source: TRAC (trackingterrorism.org).

Human resources

Boko Haram needs fighters in order to be able to keep launching its attacks. The group has sometimes used IED’s, suicide bombers, and car bombs, but many of the attacks involve laying siege on a village, police station, or other, with the use of machine guns. This type of tactic calls for large numbers of combatants. Also, of course, some Boko Haram members get arrested, killed, or severely injured over time, so there needs to be a large pool of recruits, and a flow of new ones, in order to keep their insurgency going. It is that the group, while active in Nigeria, does not only comprise Nigerians. There were apparently Malians, Chadians, and even Arabs among their ranks.456 Below, the human resources of Boko Haram and how the group acquires them are discussed.

456 Emeka Mamah et al., ‘207 suspected terrorists killed as Boko Haram battle military in Maiduguri’, Vanguard, http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/03/207-suspected-terrorists-killed-boko-haram-battle-military-maiduguri/#, 15 March 2014.

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The role of the leader

Something that is not to be underestimated in hierarchical groups in which one person is effectively the leader, is the role of this leader. In chapter VII on political process perspectives, it was shown how Boko Haram returned much more violently after Mohammed Yusuf and many members of the group had been killed. The remaining members had gone into exile for some months and stayed with other, well- organized, radical Islamic groups. It was pointed out there, how the nature of state repression seems to have played a large role in the Boko Haram violence spiralling out of control. However, there is another way to look at this, which is that the killing of Yusuf had a big influence because it meant that the group got a new leader, and that leader was Abubakar Shekau. From a resource mobilization perspective, Shekau is an important human resource for the group. The killing of Yusuf and many other members of the group really marked a turning point in the evolution of Boko Haram. As has been discussed in chapter V, Yusuf and Shekau are described as rather different personalities. While Yusuf did become more violent towards the end, he was said not to be as radical and violent as Shekau. In fact, Yusuf used to have “trouble keeping his unruly lieutenants, particularly Abubakar Shekau, in check”.457 And Shekau was reportedly chosen as the group’s new leader because of his radicalness and aggressiveness.458 Shekau is said to be feared by Boko Haram members, and he has sometimes eliminated people that had different ideas than he.459 It is thus clear that Shekau is a major influence. The change in leadership has clearly affected Boko Haram’s tactics, leading to a more violent routine. Of course, it is not just the leader that is important, it is also about other human resources such as the amount of members and the quality or skill of these members. For various reasons, recruitment in general does not appear extremely difficult for Boko Haram. There is poverty, high unemployment rates, power shortages, bad infrastructure and so on, which means youths often do not have much going for them. With a lack of other options, the option to join a group such as Boko Haram becomes more attractive. This would certainly be the case since the bad living conditions are often (rightly) blamed on bad governance, and a group that has a strong anti-government discourse, as Boko Haram does, has particular appeal then. However, while Boko Haram profits from these kinds of human resources, they also need more skilled people, for example someone that can make IED’s, or someone that can fix cars and motor bikes, or someone that knows how to use certain modes of communication. Next, it is set out in which ways Boko Haram obtains its members and human skills.

457 ‘Curbing Violence in Nigeria (II): The Boko Haram Insurgency’, International Crisis Group, 18. 458 Idem, 19. 459 Idem, 19-22.

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Aggregation: recruiting constituents

Boko Haram recruits its members not just in Nigeria, but also in Niger, Chad, and Cameroon.460 The borders between these states are porous, and there are several ethnic groups that are dispersed across Nigeria and some of its neighbouring countries — including the Kanuri, which is the ethnicity of many Boko Haram members. These factors facilitate Boko Haram’s recruitment practices across the borders.461 For example, in northern Cameroon, various suspected Boko Haram members have been arrested over the last couple of years, but most were let go because of lack of evidence.462 It is known, however, that many youths from the area have actually joined Boko Haram.463 Local officials and residents give some insight into Boko Haram’s recruitment methods. “[U]nidentified preachers” target Cameroonian youths, as the word ‘preacher’ suggests with a religious message, and next to that, they often offer the youths money.464 According to Niger youths interviewed by the BBC, Boko Haram members also come into Niger and pay money to fight for them. And in the case of the young men interviewed here, they were not even approached by preachers and indoctrinated — they claim to not subscribe to Boko Haram's ideas, but to have participated merely for the money.465 Thus, it is the combination of the poverty and lack of prospects in the region, and the religiosity of the region, that provide fertile ground for recruitment, which Boko Haram apparently knows and uses well. These factors exist within Boko Haram’s home region of northern Nigeria as well. According to Human Rights Watch, Boko Haram actively recruits children, some as young as 12, and uses child soldiers.466 A good example is the story of how Boko Haram paid some children 5000 Naira — which is somewhere between 20 and 25 Euro — to burn down a school.467 So material resources are put to use for recruitment purposes. The United States’ countering violent extremism (CVE) approach is directed at curtailing Boko Haram’s violence by limiting the flow of human resources to the group. For the individual recruitment of constituents as described above, this means looking at the push factors of the grievances and lack of perspective for the youths, and the pull factors of the Boko Haram priests’ extremist message and money.

460 ‘Curbing Violence in Nigeria (II): The Boko Haram Insurgency’, International Crisis Group, 25. 461 Ibid. 462 ‘Fears in Cameroon of Boko Haram recruitment’, IRIN, http://www.irinnews.org/report/99949/fears-in- cameroon-of-boko-haram-recruitment, 16 April 2014. 463 Ibid. 464 Ibid. 465 Thomas Fessy, ‘Niger hit by Nigeria’s Boko Haram fallout’, BBC, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa- 27111884, 22 April 2014. 466 ‘Nigeria: Boko Haram Abducts Women, Recruits Children’, Human Rights Watch, http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/11/29/nigeria-boko-haram-abducts-women-recruits-children, 29 November 2013. 467 John Alechenu, ‘Boko Haram paid us N5,000 each to burn schools- Kid suspects’, The Punch, http://www.punchng.com/news/boko-haram-paid-us-n5000-each-to-burn-schools-kid-suspects/

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Co-optation and appropriation: networked recruitment

“Social movements often exploit relationships they have with existing forms of social organization that were not formed for explicit movement purposes”, Edwards and McCarthy state.468 In the case of human resources, this means that Boko Haram could use already existing organizations such as mosques to recruit new members there. As was laid out in chapter V on the rise and evolution of Boko Haram, from the 1980s onwards there was a climate in which there was a radical Islamic revivalism in northern Nigeria. In that climate, various religious groups emerged, most comprised of young men that came together to study Islam. These groups often had contact with each other and sometimes merged, which, as chapter V has shown, was also how Boko Haram in its current form came into being. Boko Haram originated from the already existing form of social organization that was the Alhaji Muhammadu Ndimi Mosque in Maiduguri.469 Apart from this, there are not many reports of Boko Haram using networked recruitment. It probably happens, in the sense that Boko Haram preachers visit certain villages to persuade youths to join them, and then it could well be that youths from that same village or area follow in their footsteps. However, detailed information on recruitment remains scarce. In this case, the United States’ CVE policy also applies, especially concerning looking into the group pressures and dynamics involved in this type of recruitment.

Patronage: providing technical assistance or staff

Concerning human resources, finally, it could be that a certain person, a patron, aids Boko Haram by sending them human assistance in the form of staff or technical assistance. So here, it is about people that are not actually members of the group, but that do aid them because of patronage relationships. For more ‘traditional’, legal, social movements it is quite easy to see how this works. In the case of an organization such as Boko Haram, it seems a little less likely that somebody lends them their secretary. However, Boko Haram has been aided by members of other terrorist organizations, who seem to have given them training and technical assistance. This is widely regarded to be the case because when Boko Haram returned to Nigeria in July 2010, after they had stayed with terrorist organizations abroad, they seemed better-trained and were using IED’s.470 The organization most frequently named as one that Boko Haram has contact with is Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).471 These organizations proved to be a valuable human resource to Boko Haram, one that has had an impact on the possibilities for Boko Haram to organize attacks and carry out its tactic of violence. These networks of Islamists throughout the Sahel region in themselves are social-organizational resources that Boko Haram has. These resources help gain

468 Edwards and McCarthy (2004), 134. 469 Walker (2012), 3. 470 Idem, 4. 471 Jacob Zenn, ‘Boko Haram’s International Connections’, Combating Terrorism Center, https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/boko-harams-international-connections, 14 January 2013.

99 access to other resources, such as human and material. And, as was mentioned, the networks do not stop there, in the direct region, also not concerning technical assistance and staff through patronage, since there were also Arabs in their ranks. As Boko Haram spokesman Abu Qaqa claimed, they receive both financial and technical support from Al Qaeda, as arranged during meetings in Saudi Arabia.472

Abduction

In late 2013, Boko Haram suffered severe losses from a government crackdown on the group’s hideouts in Sambisa forest in Borno state. To make up for these losses, it seems that Boko Haram resorted to forcing people to join them. In December 2013, for example, the timeline of Boko Haram attacks shows a lot of abductions in Borno state, especially along roads.473 These happened near the Sambisa forest, which is an indication that the group is behind it. Abducting people along roads, in more quiet areas, also suggests that Boko Haram was not exceptionally strong at that point, which is also proven by the fact that abduction was needed to fill their ranks in the first place. However, sources commenting on this are government sources, to whom it is useful propaganda to state that Boko Haram now has to resort to forcing people to join the fold, because they are weak, and because nobody would voluntarily join the group anymore. In truth, it appears that the number of people fighting for Boko Haram because they were kidnapped is still fairly low — judging by the number of people that has been kidnapped, and by abovementioned stories of recruitment through ideology or through payment.

In conclusion, the bad living conditions in northern Nigeria make for good recruitment grounds for Boko Haram, while the porous borders474 and shared ethnicity mean the group can also easily recruit across the borders, and also has contacts with various other radical Islamist groups throughout the region which provide additional human resources to Boko Haram, especially more skilled labour. Thus, access to human resources seems to be good and not declining. Even if Boko Haram seems to have lost support among many, there are still plenty of fertile recruitment grounds in the north-east of Nigeria and very importantly, across its borders.

472 Monica Mark, ‘Boko Haram Vows to Fight Until Nigeria Established Sharia Law’, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/27/boko-haram-nigeria-sharia-law, 27 January 2012. 473 ‘Boko Haram in conscription, abducts 9 female traders, 27 others in Borno’ Vanguard, http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/12/boko-haram-conscription-abducts-9-female-traders-27-others-borno/, 11 December 2013. 474 See for example ‘Cameroon blames Boko Haram in French priest’s kidnapping’, CNN.

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Moral resources

Co-optation and appropriation: allying yourself with a well-respected group & patronage: a widely respected person or organization recognizes a group

As was laid out earlier, it is difficult to produce moral resources, such as legitimacy, for yourself. Legitimacy is often something that is bestowed upon a group by some person, group, or institution outside of that group, who or which is seen as an authority. So, linking to the above, some types of social- organizational resources, most notably networks, can help gain moral resources as well, if the group that Boko Haram has an alliance with is seen as a legitimate group. As was discussed in the above, Boko Haram has alliances with Islamist groups outside of Nigeria, many of which are violent. The violent nature of these groups does not make them well-respected among everyone, of course, but amongst certain groups of people, an alliance with these groups can actually create moral resources such as legitimacy. The difficulty here is: how do you define legitimacy? Legitimacy for whom? The world is home to a lot of groups that do not seem legit to a large number of people, while to some people they are. Something that should not be underestimated, is the large support base Al Qaeda had and still has among Nigerian Muslims. In 2010, according to a poll, 49%, so half, of Nigerian Muslims was favourable of Al Qaeda.475 Boko Haram is linked to Al Qaeda’s Sahel branch AQIM. So this shows that on one hand, there is support for radical Salafist jihadist organizations in Nigeria, and also that because Boko Haram is linked to these types of organizations moral resources can be bestowed upon them through these organizations. Interestingly, in the case of Boko Haram, it can be argued that legitimacy was actually accidentally bestowed upon them by the Nigerian authorities. Their “abusive tactics at times strengthen the Islamist group’s narrative that it is battling government brutality”, Human Rights Watch states.476 In this case, the group may have actually gained legitimacy among the population. In 2011 and 2012 it was also argued, most notably by a group of American scholars on Nigeria and African politics, that designating Boko Haram as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) would actually internationalize the group and give it legitimacy among other jihadist groups.477 So in this case, the United States can accidentally legitimize Boko Haram vis-à-vis other terrorist organizations, and this can greatly influence the amount of resources bestowed upon Boko Haram by these other groups. The FTO designation could also increase Boko Haram’s legitimacy among some parts of the population, who see a bigger enemy in the United States or the West in general, or see neo-colonial or imperialist strategies,

475 ‘Osama bin Laden Largely Discredited Among Muslim Publics in Recent Years’, Pew Research Global Attitudes Project, http://www.pewglobal.org/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-largely-discredited-among-muslim-publics-in- recent-years/, 2 May 2011. 476 ‘Spiraling Violence. Boko Haram Attacks and Security Forces Abuses in Nigeria’, Human Rights Watch, 10. 477 Letter to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, 21 May 2012. Via: http://carllevan.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/05/Boko-Haram-FTO-letter-to-Clinton4.pdf.

101 leading to a ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. This can also lead to larger flows of other resource types towards Boko Haram. Firstly, Boko Haram’s has anti-government frames, which corresponded well with grievances that were felt among many northern Nigerians,478 and secondly they also have an anti-western stance, which was an outlook that gained vigour after 9/11, the group had a substantial amount of support among the population in its early days.479 As Olojo explains it clearly: “there was a prevailing mood among numerous young Muslims in northern Nigeria which drew inspiration from the "guts" that Osama bin Laden personified. While there was an increase in religious consciousness, 2002 also saw a rapid increase in the number of babies bearing the name Osama in northern Nigeria. In , where there were celebrations after the September 11 attacks, seven out of ten babies in a particular hospital were reported to have been given the name by their parents. The ensuing military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, which commenced in 2001 and 2003 respectively, coincided with diffuse events in Nigeria that inadvertently created the ideal environment for Boko Haram to capitalise on. Muslims in the Middle East were thus portrayed as oppressed brethren in the eyes of socio-economically vulnerable youths amid an atmosphere of religious anxiety. Expressions of sympathy by “comrades” in northern Nigeria steadily transcended to bolder expressions of violence, aided by the catalytic and charismatic input of Boko Haram’s leadership.”480 However, as time passed, and Boko Haram turned more violent, their legitimacy among fellow Muslims seems to have waned. There are some minimum requirements for legitimacy. If a social movement organization claims to represent a certain group, or belong to that group and speak on behalf of (a part of) it, and the group feels the organization by no means represent it, there are clear issues with legitimacy. In the case of Boko Haram, viewing legitimacy like this shows that their legitimacy has waned in the last couple of years. There are many accounts by Nigerian Muslims and Muslim clerics who are angered by the tactics of Boko Haram and the fact that they call themselves Muslim.481 As of 2013 and especially 2014, even fellow radical Islamists seem to have lost sympathy for Boko Haram. In July 2013 one of the spiritual leaders of AQIM (a group that Boko Haram is assumed to have

478 Adam Nossiter, ‘Killings in Nigeria Are Linked to Islamic Sect’, , http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/world/africa/19nigeria.html?ref=adam_nossiter&_r=1&, 18 October 2010. 479 Akinola Olojo (2013). 480 Idem, 4. 481 ‘Muslims of Nigeria Denounce and Condemn Boko Haram’, MuslimsAgainstTerror.com, http://muslimsagainstterror.com/muslims-of-nigeria-denounce-and-condemn-boko-haram/, last accessed 28 May 2014. Also see: ‘Nigerian Muslim cleric opposed to Boko Haram shot dead’, Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/03/us-nigeria-bokoharam-idUSBREA120CK20140203, 3 February 2014.

102 links with) issued a fatwa against the killing of young students in school, which is one of the tactics used by Boko Haram more and more.482 And as multiple media stated, the fact that organizations such as Al Qaeda — including the AQIM-branch which operates not far from Boko Haram and is known to have had contact with the group — remained absolutely silent after the abduction of roughly 300 school girls from Chibok in April, means that they distance themselves from Boko Haram’s practices.483 Concluding, it seems that Boko Haram got most of its legitimacy because of its anti-government frames, which fit into an atmosphere in which many people felt disenchanted by their government, and were experiencing an Islamic revivalism which made an Islamist answer to bad governance and poverty a logical fit. However, as Boko Haram’s ideas and tactics became more radical, their moral resources decreased, eventually even among other jihadist groups.

Social-organizational resources

The self-production methods of Boko Haram lie at the heart of the group. Once an organization, ideas and frames are established, these structures and tools can be used to further the group’s goals. Thus, in the above discussion of obtaining moral and especially human and material resources, social-organizational and cultural resources were already shortly mentioned as helping to attain these. They were mentioned, for example, with relation to recruitment: social-organizational resources may include the capability to use already existing networks such as mosques or friends and relatives of Boko Haram members, of the capacity to successfully build new networks to use. Cultural resources make recruitment or gaining moral support easier — if they are successful frames that resonate in the existing culture, that is. Below, social- organizational resources and ways to acquire them are looked into in more detail — and after that the fifth and final resource category of cultural resources is discussed.

Self-production: founding social movement organizations

The social-organizational structure it obviously all starts with is creating the organization itself. Boko Haram could not be doing what it is doing now if it did not exist as an organization. As was outlined in chapter V, one cannot speak of Boko Haram as one clear organization — it has split up in various factions which do not always appear to really be part of the same organization anymore. However, it was once founded with a clear organizational structure with one leader, a couple of lieutenants, and a council. Later on, several factions were established in several areas across the north of Nigeria, who stayed in touch with each other. Founding this type of organization was of course an important step towards carrying out the attacks on the scale that they are now, and having as much of an effect.

482 Jacob Zenn (2014) ‘Nigerian al-Qaedaism’. 483 Frank Gardner, ‘Have Boko Haram over-reached themselves?’, BBC, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa- 27334894, 8 May 2014.

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Aggregation: building networks

Looking at Boko Haram’s linkages with some other Islamist groups, and the fact that in the past they have received both material and human resources from them, the group is capable of building networks. Creating these social-organizational resources helped them gain other resources. The question is how they built these networks. This already came forward in chapter V, too: from the 1980s onwards, there was a revival of radical Islamism in Nigeria, which led to a wide range of Islamist groups there. People from these groups, specifically those from better-of groups from society, frequently travelled abroad, such as to Saudi Arabia for hadj.484 Boko Haram also already had contacts with similar groups in neighbouring countries in its earlier days, which is illustrated by the stay of the group’s members at Islamist organizations abroad in 2009. When Boko Haram returned, they could build upon these connections and use them to get further.

Co-optation and appropriation: gaining access to congregations for solicitation and mesomobilization

It was mentioned before how Boko Haram uses already existing organizations such as congregations to spread their ideas and recruit new members. It also came forward that Boko Haram does not necessarily gain access in a way that more law-abiding social movements might do. They basically take access. As was also mentioned when discussing the group’s recruitment activities in Cameroon, it does happen that the local cleric does not agree with the practices. Therefore, in order to gain access, Boko Haram preachers need to act in a secretive manner, which they do, as the article shows: they preachers are “presumed to have links with the group”, there is talk of “unidentified preachers […] secretly reaching out to youths”.485

Cultural resources

Self-production: ideas, frames, tactical repertoires, history

With successful framing, several things can be established — one could say several resources can be gained. First, successful use of framing by Boko Haram can help create legitimacy and support for the group. In other words, moral resources. Second, successful frames help to “forge and sustain linkages with potential recruits”,486 therefore adding to human resources, and also to social-organizational resources (and through them to human resources again). So ideas and frames fall under cultural resources that have been self-produced, and can then be used to gain other resources through aggregation. This is the same for tactical repertoires; using the tactical repertoires Boko Haram has developed has led to attaining other resource types such as moral resources. With the ‘right’ tactical

484 See for example Mark (2012) ‘Boko Haram Vows to Fight Until Nigeria Established Sharia Law’. 485 ‘Fears in Cameroon of Boko Haram recruitment’, IRIN. 486 Carrie Rosefsky Wickham (2004) ‘Interests, Ideas, and Islamist Outreach in Egypt’ in Quintan Wiktorowicz (ed.) Islamic Activism. A Social Movement Theory Approach, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 231.

104 repertoire, the group can make a name for itself or shame the authorities or whichever enemy. The history of a group is also part of its cultural resources. It is, of course, particularly important how this history is framed. Concerning the ideas of the group, they fall under the Salafist branch of Islam. It is very strict, in the sense of strict adherence to the Quran (no ‘modern interpretations’) and denounces western culture.487 Here, too, framing is important. At first, the group often rebuked the use of the name Boko Haram, but later on they started using it themselves sometimes. While the name may be a tad misleading, because it gives the impression that the main or only concern of the group is with western education, it is also very recognizable, ‘the group that is against western education’, so for name recognition it works. Finally, concerning Boko Haram’s tactical repertoires, these are quite varied. This is illustrated most clearly by taking a look at the timeline of the group’s attacks in the appendix. It can be seen that tactical repertoires for attacks include suicide bombings, car bombs, gun attacks by motorcycle, throwing IED’s and burning places down, targeted executions of critics, and simply storming villages, prisons or police stations with large numbers of fighters. What also becomes clear is that the north-eastern region of Nigeria sees a lot of attacks on villages by gunmen, while bomb attacks are spread throughout a larger portion of the country.488

Changing access to resources?

The key question is whether Boko Haram’s access to resources has increased, and whether around that same time the violence by the group also increased — measured by looking at the number of attacks and the number of deaths they caused. Boko Haram’s access to resources and possibilities for resource mobilization have certainly been important for the development of the conflict, for without resources and the know-how how to mobilize and properly use them, they would not have been able to do what they did. The question is, how important it is, especially compared to the role of political opportunity and state repression, grievances, and a hatred for the west and the role of the United States. What becomes clear from the above review of all resource types and how Boko Haram obtained them is how vital the international network of Islamist groups has been in the earlier stages of Boko Haram’s insurgency. Next to this, support from Nigerian elite, either for political/tactical or ideological reasons, has also been important, however, it is very difficult to establish the scope of this, since, for obvious reasons, donations to Boko Haram are done in a highly secretive manner.

487 Valarie Thomson (2013) ‘Boko Haram and Islamic Fundamentalism in Nigeria’ in Global Security Studies, 3:3, 51. 488 Will Ross, ‘Boko Haram’s two-pronged attack in Nigeria’, BBC, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa- 27513080, 21 May 2014.

105

Concerning material resources, large donations from people that were ideologically bound to Boko Haram are likely to have gone down. Support for the group has been declining over the last couple of years as they became more violent and their targets spread to include civilians, causing a lot of casualties among Muslims as well. Large donations from individuals or groups that donate for political reasons only may not be affected by this as much, but this is hard to tell. Material resources that Boko Haram gains from Islamist groups abroad are likely to be declining too, since many groups have recently distanced themselves from some of Boko Haram’s actions.489 The same goes for human resources the group gained from their network of Islamist organizations. However, these developments are very recent. Boko Haram has had ties with Islamist groups in the Sahel region up until quite recently, and still received human and material resources from them, for example from Libya and Mali.490 However, mentions of donations from the Arab world, such as Saudi Arabia, decline and almost disappear after the 2009 dispersal of the group and its violent return under Shekau. The social-organizational resources that the group has gained, and the skills it has attained earlier through their networks and through patronage, seem to have made up for any possible drop in resources handed to them. They have showed to be well-equipped to self-produce material and human resources by kidnapping and robbing, for example, and know where to find new recruits. As the previous chapter on relative deprivation has shown, unemployment rates in north and particularly north/east of Nigeria remain low, living conditions remain poor, and this is also the case for some of the areas just across Nigeria’s borders with Chad, Cameroon, and Niger, which are apparently also productive recruitment grounds for the group. It would thus appear, that Boko Haram knows how to put the resources — material, human, social-organizational, and cultural — to good use in order to gain more resources. The only element missing are moral resources, which have clearly gone down for the group. After losing legitimacy with almost all of the population, they have now apparently even lost legitimacy among many jihadist groups.

Concluding, as became clear from the above, it is vital, most of all, that Boko Haram has the guns to sling and the people to sling them, simply put. For this, the group does not necessarily need moral resources and allies. However, when its tactical repertoires and frames seem to go awry, and when its legitimacy declines rapidly, the pressure on authorities — Nigerian but also other — to deal with the group mounts. Therefore, while these kinds of resources may not directly be the most important, there has to be a certain balance. However, if the group’s knowledge, skills and willpower are strong enough, and the

489 Gardner (2014) ‘Have Boko Haram over-reached themselves?’. 490 Sudarsan Raghavan, ‘Nigerian Islamist militants return from Mali with weapons, skills’, The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/nigerian-islamist-militants-return-from-mali-with-weapons- skills/2013/05/31/d377579e-c628-11e2-9cd9-3b9a22a4000a_story.html, 31 May 2013.

106 fighters, weapons and ammunition plenty, while the authorities lack in those, the group could survive for quite some time simply by outdoing the authorities in these departments. As the group has shown, it is also able to adapt to a situation in which it is temporarily (relatively) weaker: for example when after the second state of emergency was enforced, they focused on civilian targets rather than military ones, and moved to border regions and sometimes neighbouring countries to flee mounting pressure within Nigeria.491 Clearly, resources matter a great deal, but it is a complex story with many different resource types to take into the equation. One cannot predict what is going to happen, but the fact that Boko Haram had sufficient amounts of vital resources up until now has certainly been important for the development of the issue. And now they have established such a wide array of practices to attain these resources, it may be difficult to influence Boko Haram’s resource mobilization possibilities to a great extent. This wide array of practices means that the group has been able to maintain a relatively steady access to resources, which has helped them launch their attacks.

491 ‘Cameroon blames Boko Haram in French priest’s kidnapping’, CNN.

107

X. A framing perspective

In chapter VI, a short oversight of United States involvement in security policies in Nigeria, and specifically those directed at Boko Haram, was given. This already showed that the United States is pursuing counter narrative strategies in Nigeria. It is interesting to see what this does and how Boko Haram responds to this. It is also vital how the United States frames its involvement in Nigeria at home, and how U.S. media report the goings-on in the African country. This chapter aims at studying these factors and their effect on how the Boko Haram conflict has developed.

The framing of Boko Haram in the United States

Most of the world had no idea who Boko Haram were until early May 2014. Then things suddenly changed, and simply uttering one word, ‘Chibok’, would say it all. Various governments such as the French,492 Dutch,493 and British,494 have spoken out against Boko Haram’s kidnapping of 300 school girls, of whom 200 were still missing weeks later,495 and are offering help. The United States has also done so, with even a speech by First Lady Michelle Obama dedicated to the subject.496 Before these events, the world seemed to have little attention for the issue of Boko Haram. In this environment, the United States stood out, since they were actively engaged in countering the group, as chapter VI has shown, and also designated Boko Haram and its splinter cell Ansaru as foreign terrorist organizations in October 2013.497 The question is how the U.S. government and the media framed the Boko Haram conflict, seeing this kind of outcome. While most of the world saw a Nigerian domestic problem, not endangering their interests, and apparently not bad enough for a moral outcry such as happened after the Chibok kidnappings, the United States was already actively mingling. How did they ‘sell’ this? First of all, it is interesting to look at the news coverage on Boko Haram in the United States prior to the Chibok kidnappings. Was there almost no attention to the issue at all before that, as is the case in for example most of Europe, or was there? Looking at the five best-read U.S. newspapers, the news coverage seems similar to that in Europe — with the slight difference that the United States, after 9/11

492 ‘France to host summit on Boko Haram’, AlJazeera, http://www.aljazeera.com/video/europe/2014/05/france- host-summit-boko-haram-201451752120770543.html, 17 May 2014. 493 ‘Nederland: meer EU-steun tegen Boko Haram’, De Telegraaf, http://www.telegraaf.nl/buitenland/22615514/___Meer_EU-steun_tegen_Boko_Haram___.html, 12 May 2014. 494 ‘Nigeria’s Boko Haram crisis: UK spy plane breaks down’, BBC, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa- 27487957, 20 May 2014. 495 Chika Oduah, ‘Chibok: the village that lost its daughters to Boko Haram’, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/15/chibok-nigeria-200-kidnapped-schoolgirls-boko-haram, 15 May 2014. 496 ‘Weekly Address: The First Lady Marks Mother’s Day And Speaks Out on the Tragic Kidnapping in Nigeria’, The White House, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAncJ3nuczI, 10 May 2014. 497 Office of the Spokesperson, ‘Terrorist Designations of Boko Haram and Ansaru’.

108 and the following wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been particularly interested in anything to do with Islamist violence. The New York Times reported on the 2009 clashes between Boko Haram members and the police, which left many people dead.498 The article already mentions the name ‘Boko Haram’, but is not sure what to call them yet, and also mentions ‘Yusufia’ — a name the journalist at the time apparently did not understand.499 He speaks of “an obscure group opposed to Western education”, so they were already known for that back then.500 In summer 2010, the group returned, as is now known. In October the New York Times published an article that linked the spade of mysterious killings and prison raids that had been going on to Boko Haram, “a radical Islamic sect thought to have been crushed by Nigerian troops last year”.501 Other attacks that year are reported, but mostly in short press agency releases, and they all discuss Boko Haram as a purely domestic issue.502 The Daily News also reported on the 2009 clashes — which makes sense because of the large number of deaths after the relative quiet of the period before.503 This report is quite detailed and names the group Boko Haram, names their leader Mohammed Yusuf, and even names Abubakar Shekau, the later leader. Interestingly, Shekau is claimed to be dead in this article, so this represents perhaps the first misinformed claim of his death in a string of many more. After this, however, the newspaper is quiet on the group up until the bombing of the UN headquarters in Abuja.504 Very telling on the low intensity of reporting on the issue before the Chibok kidnappings is the fact that searching for ‘Boko Haram’ in Daily News articles results in 65 articles in total, of which half is from May 2014.505 When the group was mentioned before that, it was often when it attacked churches, or, when it was linked to or seen in relation to other radical Islamic groups or events in the Islamic world.506 Boko Haram and Islamism in Nigeria are mentioned in relation to an obscure U.S. film that was seen to be insulting Islam, after which

498 Adam Nossiter, ‘Scores Die as Fighters Battle Nigerian Police’, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/world/africa/28nigeria.html?_r=1&, 27 July 2009. 499 Ibid. 500 Ibid. 501 Nossiter, ‘Killings in Nigeria Are Linked to Islamic Sect’. 502 See: The Associated Press, ‘Nigeria: Mosque Attack Signals a New Round of Violence’, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/20/world/africa/20briefs-MOSQUE.html, 20 November 2010. Also see: Reuters, ‘Nigeria: Political Rally Is Bombed’, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/world/africa/30briefs-Nigeriabrf.html, 29 December 2010. Reuters, ‘Nigerian Villages and Churches Are Struck in Deadly Attacks’, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/world/africa/26nigeria.html, 25 December 2010. 503 ‘Nigerian Troops kill 100 Islamic militants in door-to-door hunt after storming sect’s compound’, Daily News, http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/nigerian-troops-kill-100-islamic-militants-door-to-door-hunt-storming- sect-compound-article-1.396631, 30 July 2009. 504 Search results for Boko Haram, nydailynews.com. 505 Ibid. 506 Search results for Boko Haram, nydailynews.com.

109 riots broke out in various places such as Khartoum and Tripoli,507 and it was even mentioned in an article on the murder of a British soldier in London, since the killer was of Nigerian descent.508 In the end of 2013, the group is mentioned as part of just one of many violent conflicts going on in Africa, critiquing the Obama administration on the absence of the United States.509 The Washington Post has much more articles on Boko Haram, also in its earlier days, publishing a background article on the unrest in northern Nigeria in the summer of 2009.510 However, this newspaper was also quiet about the return of the group in the summer of 2010 and only reported on them again after their bombing of the UN headquarters in Abuja.511 In December 2011, an opinion piece on U.S. interventionism in Africa is published, which states that U.S. interests on the continent are in fact mostly humanitarian in nature, and that the United States has a responsibility here: according to Johnnie Carson, the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs at the time, the U.S. military should not only be deployed to protect American citizens and corporations, but also for these humanitarian actions.512 This relates to the concept of responsibility to protect or r2p which was coined by Kofi Anan after the failures by the international community to properly intervene in many of the 1990s crises such as in Bosnia and .513 It is an interesting remark because the report by the Committee on Homeland Security that came out shortly before these statements appeared in the media was actually titled ‘Boko Haram. Emerging Threat to the U.S. Homeland’.514 This points to the existence of differing opinions on the issue of Boko Haram. Apparently, as the insurgency by Boko Haram lasted, and specifically after the group bombed the UN in Abuja, there was discussion within the U.S. government whether or not the group should be designated as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). A reconstruction of the events back then — detailed information is not (yet) available — was published in May 2014 after Hillary Clinton had spoken out

507 Reuters, ‘Sudan protesters storm German embassy, raise Islamic flag’, Daily News, http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/sudan-protesters-storm-german-embassy-raise-islamic-flag-article- 1.1159566, 14 September 2012. 508 Erik Ortiz and Corky Siemaszko, ‘Lee Rigby Identified as British soldier viciously killed on London street; 2 more suspects busted’, Daily News, http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/knife-wielding-terror-suspect-named- london-soldier-attack-report-article-1.1352385, 23 May 2013. 509 John Bolton, ‘As Obama dithers, North Africa unravels’, Daily News, http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/obama-dithers-north-africa-unravels-article-1.1559065, 27 December 2013. 510 Karin Brulliard, ‘For Many, Nigeria’s Moderate Form of Sharia Fails to Deliver on Promises’, The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/11/AR2009081103257.html, 12 August 2009. 511 Search results for Boko Haram, washingtonpost.com 512 Walter Pincus, ‘Is a U.S. military precedent being set in Africa?’, The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/is-a-us-military-precedent-being-set-in- africa/2011/12/08/gIQAbFnWqO_story.html, 13 December 2011. 513 International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect, http://www.responsibilitytoprotect.org/index.php/about-rtop, last accessed 27 May 2014. 514 Meehan and Spreier (2011).

110 against the kidnap of the Chibok school girls.515 It states that there had been talks of adding Boko Haram to the list of foreign terrorist organizations ever since their bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Abuja in 2011.516 However, Clinton and her staff did not do this, even though the FBI, the CIA, the Justice Department, and several congressmen.517 While they had good reasons for this, as those that can be found in the letter sent to them by a group of scholars, urging not to make the designation,518 Clinton represents an easy target for Republicans and media with a right-wing signature after the Chibok kidnapping. Of course, there is not necessarily a unified government — within the government, there are different standpoints and interests at stake, as the above has made clear. Intelligence agencies and the State Department may have different opinions — and clearly, interests — as well as Democrats and Republicans, obviously. There was apparently quite some pressure from various organizations and individuals on the State Department to make the designation: “Risch and seven other GOP senators introduced legislation in early 2013 that would have forced Clinton to designate the group or explain why she thought it was a bad idea. The State Department lobbied against the legislation at the time, according to internal State Department emails obtained by . In the House, leading intelligence-minded lawmakers wrote letter after letter to Clinton urging her to designate Boko Haram as terrorists. The effort in the House was led by then-Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King and Patrick Meehan, chairman of the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. Meehan and his Democratic counterpart Jackie Speier put out a lengthy report in 2011 laying out the evidentiary basis for naming Boko Haram a terrorist organization, including the group’s ties to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and to Somalia’s al-Shabaab terrorist organization.”519 This report was released, and discussed at the Capitol, at 30 November 2011.520 At the time, there was a lack of scholarly work on the group and therefore the Homeland Security Committee had investigated the group.521 It compared the group to Al Qaeda (in the Arab Peninsula) and the Pakistani Taliban.522 It recommended to look into the group more and to support Nigeria in developing its counterterrorism capabilities — and to not underestimate Boko Haram’s capabilities to actually striking the U.S.

515 Josh Rogin, ‘Hillary’s State Department Refused to Brand Boko Haram as Terrorists’, The Daily Beast, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/07/hillary-s-state-department-refused-to-brand-boko-haram-as- terrorists.html, 7 May 2014. 516 Ibid. 517 Ibid. 518 Letter to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, 21 May 2012. 519 Ibid. 520 Caitlin C. Poling (2013) ‘U.S Congress and Boko Haram’ [sic] in Ioannis Mantzikos, Boko Haram. The Anatomy of a Crisis, e-International Relations, Bristol. Via: http://www.e-ir.info/2013/11/06/u-s-congress-and-boko-haram/. 521 Idem, 75. 522 Ibid.

111 homeland.523 This report and hearing resulted in a discussion between parts of Congress and the Department of State, mostly concerning the option of designating Boko Haram as an FTO. Such a designation must be initiated by the Secretary of State —Hillary Clinton at the time. It can mainly be used to curb finances flowing to the group, and perhaps inspire other countries to make the same designation, further limiting the flow of financial resources to Boko Haram.524 The fact that this discussion first started after Boko Haram’s attack on an international target, the UN headquarters in Abuja, and that the group’s links to AQIM and Al Shabaab are explicitly mentioned, points to the fact that the United States, or more accurately, certain actors within the United States, were already concerned with Boko Haram’s threat in a way that goes beyond them being a local problem in 2011. However, they were not necessarily concerned with Boko Haram threatening the U.S. directly, it appears, but indirectly: “Meehan and others believe that the Clinton State Department underestimated the pace of Boko Haram’s growth and the group’s intention to plan operations that could harm U.S. critical interests abroad.”525 This is a different stance than the one taken by Johnnie Carson, who stated that the United States should intervene because it had humanitarian interests there. Obama, at a meeting with Jonathan in September 2013, said: “[W]e're going to have an opportunity to discuss some significant challenges on the security front in Nigeria. In the northern regions of Nigeria we've seen the emergence of one of the most vicious terrorist organizations in the world - the Boko Haram. It presents an extraordinary security challenge for the people of Nigeria, and we want to be cooperative in that process of building capacity inside Nigeria to deal with that terrorist threat, but doing so in a way that is consistent with human rights. Because we strongly believe that the best way to undermine the agenda of those who would do violence is to make sure that governments are responsive to the needs of people and following rule of law.”526 This seems to be yet another stance: Obama mentions the humanitarian aspect, but widens the issue to include the United States’ mission to spread democracy and rule of law. Other sources within the U.S. government have argued that this emphasis on the designation is exaggerated, because designation is only one of many tools that the United States has to challenge a

523 Meehan and Spreier (2011), 5. 524 Poling (2013), 76. 525 Rogin, ‘Hillary’s State Department Refused to Brand Boko Haram as Terrorists’. 526 ‘Remarks by President Obama Before Bilateral Meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria’, The White House, http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2013/09/23/president-obamas-bilateral-meeting- president-jonathan-nigeria#transcript, 23 September 2013.

112 group such as Boko Haram.527 Also, while Boko Haram was not designated as a group, three individuals that were part of the group, including leader Abubakar Shekau, were designated as terrorists by the State Department in June 2012.528 In November 2013, the new Secretary of State John Kerry did designate Boko Haram and Ansaru as terrorist organizations.529 What becomes clear from the above is that Boko Haram was part of a political discussion. That it was part of politics meant that there was a certain way of framing the situation — exaggerating the threat it presents to the U.S. homeland, for example, in order to be better able to point the finger at the other (here, mostly Republicans at the Democrats for not designating Boko Haram as an FTO). These kinds of practices could have led to a harsher stance against the group in order to try to prevent being blamed for inactivity later on, and being partly blamed for something as the Chibok kidnappings. In the discussion of U.S. actions against Boko Haram, the focus is also very much on the FTO designations, while the U.S. has been actively engaging Boko Haram in many other ways, and designating the group as an FTO is only one of many tools available to deal with them. Another thing that stands out is that Boko Haram is very much seen as and framed as part of a wider trend, of uprisings and protests and conflicts involving Muslims. The conflict is sometimes scraped together with ones in neighbouring countries such as the Central African Republic, sometimes with issues in Sudan and Somalia, and sometimes with issues in North Africa or across the Muslims world. It does make sense to not treat the violence in northern Nigeria as a completely isolated issue, because as was shown it is in a way part of a wider trend of Islamic revivalism and there have been contacts between Boko Haram and similar groups abroad, but framing the issues this way would lead to earlier and more U.S. intervention, and justifies that, than if it would have been mentioned as merely being a conflict between Boko Haram and the Nigerian authorities — which, in essence, it kind of is. Finally, it becomes clear that there is no one way of framing Boko Haram, which is linked to the fact that it is a political issue. Depending on who speaks, it is seen as a threat to the United States directly, to U.S. interests abroad, or as a humanitarian issue that the United States has the responsibility to intervene in.

The framing by Boko Haram

As was discussed in chapter IX on resource mobilization, Boko Haram uses certain frames in order to legitimize and mobilize. Now, these frames are assessed in more detail. There are three types of frames that social movements may use, which are prognostic, diagnostic and motivational frames. All of these

527 Ibid. 528 ‘Boko Haram leaders are designated as terrorists by the US’, BBC, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa- 18542030, 21 June 2012. 529 Office of the Spokesperson, ‘Terrorist Designations of Boko Haram and Ansaru’.

113 are discussed below by looking at videos that were brought out by Boko Haram, and by statements of the group’s previous spokesperson, Abu Qaqa. This is done chronologically, so as to see whether the framing practices of Boko Haram have changed over time, and whether this has meant something for the dynamics of violence. What stands out in all messages by Boko Haram is, first of all, that they are rigged with a lot of religious references. God or Allah is invoked almost every other sentence as an explanation for the group’s actions. With invoking God, they show their moral superiority — they have God on their side, so they say, so everyone against them is essentially against God. This way, the group creates legitimacy — if they are supported by God, as they claim, this is of course a great legitimacy that is bestowed upon them by a respected other. With this religious framing, the conflict clearly becomes framed in terms of ‘good’ and ‘bad’; religions often have clear ideas of what is good and what is bad, and the need for men to do good and how the bad is trying to distract them from the path to good is one of the main topics in most religions. So Boko Haram is using boundary or adversarial framing quite a lot. In these injustice frames, it is interesting to look at who the agents of injustice are, and whether this has changed over time. In a video from January 2012, Shekau stated: “We decided to defend ourselves and God has said if [you] follow him, he will give you strength! That is why Jonathan, [you] should know that this is beyond your power. It is not our doing but that of God. It is beyond you. Wallahi, what you are saying is like you have not started saying anything! Before God created the earth, he knew what was going to happen and he has promised in the holy book that he will help his religion. It is beyond your power. What you see has been happening, God allowed it because you have refused to follow him and you have betrayed his religion. That is why Jonathan, this is beyond your power-yes! If a few in your government say nice things about us, it is not surprising-it has happened many times -our hands are open! Anybody that says he will not follow God, even if he loves us, God has not said we should love such a person. God has said we should show such person the right path and embrace such person! You [C]hristians should know that Jesus is a servant and prophet of God. He is not the son of God. This religion of Christianity you are practicing is not a religion of God-it is paganism. God frowns at it. What you are practicing is not religion. Aside that, you Christians cheated and killed us to the extent of eating our flesh like cannibals! You did all you wanted to us. We are trying to coerce you to embrace [I]slam, because that is what God instructed us to do. Even at that, without provocation, you slaughtered us and took our wives and humiliated us!”530 The above transcript shows a very clear frame: Muslims (‘true Muslims’, such as Boko Haram) are good, Christians (as represented here by president Goodluck Jonathan) are bad. And Boko Haram has God on its

530 ‘VIDEO: Boko Haram leader “Imam Abubakar Shekau” Message to President Jonathan´, SaharaReporters.

114 side, so Jonathan cannot do anything to stop the group. There is also fatalism in what Shekau says, claiming that what will happen will happen no matter what, and resistance is futile. Boko Haram often uses anti-government frames, but while they do target Jonathan here, in the above transcript they seem to do more so because he is a Christian than because he represents the government. After speaking to Jonathan, Shekau moves on to address the president of the Christian Association of Nigeria, again creating the adversaries of Christians and Muslims.531 Since sectarian violence is widespread in Nigeria, these frames seem like a logical choice; they are likely to resonate within an environment in which Muslim-Christian relations are indeed difficult. Another interesting point about the January 2012 video is that Shekau repeatedly claims that they do no harm, except to some clearly defined groups of people: “We hardly touch anybody except security personnel and [C]hristians and those who have betrayed us”, and “We serve God and we do not harm anybody, but anybody that looks for our trouble, we will face such person or persons!”.532 This is another way for the group to legitimize its actions. Indeed, in early 2012, Boko Haram did mostly target security personnel and Christians. The Muslims that they attacked were mostly members of the security force or part of the Nigerian (local) government. Later on, as the timeline of Boko Haram attacks in the appendix clearly shows, they widened their range of possible targets, and also started killing indiscriminately, targeting entire villages or marketplaces without aiming specifically for Christians, for example. Most victims of Boko Haram violence are in fact Muslims.533 Finally, Boko Haram clearly portrays Muslims in general and themselves specifically as victims within their injustice frames. This shows from the “We decided to defend ourselves” which started the above transcript: they are attacked, they are cornered, they are the victims. Also, Shekau states “our members are being killed!”534 almost as if saying ‘so what are we to do?’, again invoking the need for self-defence. While in this 2012 video there are a lot of diagnostic frames, it does not provide any real prognostic frames — solutions to the injustice that they perceive. The solution seems to be to simply keep on going, because with God on their side, they are bound to win. Concerning motivational frames, the fact that Boko Haram depicts their battle as an epic battle between good and evil, and how they are representing God, or have God on their side, this is the type of sweeping language that could certainly be motivational to people with the same ideological standpoint — other radical Islamists who feel they are threatened by Christianity, democracy, or western culture, for example. The motivational frame stresses

531 Ibid. 532 Ibid. 533 ‘Boko Haram: The group behind the brazen Nigerian schoolgirl kidnappings’, CBC News, http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/boko-haram-the-group-behind-the-brazen-nigerian-schoolgirl-kidnappings- 1.2633899, 6 May 2014. 534 ‘VIDEO: Boko Haram leader “Imam Abubakar Shekau” Message to President Jonathan”, SaharaReporters.

115 the severity of the issue — it is about good versus evil — while for example urgency is not really an issue, which links to their prognostic frame — the group apparently has all the time in the world. In March 2012, only a little after the video discussed above, Abu Qaqa spoke to journalists about the group’s motives and plans. He is one of the few public figures of Boko Haram, and a rare spokesperson of whom it is known that he truly spoke on behalf of the core group.535 He stated that Boko Haram had closed all options for negotiation, for which one of the reasons he expressed was the arrest of one of the group’s members in the same period of time as the negotiations were held in.536 In the interview, he talks about “unbelievers” and the government as interchangeable terms.537 So here, the anti-government frames and the anti-Christian frames merge — and the term ‘unbelievers’ is not reserved for people of other religions than Islam only, as has been mentioned — the majority of Muslims also appears to be ‘false’ according to Boko Haram’s standards. Qaqa does not once mention Christians specifically. He does, once, call upon “all Muslims in this part of the world” towards the end of his statement, turning it into a war for the survival of Islam again.538 However, as said, he does not explicitely name Christians as the enemy, but calls to: “fight for the restoration of the caliphate of Usman Danfodio which […] the white man fought and fragmented. The white man killed prominent Islamic clerics and emirs and also replaced the white Islamic flag with the Union Jack. We want all our people to come together and restore our los[t] glory”.539 The calling upon all Muslims to fight to restore Islamic rule is a motivational frame. What is interesting about it, is that while Shekau in the January 2012 video framed the injustice as being done by Nigeria’s government, and specifically by the Christians running the country, Qaqa in the March 2012 interview marked the west and the white man as the enemy. While in both cases the enemy is Christian or embodies Christian values, there is a clear difference between the two. In the first case, the injustice frame is largely domestic and the battle is between a Christian elite and Muslims. In the second case, the injustice frame is more international and the battle is between Islamic culture and western culture and colonialism or imperialism — which is perhaps imposed upon them by southern Nigerian elites now, but they are not the source of the problem in this wording.

535 ‘Boko Haram: No More Dialogue With Unbelievers’, The War Now Continues’, SaharaReporters, http://saharareporters.com/news-page/boko-haram-no-more-dialogue-unbelievers%E2%80%99-war-now- continues, 21 March 2012. 536 Ibid. 537 Ibid. 538 Ibid. 539 Ibid.

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Concerning prognostic frames, Qaqa states that: “Almighty Allah has told us repeatedly that the unbelievers will never respect the promises they made. As such, henceforth, we would never respect any proposal for dialogue. In fact, we have

closed all possible doors of negotiation.”540 What he does suggest as the solution to the problem, or a plan of attack, is not much. Again, the group calls upon Allah and says how the group knows he: “will give us the power to catch and kill […] government forces. We are optimistic that we would dismantle this government and establish Islamic government in Nigeria. Let the federal government and its agents do what they can; and we in return, would also do what we can. The noble prophet Mohammed was also tried and tested during the war of Uhud, he persevered and at the end of the day, he emerged victorious. The fact is that, we don’t have an element of doubt in our minds that one day; we would surely emerge victorious from this onerous encounter.”541 So sheer perseverance and keeping going while being tried and tested is the way to go. In May 2012, another Boko Haram video was released, shortly after they bombed media offices. According to transcripts of the video, Shekau states that they attacked THISDAY newspaper offices, and are planning to attack a range of other newspapers (which he lists in the video), because they are waging war on Islam, or reporting on things that Islam does not approve of.542 However, he also mentions reasons that have to do with Boko Haram directly, and are more about vengeance of the group. Shekau mentions five lies that THISDAY and other media have told about Boko Haram, according to him, and how these are offences by the newspaper that it had to pay for.543 He ends by stating that “the government has now resorted to arresting our wives and children and also demolishing our houses, like they did in Biu recently, that is why we have also resolved to start attacking government schools, especially, tertiary ones.”544 With this, again, he is talking about the group and its battle with the government, whereas in the previous remark it was its battle with the media. His remarks on attacks on Islam in general are therefore alternated and partly overshadowed by remarks on the battle Boko Haram is waging in Nigeria. Whereas naming defending Islam as the key motive and goal of the group means there may be an international factor, naming defending oneself against the government and local media makes it into a domestic issue again. Shekau is against the media that are “helping the government in fighting us”, he says, which does not have a clear religious component. So in the three videos or statements looked into

540 ‘Boko Haram: No More Dialogue With Unbelievers’, The War Now Continues’, SaharaReporters. 541 Ibid. 542 ‘UPDATED WITH FULL TRANSCRIPT: Boko Haram Releases Video On ThisDay Bombing, Threatens To Attack VOA, Guardian, Daily Trust, SaharaReporters, SaharaReporters, http://saharareporters.com/video/updated-full- transcript-boko-haram-releases-video-thisday-bombing-threatens-attack-voa-guardia, 1 May 2012. 543 UPDATED WITH FULL TRANSCRIPT: Boko Haram Releases Video On ThisDay Bombing, Threatens To Attack VOA, Guardian, Daily Trust, SaharaReporters, SaharaReporters,. 544 Ibid.

117 now, there is a mixture of anti-government, anti-Christian, anti-western, vengeance, and self-defence frames. What is interesting, finally, about the quote on attacking schools, is that Shekau claims Boko Haram will attack these schools as a retaliatory measure against the government. This seems to oppose the general idea that Boko Haram attacks these schools because they are places of western education. However, one could argue that it does not oppose this so much, since the government is comprised of false Muslims and Christians, and is democratic and western, as are its schools — and therefore attacking these schools because the group is against the government is actually the same as attacking these schools because the group is against western education. In August 2013 Shekau claimed responsibility for a series of attacks. He seems to feel triumphant, and states: “You soldiers have claimed that you are powerful, that we have been defeated, that we are mad people; but how can a mad man successfully coordinate recent attacks in Gamboru, in Malumfatori, slaughter people in Biu, kill in Gwoza and in Bama where soldiers fled under our heavy fire power. We have killed countless soldiers and we are going to kill more. Our strength and firepower has surpassed that of Nigeria. Nigeria is no longer a big deal as far as we are concerned. We can now comfortably confront the United States of America.”545 Apparently, next to challenging Obama, he also challenged French President François Hollande and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.546 This is memorable because Shekau stated the United States as another enemy, and as a possible target. Before, it was about western influence or the west in general that was the bad in the diagnostic frames (if it were not the Nigerian authorities), now he specifically named the United States as having a more pronounced role in the narrative. Next, in a September 2013 video which was brought out to show that Shekau was not dead, as was stated by the Nigerian authorities and looked into by the United States.547 In this video, again, Shekau mentioned the United States, as well as other western countries — and even the late Margaret Thatcher: “This is to the people, who call themselves Nigerians; it is Shekau that is speaking since you said he has died. Here is something new (Shouts). It is me that has come out to counter the lies and speculations. I believe you are watching and listening to me. Sagir Musa (spokesman of JTF) will be sad now and really angry. I pity Sagir Musa. This is just beginning of another war that will befall Nigeria. It is just starting and new beginning. I know Oladipo Diya will be sad, Jonathan too will

545 Ola’Audu, ‘Boko Haram leader laughs in new video, claims sect winning war against Nigerian military’, Premium Times, http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/142626-boko-haram-leader-laughs-in-new-video-claims-sect- winning-war-against-nigerian-military.html, 12 August 2013. 546 Precious Igbonwelundu and Adamu Sulaimon, ‘Boko Haram leader Shekau dares Obama in video’, The Nation, http://thenationonlineng.net/new/boko-haram-leader-shekau-dares-obama-in-video/, 13 August 2013. 547 Tokunbo Adedoja and Muhammad Bello, ‘Nigeria: U.S. Probes Shekau’s Death Report’, THISDAY, http://allafrica.com/stories/201308220219.html, 22 August 2013.

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not be happy but angry, Obama will be angry, Benjamin Netanyahu (Prime Minister) of Israel will be sad too. Francois Hollande (French President) will be angry, Queen Elizabeth is angry. Margaret Thatcher will also be angry and all infidels throughout the world.”548 In December 2013, a new video featuring Shekau was released, in which he threatened some western countries and their leaders, similar to those in the September 2013 video.549 “We are Jama’atu Ahlissunnah Lidda’awati Wal Jihad whose leader is Abubakar Ash-Shakawy, who in the past committed a lot of infractions but when he followed the Quran and the prophet’s teachings, today even Obama fears him, Francois Hollande fears him, Benjamin Netanyahu fears him, the whole world fears him.”550 He went on to focus specifically on the United States: ”You are boasting you are going to join forces with Nigeria to crush us, bloody liars. You couldn’t crush us when we were carrying sticks, is it today when we storm your barracks and commandeer your things one after the other, killed you in numbers that you are going to crush us?” The man believed to be Shekau continued saying in the video. “Where were you when your World Trade Centre was bombed, including your Pentagon when you were faced on your turf? […]By Allah we will never stop. Don’t think we will stop in Maiduguri, tomorrow you will see us in America itself. Our operation is not confined to Nigeria; it is for the whole world.”551 As the above has shown, over time Shekau started mentioning foreign and specifically western governments and leaders more. Diagnostic frames varied from seeing the Nigerian authorities, Christians, and the West as the adversarial. Their prognostic frames were never precise, but did shift from ‘taking on the Nigerian authorities’ to ‘taking on the United States’, and from creating an Islamic state in (northern) Nigeria to moving their operation to “the whole world”. In the sense of motivational frames, this shift meant an even greater emphasis on mobilizing in order to defend the Islamic religion, which was under attack — not just by Nigerian authorities anymore (who in some cases were Muslim, only ‘false’ ones) but by the West. The use of radical religious frames makes these frames somewhat rigid. There might be some room for interpretation, but the general ideas of good and bad remain the same. They are also rather exclusive — it is ‘true Muslims’ versus the rest, the unbelievers. The frames are so radical that they are not likely to become a master frame, to be taken over and used in everyday language by many. They could inspire already radicalized youths and other radical Islamic groups, but Shekau’s videos are so

548 ‘VIDEO: Boko Haram Leader Mocks Jonathan, Obama, Netanyahu, Hollande, Queen Elizabeth And Promises New War’, Abiyamo, http://www.abiyamo.com/video-boko-haram-leader-mocks-jonathan-obama-netanyahu-hollande- queen-elizabeth-promises-new-war/, 27 September 2013. 549 ‘Boko Haram Threatens To Attack U.S. In New Video’, Channels TV, http://www.channelstv.com/2013/12/12/boko-haram-threatens-to-attack-u-s-in-new-video/, 12 December 2013. 550 Ibid. 551 ‘Boko Haram Threatens To Attack U.S. In New Video’, Channels TV.

119 radical that instead of moving people to adopt the frames used, they inspire disgust or disdain. It could well be that these videos are not intended to move other people to support Boko Haram in this stage of the conflict, but to mock and instil fear.

As set out above, Boko Haram uses certain frames to legitimize its actions and help mobilize support, and more recently more to create a name for itself, and instil fear, while the United States uses certain frames to delegitimize Boko Haram and legitimize its own actions, meaning intervening in Nigeria — because of humanitarian reasons, for example. But of course, these two do not exist in a vacuum. The framing actors are part of a social world in which they interact, and the frames they created have an effect on that world — which was their intention, but they may also have unintended effects (if they are unsuccessful frames), or at least inspire a counter framing response by another actor, which, if successful, decreases the effectiveness of the original frame. It is this interaction of frames by the United States and Boko Haram and how this may have affected the course of the conflict, and perhaps lead to an increase in radical Islamist violence, that is assessed below.

The effect of the United States on Boko Haram violence

As was shown in the above, except for condemning Boko Haram, there was not a clear line of framing the group in the United States. However, the United States has been involved in the conflict from the beginning, and moving more to front stage after the bombing of the UN headquarters in Abuja. The effect of this seems to have been that Boko Haram started naming the United States and other western countries and leaders more in its videos, which also made more sense at the time that the group actually got worldwide attention. So while Boko Haram, as its unofficial name indicates, has always been against western influences, in their earlier years they mainly spoke of domestic issues and establishing an Islamic state in northern Nigeria, or sometimes in the whole of Nigeria, and of the illegitimacy of the Nigerian government. The targeting of international goals such as the UN headquarters and talking of hitting the United States only came later. Studies have shown that increased hatred of the United States has often meant increased liking of groups such as Al Qaeda (perhaps as to at least take a clear side?), and since the United States started its war on terror the percentage of people throughout the MENA region that is positive about the United States has dropped.552 Among Nigerian Muslims, interestingly, support for Al Qaeda and Bin Laden remained high in 2010, with 48% approving of Bin Laden and 49% of Al Qaeda, while it had gone down in

552 Karin von Hippel (2008) ‘A Counterradicalization Strategy for a new U.S. Administration’ in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 618, 183.

120 other states polled.553 Therefore, next to the nature of repression of Boko Haram by the Nigerian authorities actually steering people and public opinion towards the group, the intervention of the United States both in Nigeria and in Iraq and Afghanistan may actually steer people and public opinion towards the group. Possibly, more recently, the economic crisis strengthened negative perceptions of the West. As chapter VIII has shown, unemployment rates have gone up in Nigeria since the crisis started, especially in the northeast region. Concluding, the increased involvement of the United States in dealing with Boko Haram has led to extra justification possibilities for the group. There was already relative deprivation of the mainly Muslim north and anger towards the government, combined with radical Islam providing an answer to that, and the involvement of the United States adds anti-western frames, which fit perfectly into the ideas the Muslim’s fight against oppression, to the equation.

553 ‘Osama bin Laden Largely Discredited Among Muslim Publics in Recent Years’, Pew Research Global Attitudes Project.

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XI. Conclusion

In this thesis the issue of Boko Haram and how it has been spiralling out of control has been looked into. The research question was: How can the increase of Islamist violence in Nigeria, focusing on the case of Boko Haram, be explained in part against the background of intensified U.S.-Nigerian cooperation concerning counterterrorism? While religion is of course important in explaining this, in order not to put too much emphasis on this and predetermine what exactly Boko Haram was — a religious group — the issue has been assessed by making use of approaches that are found within social movement theory. These were a political process perspective, a relative deprivation perspective, a resource mobilization perspective and finally a framing perspective which focused on the influence of the United States. First, the findings from all of these approaches are summarized. Then, a comprehensive answer to the question of how the increase of Islamist violence by Boko Haram can be explained, is given. For this, the different approaches are linked together.

The first perspective was the political process perspective, which used theories of Hafez and Wictorowicz, which assert that the nature of state repression and the degree of access to institutionalized politics are vital in explaining a social movement turning violent. This study found that these factors do indeed seem to be one of the causes for the Boko Haram problem. First, it appears that access to institutionalized politics is low, with a small and strongly intertwined political and business elite calling the shots. There is a complicated power sharing system in Nigerian politics which is also highly volatile. This results in a difficult situation for newcomers in institutionalized politics. It is, however, not easy to establish whether this has been of effect on the rise of Boko Haram. Second, the nature of state repression vis-à-vis Boko Haram has been rather indiscriminate and reactive. The first major example of reactiveness is presented by the events of 2009 in which the situation got so out of hand that over a hundred people were killed and many Boko Haram members and their leader Mohammed Yusuf were killed extrajudicially. This was after the group had already built a strong base and only created a feeling of vengeance among the group, worsening the problem. These events also showed the indiscriminate nature of state repression, as many suspects were killed without investigating, which is likely to have led to loss of innocent or relatively innocent lives. Reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have shown that Nigerian security forces have kept up their harsh methods up until today. With this, they have only fed the anti- government narrative of Boko Haram and aggravated grievances among the population. Finally, the harsh crackdowns also led to an increased number of civilian casualties, both by Boko Haram and by the security forces.

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The second approach, the relative deprivation perspective, argues that grievances stemming from a group feeling relatively deprived, meaning a situation of perceived inequality, lie at the root of mobilization and the formation of social movements. For this study it unfortunately proved impossible to assess this perception of inequality because there was not enough data available on the matter. Therefore, under the assumption that actual, measurable inequality says something about the likeliness of the existence of perceived inequality, measurements of actual ‘objective’ inequality were used. While not every measurement for inequality provides a clear picture, meaning that not all of them put together show that the Muslim north and specifically north-east of Nigeria is relatively deprived vis-à-vis the South in all cases, it is clear that the north and particularly the north-east are generally less developed. Income in those regions is lower than in the south, just as employment rates are higher. The health care situation is particularly poor in the north-east region of the country. Literacy rates are low throughout almost the entire northern part of Nigeria. Finally, the income inequality in the country in general is high. These points have led to grievances, as are often voiced by the population. They have also been leading to various communal conflicts, which supports the idea that these grievances are felt. Various scholars also subscribe to the idea that the fact that the relative deprivation on the above-mentioned aspects can be found along religious lines is an important aspect in explaining the issue of Boko Haram.554 How big the effect of the relative deprivation of the north and of significant segments of the population is, is difficult to establish. At the very least it is clear that the existence of this kind of inequality makes for a fertile soil for Boko Haram to grow, to recruit, and spread its message. Third was the resource mobilization perspective. It asserts that it is the access to resources and a group’s options for mobilizing those resources that are vital to explaining the dynamic of movement formation and development. Boko Haram has long had good access to material resources. In 2002, when it was established, it received funding and property. It kept receiving money and weapons from Islamist and jihadist groups throughout the Muslims world. It reportedly also received funding from Nigerian nationals, including politicians. The group also produces material resources themselves through for example robbery and kidnapping. It knows how to put their fungible material resources to use in acquiring other resources such as human resources. For human resources, they receive skills and training from Islamist and Jihadist groups in other states, such as AQIM. Boko Haram also recruits many youths in the northeast region of Nigeria but also in the bordering states of Chad, Niger, and Cameroon. The leader is an important human resource as well, and the shift from Mohammed Yusuf to Abubakar Shekau, who is more violent, has had a great impact on the group’s tactics and the dynamic of the issue. Concerning moral resources, the group used to have those, because they represented a genuine Islamist revival and genuine grievances present in the population. Also, their alignment with other Islamist groups may have

554 Forest (2012), Rogers (2012), Olojo (2013). Also see Seul (1999), which is not about Boko Haram but describes the link between religion and RD more in general.

123 enhanced their moral resources among certain groups. In northern Nigeria, for example, liking of Al Qaeda has been high. However, as Boko Haram’s methods got harsher and their victims started to include larger numbers of children and Muslims, they lost moral resources quickly, supposedly even among other Islamist groups. Boko Haram’s social-organizational resources include their networks, which as the short recap of the other resource types has shown, they know how to put to good use. The group’s cultural resources include their ideas and use of framing. The group may have lost touch here, with their ideas becoming more radical and less clear and the videos showing an increasingly disturbed Shekau. However, in conclusion, it seems that the group has learned a great deal and has the social-organizational, human and material resources to accumulate more resources. This wide array of resource accumulation practices the group has made it difficult to effectively quell the flow of resources that is going in their direction. The account also shows that resource mobilization has indeed been vital to explaining the dynamics of the Boko Haram conflict; had they not received funding and training to the extent that they have, they could probably never have launched this type of insurgency. Finally, the framing perspective is about the use of frames and the interaction between different frames, and how this can affect the dynamics of a movement’s acitivity. This perspective was used to assess the role of the United States on the Boko Haram issue. It shows that Boko Haram at first only mentioned domestic politics as a reason for their actions, and how it wished to establish an Islamic state in Nigeria or perhaps only in northern Nigeria. As they received more international attention since their 2011 UN headquarters bombing, this started changing. From 2012, Shekau called on the West in his videos, naming leaders such as Hollande and Obama. He spoke to the United States and Obama repeatedly and asserted that Boko Haram was ready to take on the United States. While the group has always been anti-western- as their calling name suggests — they did not use these kinds of anti-western frames as much earlier on. It does seem that the increased involvement of the United States in Nigeria, for example training Nigerian security forces, has shifted Boko Haram’s attention there, and created a new frame for them to use; that of an attack on Islam by the West, and a need to defend oneself against ‘imperialism’.

Of course, none of these approaches can explain the rise of Boko Haram and how they became so violent, and their violence so widespread, on its own. All these approaches taken together still do not present a complete picture answer, since it is of course highly complicated. However, looking at the approaches that were studied here, and combining them, gives some serious insight into how a small group of highly religious youths turned into a rather professional Jihadist organization. The first perspective, concerning state repression, is very important. It is one of the key points in explaining why and when Boko Haram turned so violent, and turned into something like a professional

124 terrorist organization. State repression contributed to this in multiple ways. It had helped Boko Haram gain moral resources, because it actually accidentally bestowed legitimacy on them through validating their anti-government frames. The nature of state repression is also what led members of the group towards other Jihadist organizations that gave them material and human resources, and the technical know-how to plan their attacks, which is of course vital. It is not that Boko Haram members otherwise would have not turned to these groups — they were already in contact — but the nature of state repression altered the dynamic of the conflict, speeding up the road to violence. Relative deprivation also leads to more options for recruitment, thus adding to human resources. It also adds to moral resources, to the legitimacy of Boko Haram. If Boko Haram used the ‘right’ frames, ones that fit in the culture and existing circumstances, which they did with their anti-government framing, claiming the government was corrupt and wrong, moral resources went up because the government acted exactly as the people expected them to, and as Boko Haram predicted them to. Interestingly, taking grievances towards the state a bit further to include weak state institutions, these weak institutions make resource mobilization both more difficult and easier. Money wiring and communications may be difficult because of power shortages. But acquiring money and weapons through other means is quite easy because of the weakness of police and military. Furthermore, Boko Haram, the Nigerian state, and the United States all use frames to legitimate their actions. The frames used by both the United States and Nigeria provide extra ammunition for Boko Haram in justifying its actions. What this leads up to is that the existence of grievances related to relative deprivation and an overall failing state, combined with Islamic revivalism in the region, had created a fertile soil for groups such as Boko Haram to grow. Then, the state repression came late — it was reactive — and was harsh and indiscriminate, things that led to a wish for vengeance in the group and an affirmation of the anti- government frames of Boko Haram, leading to increased legitimacy of the group. The flight of the remaining members led to increased resources — social-organizational, cultural, moral, human and material. It also led to a radicalization process within the group because of increased isolation and a lack of encountering other ideas, even more so than they would have experienced before — the social- psychological perspective. Because of increased state repression options for framing, creating legitimacy and gaining more resources also improved for the group. Finally, there is of course also the influence of individuals: the personality of Shekau has played a role in the path to extreme violence that Boko Haram has taken, as has the fact that Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian Ijaw, is now Nigeria’s President. So essentially, grievances about a failed state and massive inequality along religious lines, plus the nature of state repression are at the core of the rise of Boko Haram. These influenced the access to resources for the group, and now they have established a wide array of repertoires to maintain or achieve

125 these resources. Of course, their ideology matters as well, but this could not have grown out to what it has become today in any environment. As was stated, their hard-line ideology provides an answer, and a direction, to youths who are deprived — and this deprivation is largely along religious lines.

Turning back to the research question, this thesis has found that the influence of the United States — and of their cooperation with the Nigerian authorities — has not been particularly big. Especially more recently, most of Boko Haram’s violence has been restricted to the far north-east of Nigeria, where they are … locals. This hardly makes it a global problem, as the United States had indicated by naming the group a foreign terrorist organization. The region is also quite inaccessible and the United States does not have any ‘boots on the ground’ there, so they do not influence the situation in this manner. And while the United States has various programmes directed at Boko Haram, most of these concern training Nigerian security forces on a relatively small scale. The United States does, however, especially since the April 2014 Chibok kidnappings, take centre stage in condemning the group. This has had some influence on the dynamics of the Boko Haram conflict, with Shekau naming the West as the group’s and Islam’s nemesis more often in his more recent videos. Perhaps the United States’ attention to the problem may actually mean something in the future, now that they eyes of the world are on Nigeria and there is more pressure to deal with Boko Haram. However, up until now the statements made by leaders of various Western states appear to merely be words. And nevertheless, as this thesis has shown, the rise of Boko Haram has many different causes. There are the root causes of poverty and general underdevelopment of the northern part of Nigeria, also as compared to the southern part, and the fact that this inequality can be found largely along religious lines — issues to which radical Islam could then be the answer. Later on, the group had accumulated lots of resources, of which their networks and skills and know-how are very important for continuing the violence. Finally, the way that the Nigerian authorities have dealt with the issue so far has not decreased, but seemingly only increased the violence, and also contributed to the death toll directly through security forces’ human rights abuses. All of this make the situation a difficult one to deal with, especially if the outlook would be to find a durable solution to the violence. As chapter V has shown, the north and specifically north-east of Nigeria have seen various violent, radical Islamic groups arise in the last couple of decades, pointing to longstanding issues that mean that there is room for them. Therefore, a long-term solution to radical Islamic violence in Nigeria, both by Boko Haram and similar groups, may still be far away.

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Appendix: timeline of Boko Haram attacks

This list features all of Boko Haram’s attacks from the group’s return in mid-2010 until June 2014. The timeline starts here, since this is when the group started in its present form. The foundations for this had already been laid in the 2009 riots, but reports on these events and the number of casualties among security forces and civilians are unclear. These events are described in chapter V. The main source were timelines by IRIN (see bibliography). These were clarified and supplemented by searching Nigerian newspapers online through OnlineNewspapers.com. Particularly some of the country’s largest newspapers such as Premium Times and Vanguard were used. The BBC, CNN, and The Guardian have also been consulted. Finally, reports by NGO’s such as Amnesty International completed the list. The reason that news reports and timelines provided by NGO’s and UN organizations have been used instead of official statements by Nigerian authorities, is that these tend to be untrustworthy or conflicting, with police officials stating different numbers of casualties than military officials. They also tend to exaggerate the number of Boko Haram fighters killed during the attack and downplay the number of security officials killed. The sources used often include different statements and eyewitness accounts, creating a more complete image. Furthermore, there is no claim of this list being exhaustive. In certain periods there were so many attacks, that some may have received less attention. These events are underreported and information available tends to be diffuse and unreliable. This is why the focus has been on attacks in which people were killed or severely injured. Next to that, abductions have also been included, since these are quite rare and tend to have a great impact, and therefore are documented well enough. It is also often impossible to state with certainty that an attack has indeed been carried out by a Boko Haram cell. There have been other groups, for example organized criminals, that use Boko Haram as a cover for their operations. Only attacks of which there was strong suspicion or evidence that the group was involved, and those for which Boko Haram claimed responsibility, are included. Sometimes not all spaces in the overview could be filled in due to a lack of information. Also, the reports on the death toll of an attack tend to be diffuse. One column states the death toll and the number of injured in more detail, the other just gives the exact number, and if not available, the mean of the lowest and highest reported numbers. Finally, it has to be taken into account that some attacks in 2010 and 2011, when Boko Haram was less well-known, went unreported, or unattributed to the group. Later on, people could quickly point to Boko Haram (sometimes even if it was not them) because they and their methods were known. These kinds of things may have led to a slight bias in the overview, but the general picture still holds.

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Number of Boko Haram attacks and resulting deaths 2010-2014 per quarter

Period Number of Number of deaths attacks

1st quarter 2010 0 0 2nd quarter 2010 0 0 3rd quarter 2010 2 16 4th quarter 2010 8 125 TOTAL 2010 10 141

1st quarter 2011 4 11 2nd quarter 2011 11 78 3rd quarter 2011 9 60 4th quarter 2011 30 274 TOTAL 2011 54 423

1st quarter 2012 54 362 2nd quarter 2012 42 255 3rd quarter 2012 24 185 4th quarter 2012 26 164 TOTAL 2012 139 966

1st quarter 2013 27 159 2nd quarter 2013 15 307 3rd quarter 2013 25 498 4th quarter 2013 14 117 TOTAL 2013 81 1081

1st quarter 2014 19 523 2nd quarter 2014 30 921 TOTAL FIRST HALF 2014 49 1444 TOTAL 333 4055

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Attacks by Boko Haram 2010 - 2014

Type of attack/ Number of people Death Date State Place Target methods injured/ killed toll

2010 12 people killed, including 7 10-2010 Borno Gunfire policemen 12

4-5 people killed, 07-09-2010 Bauchi Prison Prison raid, gunfire 700+ inmates freed 4

06-10-2010 Borno Maiduguri Politician Gunfire 2 guards killed 2

06-10-2010 Borno Maiduguri Politician Gunfire 1 politician killed 1

Gunfire, burning 12-10-2010 Borno Maiduguri Police station down building 3 policemen injured

24-12-2010 Plateau Church Bomb 80 killed 80

Gunfire, burning 25-12-2010 Borno Maiduguri Church down building 6 killed, 25 injured 6

BH critics, 29-12-2010 Borno Maiduguri politicians Gunfire 8 killed 8 5-8 people killed, Gunfire, burning including several 30-12-2010 Borno Police down building policemen 6

Bar near army 10-30 killed, civilians 31-12-2010 Abuja FCT Abuja barracks Bomb and soldiers 20

2011

03-01-2011 Borno Maiduguri Police Gunfire 1 policeman killed 1

1 politician and 4-8 28-01-2011 Borno Politician Gunfire others killed 7

02-03-2011 Borno Maiduguri Police Gunfire 2 policemen killed 2

Muslim cleric 13-03-2011 Borno Maiduguri critical of BH Gunfire 1 killed 1 Hotels, cattle 24/25-4- market, transport 2011 Borno Maiduguri hub Bombs 3+ killed, 15+ injured 3

17-05-2011 Borno Maiduguri Policeman Gunfire 1 killed 1 Police station, police barracks 8 killed, including 4 27-05-2011 Borno Damboa and bank Gunfire policemen 8

Beer garden in 14+ killed, 33 29-05-2011 Bauchi Bauchi military barracks Bombs injured 14

Muslim cleric 06-06-2011 Borno Biu critical of BH Gunfire 1 killed 1

Police stations, 07-06-2011 Borno Maiduguri church Bombs, gunfire 14+ killed 14

Police 16-06-2011 Abuja FCT Abuja headquarters Suicide bomber 2-8 killed 5

16-06-2011 northeast Bomb 3 children killed 3

20-06-2011 Borno Maiduguri Bus stop Gunfire 1 civilian killed 1

Police stations, 7 killed, including 5 20-06-2011 Katsina Kankara bank Gunfire, bombs policemen 7

25+ killed, many 26-06-2011 Borno Maiduguri Beer parlour Bomb injured 25

Bar near police 03-07-2011 Borno Maiduguri barracks Bomb 5 killed 5

2/3-07- 2011 Borno Maiduguri Gunfire 5 killed 5

06-07-2011 Borno Maiduguri Military patrol IED, gun battle 3 soldiers injured

3 policemen and 1 19-08-2011 Borno Maiduguri Police Gunfire civilian killed 4 12-16 killed, Police stations and including 7 25-08-2011 Adamawa Gombi banks Gunfire, bombs policemen 14

23-25 killed, 100+ 26-08-2011 Abuja FCT Abuja UN building Suicide bomber injured 24

04-09-2011 Borno Maiduguri Muslim cleric Gunfire 1 killed 1 Police station, 7 killed, including 4 12-09-2011 Bauchi Misau bank Gunfire, bombs policemen 7

13-09-2011 Borno Maiduguri Army Gunfire 4 soldiers injured

01-10-2011 Borno Maiduguri Civilians Gunfire 2 killed 2

01-10-2011 Borno Maiduguri Military vehicle Gunfire, bombs 3 civilians killed 3

03-10-2011 Borno Maiduguri Market Gunfire 3 civilians killed 3

17-10-2011 Borno Maiduguri Politician Gunfire 1 killed 1

23-10-2011 Borno Maiduguri Journalist Gunfire 1 killed 1

Police station, 1 policeman, 1 bank 23-10-2011 Kaduna Saminaka banks Gunfire, bombs security guard killed 2

23-10-2011 Kaduna Katari Market Gunfire 2 killed 2

25-10-2011 Yobe Damaturu Policeman Gunfire 1 killed 1

Muslim cleric who cooperated with 29-10-2011 Borno Maiduguri security forces Gunfire 1 killed 1

02-11-2011 Borno Maiduguri Soldier Gunfire 1 killed 1

Damaturu, Security forces 04-11-2011 Yobe Potisukum and churches Gunfire, bombs Around 150 killed 150

Borno governor 04-11-2011 Borno Maiduguri convoy Bomb No casualties

04-11-2011 Borno Maiduguri JTF headquarters Suicide bombers No casualties

No casualties by Boko Haram (but 2 dead and 14 injured 04-11-2011 Kaduna Zonkwa Church Gunfire in following riots)

No casualties and 09-11-2011 Borno Maina Police station Bomb injuries Churches, police, beer parlour, shopping complex, Gunfire, bombs, local gov't burning down Buildings burned, no 26-11-2011 Yobe Geidam buildings, bank buildings casualties, 4 injured

27-11-2011 Borno Public servant Gunfire 1 killed 1 1 soldier, 1 Police buildings policeman, 1 civilian 04-12-2011 Bauchi Azare and banks Gunfire, bombs killed 3

04-12-2011 Borno Maiduguri Wedding party Gunfire 2 civilians killed 2

07-12-2011 Kaduna Kaduna Market Bombs 8-10 civilians killed 9

Military 13-12-2011 Borno Maiduguri checkpoint Bomb, gunfire 10 killed, 30 injured 10

3-4 air force 16-12-2011 Kano Kano Military school Gunfire personnel killed 3

22-12-2011 Borno Maiduguri Bombs 20 killed 20

4 policemen and 1 22-12-2011 Yobe Potiskum Police building Gunfire, bombs civilian killed 5 Gunfire, bombs, shootout with 7 policemen and 2 22-12-2011 Yobe Damaturu security forces soldiers killed 9

25-12-2011 Niger Madalla Civilians, church Bomb 37 killed 37

25-12-2011 Plateau Jos Church Bomb 1 policeman killed 1

25-12-2011 Yobe Damaturu Secret police Suicide bomber 3 secret police killed 3

28-12-2011 Adamawa Mubi Beer parlour Gunfire, bombs 15 injured

Military 4 Muslims leaving 30-12-2011 Borno Maiduguri checkpoint Gunfire, bombs mosque killed 4

31-12-2011 Jonathan declares state of emergency in four states

2012

1 civilian killed, 1 03-01-2012 Jigawa Birniwa Police station Gunfire policeman injured 1 05-01-2012 Gombe Gombe Church Gunfire 6 killed, 10 injured 6

05-01-2012 Adamawa Mubi Hotel Gunfire 5 killed 5

06-01-2012 Adamawa Yola Church Gunfire 8 killed 8 Christian Igbo meeting (mourning hotel 06-01-2012 Adamawa Mubi attack of 5-1) Gunfire 17+ killed 17

Banker and his 06-01-2012 Adamawa Mubi Banker Gunfire driver killed 2

Christian poker 07-01-2012 Borno Biu players Gunfire 3 killed, 7 injured 3

Secret police 1 secret police, 1 09-01-2012 Borno Biu officer Gunfire civilian killed 2

8 killed, including 5 10-01-2012 Yobe Damaturu Beer garden Gunfire policemen 8

11-01-2012 Yobe Potiskum Christians Gunfire 4 killed 4

2 killed, 1 policeman 13-01-2012 Adamawa Yola Beer parlour Gunfire injured 2

13-01-2012 Gombe Gombe Beer parlour Gunfire 2 killed, 1 injured 2

Military 17-01-2012 Borno Maiduguri checkpoint Gunfire 2 soldiers killed 2

Multiple explosions (at different police 151 civilians, 29 stations), suicide policemen, 6 public 20-01-2012 Kano Kano Police bomber servants killed 186

26-01-2012 Kano Kano German engineer Kidnapping

26-01-2012 Kano Kano Bus station Explosion 2 injured

27-01-2012 Kano Kano Police station Gunfire 1 policeman killed 1

29-01-2012 Kaduna Rigasa Police Gunfire 2 policemen killed 2 Gamboru 30-01-2012 Borno Ngala Gunfire 2 killed, 2 injured 2

30-01-2012 Kano Kano Police station Gunfire 2+ killed 2

30-01-2012 Yobe Potiskum Church Gunfire 1 guard killed 1

Secret police 05-02-2012 Yobe Damaturu officer Gunfire 1 killed 1

Multiple explosions at different locations, suicide 07-02-2012 Kaduna Kaduna Army barracks bomber Several injured

09-02-2012 Kano Kano Boko Haram critic Gunfire 1 BH critic killed 1

10-02-2012 Yobe Potiskum Christian traders Gunfire 2 killed, 2 injured 2

10-02-2012 Yobe Potiskum Muslim cleric Gunfire 1 killed 1

1 bomb expert killed as he tried to 14-02-2012 Kaduna Kaduna Military basis Bomb dismantle bomb 1

Prison raid, freeing 15-02-2012 Kogo Koton Karifi Prison 119 inmates

17-02-2012 Niger Minna Police Gunfire 3 killed, 1 injured 3

19-02-2012 Niger Suleja Church Bomb Several injured

20-02-2012 Borno Maiduguri Civilians, market Gunfire, explosives 30+ killed 30

Military 22-02-2012 Kano Kano checkpoint Gunfire, explosives No casualties

23-02-2012 Kano Kano Policemen Gunfire 4 policemen killed 4

23-02-2012 Niger Lapai Policemen Gunfire 2 policemen killed 2

24-02-2012 Gombe Gombe Police station Gunfire 14 killed and burned 14 24-02-2012 Kano Kano Mosque Gunfire 5 killed 5

3 policemen killed, 2 26-02-2012 Adamawa Shuwa Police station Gunfire injured 3

26-02-2012 Plateau Jos Church Suicide bomber 3 killed 3

28-02-2012 Bauchi Jama'ara Police station Gunfire, explosives 3 killed 3 Guard at home senior military 02-03-2012 Kano Kano officer Gunfire 1 guard killed 1

Home of senior 05-03-2012 Kano Kano military officer Gunfire 2 guard killed 2

Customs chief's 1 killed (customs 06-03-2012 Yobe Potiskum home Gunfire chief) 1

Prison, police 06-03-2012 Borno Konduga station Gunfire 3 injured British and Italian hostage killed in 08-03-2012 Sokoto Sokoto rescue attempt 2 killed 2

Police station, 08-03-2012 Gombe Ashaka banks Gunfire 3 policemen killed 3

Senior police 10-03-2012 Adamawa Yola officer Gunfire 1 policeman killed 1

11-03-2012 Plateau Jos Church Suicide bomber 10-11 killed 10

12-03-2012 Kano Mandawari Police station Gunfire No casualties

Military 2 policemen, 1 13-03-2012 Kano Kano checkpoint Gunfire soldier killed 3 3 BH members killed, some sources mention 3 others (police officer & 2 25-03-2012 Borno Maiduguri JTF Gunfire friends) 3

Explosives, gunfire, 29-03-2012 Yobe Damagun Police station freeing prisoners 1 policeman killed 1

Bank, police 30-03-2012 Borno Askira Uba station Gunfire, explosives 4 killed 4 Clashes after JTF 1 soldier, 1 secret 31-03-2012 Kogi Okene raid on BH hideout Shootout police officer killed 2

05-04-2012 Borno Maiduguri Civilians, market Gunfire 7 killed 7

Church (during 08-04-2012 Kaduna Kaduna Easter) Bomb 41 killed 41

Church (during 08-04-2012 Plateau Jos Easter) Bomb Several injured Banki (near Cameroonian Immigration and Gunfire, burning 10-04-2012 Borno border) customs down posts 10+ killed 10 Community center showing football 12-04-2012 Yobe Potiskum match Gunfire 2 civilians killed 2

Bakery, on the 7-8 killed, including 20-04-2012 Borno Maiduguri street Gunfire 1 customs officer 7

7 killed in total (both 26-04-2012 Abuja FCT Abuja ThisDay Suicide bomber offices) 7

26-04-2012 Kaduna Kaduna ThisDay Suicide bomber

27-04-2012 Yobe Damaturu Police officer Gunfire 1 policeman killed 1

29-04-2012 Kano Kano University church Bomb, gunfire 20 killed 20

Senior police 30-04-2012 Taraba Jalingo officer's convoy Suicide bomber 11 killed, 20 injured 11

02-05-2012 Yobe Potiskum Civilians Gunfire 3 killed 3

03-05-2012 Yobe Potiskum Civilians, market Gunfire, explosives 34+ killed 34

7 killed, including 2 04-05-2012 Borno Kumshe Local jail Gunfire jail guards 7

3 killed, 4 injured, 05-05-2012 Borno Maiduguri Wedding party Gunfire including 2 soldiers 3

Gunfire, burning 2 policemen, 1 12-05-2012 Borno Maiduguri Police station down building civilian killed 3

Civilians, card 13-05-2012 Kano Kano players Gunfire 3 killed 3 23-05-2012 Sokoto Sokoto Police station Gunfire, shootout

26-05-2012 Yobe Potiskum Muslim cleric Gunfire 1 killed 1

Retired prison 26-05-2012 Yobe Potiskum guard Gunfire 1 killed 1

27-05-2012 Yobe Potiskum Shiites Gunfire 3 killed 3

Christian Igbo 28-05-2012 Adamawa Yola traders Gunfire 4 killed 4

2 bakers killed, 3 30-05-2012 Borno Maiduguri Bakery Gunfire others injured 2 German engineer (see 26 January) killed in rescue 1 civilian (hostage) 31-05-2012 Kano Kano attempt killed, 5 captors 1

Released few days 31-05-2012 Kwara Ilorin Italian engineer Kidnapping later

15-21 killed, 40-45 03-06-2012 Bauchi Bauchi Civilians, church Suicide bomber injured 18

Former police 05-06-2012 Kano Kano chief Gunfire 3 killed 3 1 policeman, 4 Police civilians killed, 08-06-2012 Borno Maiduguri headquarters Suicide bomber several injured 5

08-06-2012 Borno Maiduguri Civilians Bomb 1 killed 1

09-06-2012 Kano Tishama Customs officer Gunfire 1 killed 1 State Security 09-06-2012 Kano Hotoro Services officer Gunfire 1 killed 1

3 killed (police and 09-06-2012 Yobe Potiskum Police Gunfire civilians) 3

Suicide bomber, 10-06-2012 Plateau Jos Church gunfire 2 civilians killed 2

1 killed, several 10-06-2012 Borno Biu Church Gunfire injured 1

12-06-2012 Yobe Potiskum Lawyer Gunfire 1 killed 1 24+ killed, 125 17-06-2012 Kaduna Church Suicide bomber injured 24

10+ killed, 50 17-06-2012 Kaduna Kaduna Church Bomb injured 10 34 killed, including 3 Shootout security policemen and 1 19-06-2012 Yobe Damaturu forces and BH Shootout soldier 4

22-06-2012 Abuja FCT Abuja Nightclub Bomb No casualties

Prison raid, 40 24-06-2012 Yobe Damaturu inmates freed Gunfire 4 guards killed 4

1 policeman killed, 26-06-2012 Kano Kano Police Gunfire 17 BH members 1

3 policemen, 2 26-06-2012 Taraba Wukari Police Gunfire civilians killed 5

Construction 02-07-2012 Borno Maiduguri workers Gunfire 9 killed 9

03-07-2012 Abuja FCT Abuja Shopping mall Bomb No casualties

7/8-7-2012 Plateau Raids, civilians Gunfire 100+ killed 100

5 killed (the target 13-07-2012 Borno Maiduguri Muslim leader Suicide bomber survives) 5

Police No casualties, attack 16-07-2012 Yobe Damaturu headquarters Gunfire repelled

18-07-2012 State of emergency is lifted

Abandoned 3 killed, including 1 19-07-2012 Kano Kano factory Gunfire policeman 3

19-07-2012 Borno Maiduguri Civilians, market Gunfire 2 killed 2

22-07-2012 Bauchi Bauchi Bar area Bomb 1 killed, 10 injured 1

2 Indian nationals 25-07-2012 Borno Maiduguri Factory Gunfire killed 2

29-07-2012 Kano Kano Security forces Gunfire, shootouts 5 killed 5 At least 1 policeman killed, several 30-07-2012 Sokoto Sokoto Police stations Suicide bombers injured 1

03-08-2012 Yobe Potiskum Muslim leader Suicide bomber No casualties

06-08-2012 Kogi Okene Church Gunfire 19+ killed 19

06-08-2012 Kogi Okene Police van Gunfire 2 killed 2

Police station, No casualties, attack 19-08-2012 Yobe Damagun school Gunfire, explosives repelled

Military 19-08-2012 Kano Kano checkpoint Gunfire 1 soldier injured

26-08-2012 Yobe Damaturu Policeman Gunfire 1 policeman killed 1

4/5-09- northern Mobile phone Burning down, 2012 Nigeria towers explosives 15-25 killed 20

Civilians, board 16-09-2012 Bauchi Bauchi game players Gunfire 6 killed, 9 injured 6 1 security officer and 3 of his family 16-09-2012 Kano Kano Security officer Gunfire killed 4

Justice 17-09-2012 Borno Bama commissioner Gunfire 1 killed 1

Former prisons 17-09-2012 Bauchi Azare chief Gunfire 1 killed 1

23-09-2012 Bauchi Bauchi Civilians, church Suicide bomber 3 killed, 48 injured 3

Islamic boarding 30-09-2012 Kaduna Zaria school Bomb, gunfire 3 injured

Student housing Gunfire, slitting 2-10-2012* Adamawa Mubi area throats 40 killed 40

14-10-2012 Borno Maiduguri Christians Gunfire 3 killed 3

14-10-2012 Borno Maiduguri Local chief Gunfire 1 killed 1 Government buildings and 18-10-2012 Yobe Potiskum schools Gunfire, bombs 23 killed 23 20-10-2012 Yobe Potiskum Civilians Gunfire 8 killed 8

Military patrol 21-10-2012 Yobe Potiskum vehicle Bomb 6 soldiers killed 6

28-10-2012 Kaduna Kaduna Church Suicide bomber 2 civilians killed 2

Ex-general and 02-11-2012 Borno Maiduguri civil war hero Gunfire 1 killed 1

Local government Gunfire, burning 1 firefighter and 2 02-11-2012 Borno Damboa building down guards killed 3

04-11-2012 Kano Kawo Civilians Gunfire 3 killed 3

Gunfire, burning 04-11-2012 Yobe Fika Police, school down 2 policemen killed 2 Chinese construction 2 Chinese engineers 07-11-2012 Borno Benisheik company Gunfire killed 2

Gunfire, burning 09-11-2012 Yobe Buni Yadi Police, churches down 3 policemen killed 3

10-11-2012 Yobe Gaidam Christians Gunfire 5 killed 5 Security personnel's 21-11-2012 Borno Maiduguri houses Gunfire 5 children killed 5

11 killed, many 25-11-2012 Kaduna Jaji Church Car bombs injured 11

25-11-2012 Kano Kano Christians Gunfire 3 killed 3

01-12-2012 Borno Chibok Christians Gunfire 10 killed 10

Gamboru Border security 01-12-2012 Borno Ngala posts Gunfire 2 policemen killed 2

09-12-2012 Yobe Potiskum Police Gunfire 1 policeman killed 1

19-12- 2012** Katsina Rimi French national Kidnapping

Mobile phone 22-12-2012 Kano Kano companies Suicide bombers No casualties 6 Christians (including 1 pastor) 25-12-2012 Yobe Potiskum Christians Gunfire killed 6

28-12-2012 Borno Maiduguri Christians Gunfire 15 killed 15

Government Gunfire and 5 civilians, 2 28-12-2012 Adamawa Maiha buildings explosives policemen killed 7

1 policeman and 1 30-12-2012 Kano Bunkure Police station Bomb blast civilian killed 2

2013

Shootout BH and 13 BH members and 01-01-2013 Borno Maiduguri security forces Shootout, gunfire 1 soldier killed 1

2 policemen, 2 02-01-2013 Adamawa Song Police station civilians killed 4

Military 1 soldier, 1 04-01-2013 Borno Marte checkpoint Gunfire policeman killed 2

15-01-2013 Kano Policemen Gunfire 4 policemen killed 4

19-01- Nigerian troups 2 soldiers killed, 2013** Kogi bound for Mali Bomb several injured 2

Convoy of emir of 19-01-2013 Kano Kano 5 killed 5

21-01-2013 Borno Damboa Civilians, market Gunfire 18 civilians killed 18

22-01-2013 Kano Dakata Civilians Gunfire 5 civilians killed 5

23-01-2013 Borno Gwange area Civilians Beheading 5 civilians killed 5

27-01-2013 Borno Gajiganna Civilians 8 civilians killed 8

08-02-2013 Kano Kano Polio vaccinators Gunfire 10 vaccinators killed 10

North Korean 10-02-2013 Yobe Potiskum doctors Knives 3 doctors killed 3

15-02-2013 Borno Maiduguri Military vehicle Suicide bomber 1 soldier injured Civilians, construction workers, 1 security guard 16-02-2013 Bauchi Bauchi foreigners Kidnapping killed 1 2 civilians killed in shootout, other Series of attacks than that mostly and fights between Boko Haram Boko Haram and members, police February- Military and security forces, officers soldiers April 2013 Kano Kano police reports unclear killed 10

near Nigerian 19-02-2013 Cameroon border Civilians, foreign Kidnapping -

20-02-2013 Borno Maiduguri Military vehicle Explosion 2 civilians killed 2 Explosion. Followed by hours 1 civilian killed, 6 22-02-2013 Borno Maiduguri Military vehicle of gunfire soldiers injured 1

3 injured, including 1 28-02-2013 Borno Maiduguri Military vehicle Explosion soldier

Failed kidnapping 28-02-2013 Borno Maiduguri Foreign workers (using gunfire) 2 police guards killed 2 Gunfire, stealing arms and At least 1 soldier 03-03-2013 Borno Monguno Military barracks ammunition was killed 1 Video in which an informant appears Informant, to be beheaded by 05-03-2013 unknown government Boko Haram 1 killed 1

12-03-2013 Kano Kano Primary school Gunfire 4 teachers injured

15-03-2013 Kano Kano Judicial official Gunfire 1 killed 1

Prison raid, gunfire, 15-03-2013 Borno Gwoza Prison 170 inmates freed 1 civilian killed 1 22+ killed, 65 injured according to Kano state police, media states 22-70 18-03-2013 Kano Kano Civilians, bus park Suicide bomber killed 46 Prison, police station, bank, plus 15 other targets (state Prison raid, gunfire organizations' and grenades, 127 22-03-2013 Adamawa Ganye buildings) inmates freed 26 killed 26 4 policemen, 5 BH 11-04-2013 Yobe Babban Gida Police station Gunfire, shootout members killed 4 185+ (soldiers, insurgents, civilians) 19-04-2013 Borno Baga Military Gunfire, shootout killed 185

5 police officers, 20 25-04-2013 Yobe Gashua ShettimaJTF, police Ali station Gunfire, shootout BH members killed 5 Monguno, former Kidnapping. petroleum Released 3 days 03-05-2013 Borno Maiduguri minister later. -

Civilians. Church 05-05-2013 Adamawa Njilang and market. Gunfire 10 civilians killed 10 6 policemen, 14 prison staff, 2 Gunfire, grenades, soldiers and 4 07-05-2013 Borno Bama Military barracks burning civilians killed 26 Police station, court house, Around 5 police 07-05-2013 Nasarawa health center, Gunfire, grenades officers killed 5

14-05-2013 State of emergency is declared in Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa

15-05-2013 Large offensive against BH begins

7-13 killed, including Banks and police soldiers, policemen, 17-05-2013 Katsina stations and BH members 10

After this, no reports on BH attacks for some weeks

11-06-2013 Borno Maiduguri Civilians Gunfire 11-15 civilians killed 13 7 students, 2 School & military teachers killed, 3 16-06-2013 Yobe Damaturu checkpoint Gunfire soldiers injured 9

17-06-2013 Borno Maiduguri Students Gunfire 9 students killed 9 Civilians in farming village- many family 17-06-2013 Borno Alau Dam members of Gunfire 13 civilians killed 13

Burning churches, 17-06-2013 Borno Gwoza Christians slitting throat 1 clergyman killed 1 Several reported killed, details unclear (partly due Limankara, Civilians, in Gunfire to state-imposed 20-06-2013 Borno near Gwoza MOPOL camp (reportedly) phone blackout) 5

Explosives, petrol bombs, burning 30-06-2013 Borno Gwoza hills Civilians down buildings 10-15 killed 12 29 students, 1 teacher killed, 4 06-07-2013 Yobe Mamudo School Gunfire students injured 30

10-07-2013 Nigerian gov't states they are in ceasefire talks with BH

Clashes between Boko Haram and 5 civilian JTF 26-07-2013 Borno Mainok civilian JTF members killed 5 Clashes between Boko Haram and 20 civilians, 5 27-07-2013 Borno Dawashi civilian JTF vigilante killed 25

Civilians, beer 20-29 killed, many 29-07-2013 Kano Kano gardens Multiple explosions injured 24 1 policeman killed (+ 17 BH members), 2 04-08-2013 Borno Bama MOPOL base Gunfire soldiers injured 1 2 soldiers killed (+ 15 BH members), 20 04-08-2013 Borno Malam Fatori JTF base Gunfire missing 2

10-08-2013 Cross River Ngom Civilians Gunfire 12 killed 12

44+ people killed, 26 11-08-2013 Borno Konduga Mosque Gunfire injured 44

16-08-2013 Borno Damboa Police and civilians Gunfire 11 killed 11

19-08-2013 Security forces claim they have killed BH leader Shekau

Gamboru 21-08-2013 Borno Ngala Civilians Gunfire 4 killed, 8 injured 4

2 policemen killed (+ 21-08-2013 Borno Gwoza Police station Gunfire 7 BH members) 2

31-08-2013 Borno Yaguwa Civilians Gunfire 14 killed 14 Monguno 31-08-2013 Borno forrest Youth vigilantes Gunfire 24 killed, 34 missing 24

05-09-2013 Borno Gajiran Civilians, market Gunfire 15 killed 15

Bulabulin Civilians, governor 05-09-2013 Borno Ngawra aide Gunfire 5-9 killed 7

08-09-2013 Borno Benisheik Civilian JTF Gunfire 17 killed, 18 injured 17

2 policemen killed, 1 12-09-2013 Adamawa Ga'anda Police Gunfire injured 2 Baga- Maiduguri 40 soldiers killed, 65 13-09-2013 Borno road MNJTF Gunfire, ambush missing 40

Gamboru 15-09-2013 Borno Ngala Vigilante group Gunfire 17 vigilantes killed

Gunfire, slaughter, 17-09-2013 Borno Benisheik Civilians burning houses 142+ killed 142 3 police escorts, multiple bank officials killed, total 19-09-2013 Borno Damboa Bullion van Gunfire, robbery of 8 8

Bulabulin Gunfire, burning 20-09-2013 Borno Ngawra Civilians houses 14 killed 14

25-09-2013 A video surfaces in which BH leader Shekau is seen alive

Gunfire, burning 1 pastor and 2 of his 26-09-2013 Borno Dorawa Christians houses and church children killed 3

Gunfire, burning 28-09-2013 Borno Gava West Civilians houses 7 killed 7

College of 29-09-2013 Yobe Gujba Agriculture Gunfire 40-50 students killed 45

1 soldier killed, 3 02-10-2013 Borno Baga Niger soldiers Gunfire injured 1

Gunfire, slitting 1 nurse, 1 prison 06-10-2013 Borno Gwoza throat guard killed 2 near Cameroonian Motorists 20-10-2013 Borno border (probably civilian) 4 killed 4 At least 7 killed, including soldiers, policemen and 24-10-2013 Yobe Damaturu Military bases Gunfire civilians 7

Gunfire, burning 31-10-2013 Borno Bama Civilians houses 27 killed, 12 injured 27

02-11-2013 Borno Bama area Civilians, bus 13 killed 13

Bama-Mubi- Civilians, wedding 02-11-2013 Borno Banki road party Gunfire, slaughter 30 killed 30 11 km from Nigerian Kidnapping (using Priest was released 13-11-2013 Cameroon border French priest gunfire) later

1 policeman killed (+ 19-11-2013 Gombe Kwami Police Gunfire 3 or 4 BH members) 1

21-11-2013 Bauchi Bauchi Police Gunfire 4 policemen killed 4 Civilians. Alledgedly civilian 3-6 killed, many 21-11-2013 Adamawa Yola JTF members Gunfire injured 4

Gunfire, houses 29-11-2013 Borno Sabon Gari Civilians, market and shops burned 17 killed 17 Reports vary: ordinary fishermen or 30-11-2013 Borno Baga civilian JTF Gunfire 7 killed 7

Air force base, Gunfire, explosives. A large number of military baracks, Large-scale deaths on both sides Maiduguri coordinated attack reported; detailed International by around 300 BH information is 02-12-2013 Borno Maiduguri Airport members. unavailable.

2014

3 Muslims killed, 12 08-01-2014 Kano Kwankwaso Mosque Gunfire injured 3

17+ killed, many 14-01-2014 Borno Maiduguri Market Bomb injured 17

Gunfire, burning 26-01-2014 Borno Kawuri Civilians, market houses 52 killed 45

Waga Gunfire, bombs, 26-01-2014 Adamawa Chakawa Church burning houses 22 killed 22 11-02-2014 Borno Konduga Civilians Burning houses 39 killed 39 106+ killed, including villagers Christian town & from nearby village Izghe & fishing village, who drown when 15-02-2014 Borno Doron Baga male civilians fleeing 106 Military and security targets, 19-02-2014 Borno Bama emir's palace Suicide bombers 47-50 killed 47

22/23-02- Gunfire, burning 2014 Borno Izghe Civilians houses Several killed

29-59 male students killed (females were Gunfire, slitting told to abandon throats, burning education and 25-02-2014 Yobe Buni Yadi Federal college school marry) 29

several Banks, shops, local Gunfire, burning 26-02-2014 Adamawa communities government houses 33-37 killed 33

01 -03 2014 Borno Maiduguri Civilians Bombs 50+ killed 50

01 -03 2014 Borno Mainok Civilians Gunfire 39+ killed 39

03-03-2014 Borno Mafa Civilians Gunfire 36+ killed 36

04-03-2014 Borno Jakana Civilians Burning houses 11+ killed 11 Gunfire, prison Many reported raid. Led to large dead, especially scale shootout hundreds killed by between B.H., security forces- both military, and BH members and 14-03-2014 Borno Maiduguri Military barracks civilian JTF civilians

Gunfire, burning Mainly Christian houses and 16-03-2014 Borno Pela Birni village churches 2 killed 2

20-03-2014 Borno Ngurosoye Civilians, market Bomb 32 killed 32 5 policemen, 3 Police patrol civilians killed, 25-03-2014 Borno Maiduguri vehicle Suicide bomber multiple injured 8 4 killed, several 29-03-2014 Borno Azir Civilians Gunfire injured 4

Military 15+ killed, mostly 01-04-2014 Borno Maiduguri checkpoint Suicide bombers civilians 15

near Nigerian Italian priests, 04-04-2014 Cameroon border Canadian nun Kidnapping Freed end May 2014 Civilians, including 10/11-04- teachers and Gunfire, IEDs, 135-210 people 2014 Borno four towns many students burning houses killed 135

11-04-2014 Borno Konduga Civilians 8 civilians killed 8

Gunfire, IEDs, 12-04-2014 Borno Kala Balge Civilians burning houses 60 civilians killed 60

Civilians, bus 75+ killed, 120+ 14-04-2014 Abuja FCT Abuja station Suicide bombers injured 75 About 230 school girls kidnapped, a little over 200 still Civilians, school missing a month 15-04-2014 Borno Chibok girls Kidnapping later

19+ killed, 60 02-05-2014 Abuja FCT Abuja Police checkpoint Bomb injured 19

Gamboru 04-05-2014 Borno Ngala Civilians Gunfire 125-300 killed 125

06-05-2014 Borno Warabe Girls Kidnapping 8 girls kidnapped Bridge between Gamboru Nigeria and 08-05-2014 Borno Ngala Cameroon Bombs 30 killed 30

Attack repelled by No (civilian) 14-05-2014 Borno Kala Balge Civilians vigilante group casualties

18-05-2014 Kano Kano Bar area Suicide bomber 4 killed 4

Civilians, market, 20-05-2014 Plateau Jos hospital Bombs 118-122 killed 118

21-05-2014 Borno Shawa Civilians Gunfire 10 killed 10

Gunfire, burning 21-05-2014 Borno Alagarno Civilians houses 17 killed 17 Gunfire, burning houses, looting 22-05-2014 Borno Chikongudo Civilians food 25+ killed 25

several Anti-Boko Haram 23-05-2014 Borno communities vigilantes 30+ killed 30 Football viewing centre, people watching 25-05-2014 Plateau Jos Champions League Bomb 3+ killed 3

25-45 soldiers and 27-05-2014 Yobe Buni Yadi Military, police Gunfire policemen killed 25 Gunfire, houses, church, and shops 27-05-2014 Borno Gwoza Civilians, churches burned 10 civilians 10

30-05-2014 Borno Three emirs Gunfire 1 emir killed 1

Bar, people 14+ killed, 12+ 01-06-2014 Adamawa Mubi watching football Bomb injured 14 Attagara, Agapalawa, 03-06-2014 Borno Aganjara Civilians Gunfire Around 100 killed 100

Gunfire, burning 04-06-2014 Borno Bargari Civilians houses 45 killed 45

09-06-2014 Borno Garkin Fulani Women Kidnapping 20 kidnapped

16-06-2014 Borno Daku Civilians, market Gunfire 22+ killed 22

Civilians, football viewing centre, people watching 17-06-2014 Yobe Damaturu the World Cup Suicide bomber 14+ killed 14

Koronginim & 20 civilians, 6 21-06-2014 Borno Ntsiha Civilians Gunfire vigilantes killed 26

several Civilians, women 91 kidnapped, 4 23-06-2014 Borno communities and girls Kidnapping killed 4