by Mike Smith
From his work in previous assignments, the US official was familiar with Algeria’s GSPC, and he saw certain similarities in what was then occurring in Nigeria. The GSPC had broken away from the Armed Islamic Group in the 1990s after growing frustrated with the widespread killing of civilians in its insurgency against the government. Later, GSPC declared its allegiance to Al-Qaeda and became known as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, taking on a more international and especially anti-Western stance. Criminality and Islamist extremism also blended with GSPC and AQIM, with its leaders believed to have made fortunes through various forms of smuggling in addition to kidnappings. Speaking of Ansaru, the US official said that ‘they do seem to have a sort of different approach than (Boko Haram) writ large tactically [...] Kind of reminds me in some ways of how the GSPC originally broke out in Algiers because they didn’t want to see so much broad targeting of Muslims, wanted to go in a different direction. So these things are not unprecedented in this region.’
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Dependable information from the Nigerian security forces was in short supply, and by that time, the allegations against them of outrageous abuses were piling up. On a road near the Borno state government compound, a group of women were gathering regularly in 2013 in hopes that the governor would hear their pleas. They had lost their husbands or sons or other family members and, beyond the sorrow of their loved ones turning up dead, had in many cases also been robbed of their household’s main breadwinner. When I was there in October 2013, there were about two dozen women gathered under neem trees along the roadside, and when I began speaking to one, others quickly crowded around, raising their voices and demanding that I interview them as well in the hope that I could somehow help. One woman I spoke with said her husband and son were killed by Boko Haram, but others I talked to in detail as the crowd pressed against me and a colleague, who translated from Hausa for me, blamed the military.
One 30-year-old woman said her husband had been arrested in the restive Gwange neighbourhood of Maiduguri about 15 months earlier during a military sweep. About a week later, the military returned his dead body to her for burial, informing her that he had died in detention. According to her, he had been shot. She denied he was a member of Boko Haram and accused soldiers of killing him. ‘He was taken away, then later they killed him’, she said, describing him as a 40-year-old taxi driver. She and her 12-year-old son had since moved back to her parents’ home. Another 20-year-old woman said her husband went out to ‘look for daily bread’ in 2012 when soldiers arrested him along with others suspected of being members of Boko Haram, later returning his dead body to her, leaving her to look after her two-year-old daughter alone. Those I spoke with denied that their family members were connected to Boko Haram and said their pleas for assistance had been ignored by the government and security forces.37
Their accusations were not a surprise since similar ones had been made repeatedly. Many of the alleged cases tended to follow a pattern: a roadside bomb would explode near a military post or convoy and soldiers would respond ruthlessly, rounding up men from the neighbourhood and setting homes, market stalls and other buildings alight. According to accounts provided to journalists and human rights groups, the soldiers would accuse residents of cooperating with the insurgents.
Beyond the destruction itself, the allegations would limit the kinds of military training Nigeria’s foreign allies could provide. The United States was prevented by law from providing training to soldiers whose units were suspected of serious rights abuses. Any soldier who rotated through Nigeria’s so-called Joint Task Force operating in the north-east could be barred, no matter if they themselves were guilty or not.
A powerful report from Human Rights Watch released in October 2012 set out a long list of alleged abuses by Boko Haram as well as members of Nigeria’s security forces, questioning whether both were guilty of crimes against humanity.38 A few weeks later, Amnesty International issued a report with similar accusations, alleging widespread extrajudicial killings and torture by the security forces, among other abuses.39 Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission would report in June 2013 that it had ‘received several credibly attested allegations of gross violations by officials of the [military task force], including allegations of summary executions, torture, arbitrary detention amounting to internment and outrages against the dignity of civilians, as well as rape’.40
A Nigerian official who has followed the situation closely estimated, when I spoke with him in May 2014 on condition of anonymity, that the number of ‘Boko Haram’ detainees was ‘in the low thousands [...] about 3,000 or so detainees’. He said that appalling detention practices may be radicalising some prisoners who may not otherwise have turned to extremism, with ‘lots and lots being held in ratholes’. Many of the abuses of detainees were said to have occurred at the notorious Giwa military barracks in Maiduguri, as described in the Human Rights Watch report: During raids in communities, often in the aftermath of Boko Haram attacks, members of the security forces have executed men in front of their families; arbitrarily arrested or beaten members of the community; burned houses, shops, and cars; stolen money while searching homes; and, in at least one case documented by Human Rights Watch, raped a woman. Government security agencies routinely hold suspects incommunicado without charge or trial in secret detention facilities and have subjected detainees to torture or other physical abuse. 41
Untold numbers of young men seemed to have simply disappeared, with no indication of whether they had been killed or if they were being held somewhere by Nigeria’s security forces. Since there had been no judicial process, there was no way of knowing whether any of them had anything to do with the insurgency. Human Rights Watch interviewed one former detainee who said he saw other prisoners tortured or killed. His descriptions of what happened to them were stomach-churning: For example, he said that while he was being interrogated by security agents in an office at the barracks he saw soldiers at another table torture a detainee by pulling on his genitals with a pair of pliers. He also described seeing soldiers try to ‘peel the skin’ off a detainee with a razor and kill another detainee while he was suspended from a tree at the barracks. 42
Perhaps the worst single incident of soldiers being accused of rampaging would occur in April 2013 in the town of Baga, located on the edge of Lake Chad in Nigeria’s far north-east. On the evening of 16 April, attackers believed to be from Boko Haram shot dead a soldier serving under a task force in the region, apparently the latest in a string of incidents blamed on Boko Haram in Baga. Reinforcements from the task force arrived in Baga later the same night and, according to residents and a police incident report, unleashed fury on the town. The soldiers ‘started shooting indiscriminately at anybody in sight including domestic animals. This reaction resulted to [sic] loss of lives and massive destruction of properties’, the police incident report quoted by Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission said. Residents also accused the soldiers of setting entire neighbourhoods ablaze in revenge, and the police report said the troops ‘completely razed down’ at least five wards in Baga.43 According to the Red Cross, 187 people were killed. A local senator put the death toll at 228. The military bitterly disputed those numbers as well as the assertions that soldiers set buildings alight, arguing that the fires would have been caused by insurgents. According to the military, 37 people were killed, including 30 insurgents, six civilians and a soldier.44
News of the violence was slow to emerge from the remote town, and when it did, access to the area was restricted by the military. My colleague Aminu Abubakar managed to enter Baga with a military escort more than two weeks after. One resident told him that the area where he lived ‘was burnt the following morning in broad daylight by soldiers who went door-to-door setting fire to homes and everybody saw them’.45
As the military continued to deny abuse allegations, Human Rights Watch published satellite photos appearing to show wide swathes of the town destroyed by fire. It said that, according to
its analysis, it had counted 2,275 destroyed buildings, ‘the vast majority likely residences, with another 125 severely damaged’, and that the destruction was spread over about 80,000 square metres – roughly the area of 11 football pitches.46 Nigeria’s space research agency conducted its own analysis and disputed Human Rights Watch’s findings, saying that the area affected was 54,000 square metres and the ‘active zone of destruction’ was 11,000 square metres. It also argued that the area analysed was not large enough to fit the 2,400 buildings mentioned by Human Rights Watch.47
While the multiplying allegations could lead one to believe that Nigeria had developed its own form of the old colonial-era punitive expedition, but against its own people, the military has maintained its denial of using excessive force. When I interviewed the defence spokesman Brigadier-General Chris Olukolade in May 2013, he firmly defended the military’s actions. He also argued that insurgents wearing camouflage have confused residents and led them to believe that soldiers were carrying out violence. As for indiscriminate arrests, Olukolade said anyone detained would have been accused of being directly involved in the insurgency.
‘Our position is every troop operating in this mission has been sufficiently briefed of the need to respect the rights of citizens, the need never to engage in extrajudicial killings, the need to observe all the laws of armed conflict, and not to execute anybody for whatever reason’, Olukolade said. ‘So they are very much aware – the briefing is going on every day as a routine – and so every troop in this mission knows the implication of such. If we have such allegation and it is credible, it will be investigated and proper trial would go on. But so far, there is no indication apart from allegations that are evidently meant to be propaganda.’
Specifically regarding Baga, he said that ‘if I take you to Baga now, all along the route between Maiduguri and Baga is full of burnt villages. It is a pattern [...] In that same Baga, the whole burning that people are referring to did not take place during this encounter. It is accumulating. Every house that was identified by Boko Haram as not supporting, because they had invaded the community, they burn down the house. And they were doing this not in one day. It has accumulated for years.’
Later, the defence spokesman said accusations against the military had been made unfairly, either for propaganda purposes or simply because residents had been duped.
‘It’s not unlikely you get people who will testify that it is done by soldiers [...] Sympathies vary, for whatever reason, and it depends on who is giving you testimony. It will reflect his sympathies.’ He said insurgents have worn camouflage, sometimes of a different type from that worn by the Nigerian military. ‘They found some camo that are not Nigerian camo – there is Chadian camo, there is Niger camo. But for civilians just seeing camo, what does he see? Soldiers.’
Olukolade told me during the interview that ‘I have not confirmed that soldiers did the burning in Maiduguri or anywhere. No soldier will do that now. They know the implication. I can tell you no soldier is involved in any form of arson.’
5
‘I Don’t Know. They’re in the Bush’
The dead bodies lay under a scorching sun, at least 26 of them, some contorted and twisted, others seeming to have been set out, if not neatly, then at least in something resembling a row. One man’s head was tilted up toward the sky, his mouth open as if he were yelling. The smell was putrid, familiar to anyone who has smelled death before, but worsened by the intense heat, and yet somehow the workers in nearby medical units carried on, moving about the hospital grounds while occasionally covering their noses with their shirts or gowns. They seemed as if they had grown accustomed to it. One explained that the bodies had come from an area about 45 miles away called Benisheik and had been dumped either by security forces or residents who had recovered a corpse along the roadside. If relatives did not come soon to collect the bodies, the corpses would be buried in a mass grave like others before them. The hospital worker said that both victims of insurgent attacks and the insurgents themselves, or at least those labelled as such, were regularly dumped there in that manner, though dead soldiers were usually taken out of view inside the mortuary, steps away. Asked why all the bodies were not placed inside instead of on the dirt outdoors, she reasoned that the lack of steady electricity would cause them to rot even faster there. She said there was an electricity generator for the mortuary, but it didn’t always work properly. In any case, the mortuary was locked up tight on this Friday afternoon since the workers there had gone to pray. It closes at other times because the attendants are often ill, according to the hospital worker. The conditions apparently make them sick.
This was at a time when, if the military was to be believed, things were getting better. The truth was far more complicated, and the reason the bodies were rotting in the dirt at the back of Borno State Specialist Hospital complex in Maiduguri would attest to that. Another state of emergency had been declared in the region more than four months earlier, in May 2013, with President Jonathan having decided after years of attacks and mayhem that something dramatic must be done. Additional troops were deployed into the region, tasked with taking back villages that the president said the insurgents had occupied. He told the nation in a televised speech that the extremists from Boko Haram had replaced the Nigerian flag with their own in certain remote border areas. Some estimates put the number of districts under Boko Haram control at 21 and described it as a gradual process, beginning around January 2013. Since Boko Haram had not been previously known to seek to take territory and had focused solely on insurgent attacks, the development would mean a sharp change in tactics. It came at a time when the world had been focused on a different Islamist extremist advance in nearby northern Mali, where rebels had taken control of around half the country, sparking a French military assault to chase them out. Jonathan’s declaration led to worry over whether Nigerian extremists had gone to Mali and returned home battle-hardened, ready to emulate the strategy there, or whether insurgents who never left had simply taken inspiration from it.
Within hours of the president’s emergency declaration, the military assault began, and it became clear almost instantly that determining what was really happening on the ground was going to be next to impossible. One of the army’s first moves was to cut mobile phone lines in the north-east, ostensibly because the insurgents used them to coordinate attacks. Satellite phones would also be banned later for the same reason. Since landlines are virtually non-existent in Nigeria, this meant the region was cut off from the rest of the world. On top of that, visiting remote areas without a military escort was considered too dangerous – because of the insurgents, certainly, but also thanks to the presence of soldiers with ruthless reputations. Nonetheless, through a combination of military statements, limited visits to the region, accounts from local residents and, perhaps above all, the emergence of a new pattern of attacks, details began to filter through and a picture, however incomplete, gradually took shape.
Early on in the offensive, the military claimed to have cleared out insurgents from camps, often in forests or on the outskirts of villages. It said it had done this with aircraft providing cover for ground troops. How many insurgents were involved, how many died, how many were arrested and where those who fled escaped to were questions the military was refusing to answer in any coherent fashion. The lack of publicly known information also led to concerns that soldiers were again killing civilians whom they accused of cooperating with Boko Haram or simply to instil fear.
There were also doubts about what exactly the offensive was achieving. Sporadic military statements made grandiose claims of having taken over almost all of Boko Haram’s remote camps, but no one knew for sure who had really been there or what the soldiers had done. Besides that, while the number of insurgent attacks seemed to have diminished since the start of the offensive, they had by no means stopped altogether. Shekau, dressed in camouflage, appeared in a video that surfaced at the end of May, claiming that Nigerian troops were retreating
and being killed in the fight against Boko Haram, while also showing weapons and vehicles he said were taken from the military.
A couple of weeks in, with the military under pressure to give some account of what it claimed to be achieving, it arranged a tour for journalists into an area of the north-east said to have been taken over by insurgents before soldiers chased them out.
A first attempt was a disappointment. Defence officials invited a mix of local and foreign journalists on the tour a day and a half before it was due to occur, and we scrambled to arrange to be there. We were told to meet in the capital Abuja, where we would take an air force transport plane to Maiduguri, but further details were unclear. Our photographer and I, like other journalists, flew from Lagos to Abuja ready for any possibility, as we had no idea what to expect once we arrived in the north-east. I had not visited the region for about a year by that point, long before the president declared his state of emergency. When our flight landed in Abuja the night before we were to meet the soldiers and I turned my phone back on, I saw that a text message had come through from the army officer who had been arranging logistics. The trip was cancelled, he said. He later assured me by phone that there would be another one scheduled soon.
The trip was indeed rescheduled about a week later, so we again packed our bags and headed to Abuja, all the while doubting whether it would actually go ahead. This time it would, and along with the other journalists we piled into a military transport plane at an airbase in the capital Abuja and took off for Maiduguri. I had visited Maiduguri twice before, and as the insurgency intensified, it had become a city under lockdown. My previous trip there had been in May 2012, and certain neighbourhoods had eerily seemed like ghost towns, with burnt-out buildings, the carcasses of torched cars and bullet-pocked walls. Schools had been hit by arson, but children were still attending classes in what remained of at least one of them, scampering around the rubble in green and yellow uniforms, one of the teachers telling me that parents insisted that learning continue. A night-time curfew caused a scramble to get home and off the streets toward the end of the day or face the wrath of soldiers. Shop owners and traders said they could no longer support their families. While most Maiduguri residents were Muslim, it was also home to a substantial Christian population, whose churches had been attacked so many times that they were forced to erect large concrete walls topped with razor wire. Some were protected by small military posts, where soldiers with AK-47s stood behind sandbags near the church entrance. Worshippers attending Sunday mass were scanned with metal detectors and women were forced to leave their handbags outside. On the roads throughout the city, there were regular military checkpoints, causing excruciating traffic jams that left drivers waiting in fear over whether yet another homemade bomb targeting soldiers in the area would explode or a gun battle would break out. I visited retired army general Mohammed Shuwa, known for his role in Nigeria’s civil war, at his home in the city and he showed me the Beretta handgun he carried because he feared that even he could one day be targeted. He was right. Later that year, gunmen shot him dead.