Last month’s attack by jihadi gunmen in the Ivoirian beach town of Grand Bassam did not come as a complete surprise to West Africa observers. In recent months, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) — which claimed responsibility for the Grand Bassam assault — and its al-Mourabitoun affiliate have shifted their lethal focus to hotels frequented by tourists and Western expatriates. Ostensibly in retaliation against African support of France’s ongoing efforts to counter jihadi groups in the Sahara-Sahel region, this change in targeting patterns already led to last November’s Radisson Blu siege in Bamako and the deadly attack at Ouagadougou’s Splendid Hotel and Cappuccino Cafe on January 15.

Still, the killings in Grand Bassam represent a troubling development. By striking a target approximately 1,400 kilometers removed from its traditional area of activity, AQIM demonstrated its reach. It is also significant that the incident took place near Côte d’Ivoire’s commercial capital, Abidjan. Previously, the economic hubs along West Africa’s coast appear to have been spared from the violence that AQIM has afflicted in parts of the Sahel. Some security analysts believe AQIM will likely attempt to follow up the Grand Bassam massacre with additional attacks in Côte d’Ivoire, as well as Senegal. A leaked security memo from the Ghana Immigration Service indicates that Accra officials consider the Ghanaian state and neighboring Togo to be also at risk of being violently targeted by AQIM.

Countering the AQIM threat to littoral West Africa will prove challenging. As a major destination for investment and home to the headquarters or regional offices of several prominent international organizations, the area is rich with targets. Migration patterns tied to the region’s economy, meanwhile, make it relatively easy for members of outside groups to infiltrate local communities. Those opposed to AQIM and its fellow travelers would do well to continue emphasizing improvements in surveillance and intelligence sharing among West African countries, rather than embrace heavy-handed tactics. Affected states should also pursue reforms aimed at enhancing governance to inoculate their societies from Islamic extremism.

Despite its Maghrebi origins, AQIM has exhibited an ability to broaden its recruitment base in the Sahel. Operatives often modify their group’s messaging to appeal to individuals from various ethnicities, demonstrating a remarkable degree of knowledge of local issues and cultural dynamics. Some jihadis have even allegedly married into indigenous clans for the purpose of winning their support for AQIM.

The 2015 reconciliation between AQIM and al-Mourabitoun seems to have further diversified the former’s membership. The latter had previously been an AQIM splinter group reputedly responsible for a number of small-scale attacks on U.N. and civilian targets in the Sahel. Al-Mourabitoun brought along with it remnants of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, a jihadi faction that had made some inroads among ethnic Songhai and Fulani populations of northern Mali. Indeed, available information indicates that in the cases of the Bamako, Ouagadougou, and Grand Bassam attacks, the jihadi terrorists included Fulani gunmen. Several Malian nationals have been detained since Grand Bassam for allegedly assisting the assailants. The suspects include at least three individuals based in the Abidjan metropolitan area, where they reputedly conspired with an Ivoirian whom authorities have since arrested.

This reported participation of native West Africans in AQIM operations must be troubling for the governments of Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Senegal. All three countries attract large numbers of economic migrants from the Sahel, particularly Malians and Burkinabe. Predominantly young men, these migrants travel to littoral West Africa to work as laborers on commercial farms or as petty traders. Abidjan and Accra possess teeming neighborhoods of foreign-born migrants, many of whom spend seven to eight months a year in these urban areas before returning to their home villages in time for the annual harvest.

Such population movements lead to high turnover among the migrant community, which in turn makes it difficult for authorities to monitor the comings and goings of outsiders. Little information is publicly available on the itinerary allegedly used by accused AQIM conspirator Alou Doumbia to transport the Grand Bassam attackers into Côte d’Ivoire. It is possible, however, that the jihadis exploited existing migration routes to avoid detection. Even if this does not turn out to be the case, the transient nature of large segments of West Africa’s migrant population poses a challenge to attempts to identify AQIM cells. Closing the region’s international borders is not economically or logistically feasible and — particularly in the case of Côte d’Ivoire — would threaten to exacerbate social tensions.

The rise of Islamic fundamentalism in littoral West Africa represents another potential obstacle to countering violent extremism. There is scant evidence to suggest that any of the revivalist movements that have gained prominence in the region actively harbor jihadi sympathizers. Nevertheless, their growth has chipped away at the influence of the religious establishments that have often served as the primary interlocutors between the national governments and local Muslim communities. This growing disconnect increases the likelihood of officials being unaware of radical Islamist activities within their jurisdictions.

Successfully addressing these challenges will require augmenting the intelligence-gathering capabilities of local security forces.. The region’s governments need to devote additional attention and resources to developing informant networks and adopting community-policing practices. In addition, steps should also be taken to cultivate stronger relations with peaceful Islamic fundamentalists, an endeavor that would require discretion and a high degree of political finesse. West African states would need to ensure their outreach efforts do not upset other religious constituencies (e.g. Christians, Sufi Muslims) and are sensitive to mainstream Islamists’ concerns of being perceived as government collaborators.

Countries affected by the AQIM menace should also build upon existing intelligence-sharing arrangements among themselves. This objective should be achievable, as all the major state actors in the region now recognize the threat that AQIM represents. What’s more, the foundations already exist in the form of the Nouakchott Process and Sahel G5. Since the Grand Bassam attack, West African officials have reportedly met to explore ways to bolster regional cooperation. These are promising steps that, if followed through, would help further reduce information gaps on AQIM, allowing authorities to disrupt attacks in their preparation stages.

Conversely, the use of security tactics, such as mass detentions and large-scale neighborhood sweeps, would probably backfire. Besides squandering precious resources, this approach would anger local Muslim fundamentalists, driving some into the arms of AQIM. Government officials should treat the current threat as a law enforcement challenge, and resist the temptation to militarize their respective counterterrorism responses.

Of course, better intelligence alone will not completely shield the states of littoral West Africa from violent Islamic extremism. Even if it becomes markedly more difficult for AQIM to infiltrate the region, there still exists the danger of homegrown terrorist cells emerging. Aspiring jihadis could draw inspiration from al-Qaeda’s toxic ideology to craft their own extremist narratives. Youth disillusionment with the sociopolitical status quo has created a pool of alienated individuals susceptible to the manipulations of craven killers who wrap themselves in robes of leadership and piety.

Any successful counterterrorism strategy, therefore, must also consider reforms designed to improve local governance and economic opportunity for the region’s youth. Corruption remains rampant, while access to various social services in both rural areas and the region’s burgeoning urban centers is woefully inadequate. More importantly, youth unemployment may be the single greatest challenge facing the region.  The level of youth unemployment, if not addressed, will serve as fodder for jihadi groups trolling for disillusioned young people lacking economic and social alternatives to their violent ideologies.  To ensure that communities are allergic to violent extremism, these issues need to be attended to in a more robust manner.

The threat of terrorism and the likelihood that further attacks will occur is fast becoming the new normal for littoral West Africa. Confronting this reality in a successful and sustainable fashion will require local political leaders to pursue coordinated, intelligence-driven strategies against AQIM, while concurrently investing additional resources towards strengthening governance and economic growth. Failure to do so could condemn the region to an extended era of jihadi violence.

warontherocks.com

A British Army team has arrived in Somalia as part of a UN-backed African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) to counter Islamist militants.The move reinforces the UK’s commitment to targeting terrorism around the world.

AMISOM was launched in 2007 to fight against Al-Shebab – the Islamist militant group allied to al-Qaeda – whichi is still battling Somalia’s government for control of the country.

One of the reasons they exert control is because armed forces on the ground do not have the means to take them on.

“The real threat of al-Shebab in Somalia is the lack of security provided in the countryside. They’re allowed to operate very freely on the countryside, there’s little local security, and the Somali securtity forces do not function properly,” Stig Jarle Hansen, an international relations professor at the Norwegian University and al-Shabab specialist, told RFI.

“One of the reasons is the lack of funding. Policemen in charge of counter-terrorism operations and the army don’t receive more than 100$ a month. Basically, the Somali security structure is not properly functionning. Which means that AMISOM doesn’t have a proper local partner. It also means that al-Shebab has full freedom of operations, even behind the lines of AMISOM. In the countryside, they can do whatever they want: amass forces, do forced recruitment and collect taxes.”

The UK is sending military personnel to help AMISOM, but it’s a small contigent to start with.

“It’s just an advanced party at the moment of about ten soldiers that have been sent to Somalia, and that’s the forst part of a deployment of about 70 personnel who will be sent to the country. And the full deployment of the 70 troops will not actually be involved in frontline combat, but carrying out training, medical, logistical and engineering duties,” Cathy Haenlein, a security and political analyst at the Royal United Services Institute in London, told RFI.

“They’ll be supporting AMISOM, who’s been fighting against al-Shebab since 2007 and we have to remember that it’s a relatively small number of troops. It will certainly be a welcome deployment given that AMISOM, the African Union mission in Somalia is lacking in terms of capabilities. And given the range of challenges AMISOM troops are facing, it’s unlikely this will lead to a change in the course of the conflict itself.”

She says this move shows the UK is determined to tackle terrorism, not only at home, but anywhere in the world.

Obviously, it’s not going to make a huge difference in Somalia. But as soldiers there needed training, it will be welcome move.

“The Somali national army lacks training and therefore needs a backing, needs capacity building and therefore those British officers sent under the UN flag could deliver something important for the Somali national army,” Roland Marchal, from the National Centre of political studies in Paris, told RFI.

“On the other hand, you could say that this is just going to increase the chaos in the way the international community organises its own support of the Somali army. The real issue is actually how to organise, coordinate and make coherent, the behaviour, or the policy of a number of international donours who want to have their input in the somalian national army, and now, with an additional one, it’s not going to solve the problem.”

Marchal said that the Somali army also lacks organisation, it’s crippled by corruption. AMISOM itself also has to face problems including cultural differences among troops coming from several countries – such as  the rivalries between Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia

What all analysts agree on though is the fact that AMISOM clearly lacks funding.In January 2016, the European Union cut its funding by 20 percent and soldiers said they wouldn’t fight if they were not getting properly paid.

rfi.fr

Al Shabaab insurgents killed 15 Somali soldiers and retook a town northeast of the capital Mogadishu on Sunday, just one day after it had fallen to government forces, the military said.

The Islamist group, which wants to topple Somalia’s Western-backed government, said it had killed 32 soldiers in the assault. It was not possible to verify independently the death toll. Al Shabaab has inflated casualty figures in the past.

Captain Nur Ali said the attack had taken place early on Sunday morning in the town of Runirgood, about 180 km to the north east of Mogadishu.

“Al Shabaab used a suicide car bomb to penetrate a military base. It exploded and then fierce fighting followed. At least 15 soldiers died,” Major Abdullahi Omar, a second army officer, told Reuters from the region by phone.

“The soldiers (at the base) were few and there were no AMISOM or other military nearby for reinforcement. We killed more than 10 militants in fighting on Saturday and Sunday,” Omar added. AMISOM is the African Union peacekeeping mission.

Residents of Runirgood said they had seen dead bodies of both al Shabaab and government soldiers in the town.

Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab’s spokesman for military operations, said its fighters had killed 32 soldiers and captured three vehicles.

“It was a fierce battle and thank Allah, we recaptured the town,” he told Reuters.

Somalia’s government is battling to rebuild the Horn of Africa nation after more than two decades of conflict. Al Shabaab ruled large parts of Somalia until 2011, when it was driven out of Mogadishu by African Union and Somali troops.

It still controls some rural areas, however, and carries out frequent attacks in the capital and other areas.

Last week it attacked a Somali government military base and killed five soldiers near the northwestern town of Baidoa.

reuters.com

Somali National Army (SNA) backed by the African Union peacekeeping troops on Saturday took control of several locations in Middle Shabelle region in central Somalia from Al-Qaida linked group Al-Shabaab, officials said.

Spokesman of middle Shabelle region Administration Da’ud Haji Iro said the joint forces took control of Runir-god, Nur-dugle, Ad-adey locations in Middle Shabelle regions after operation against the militants early Saturday.

“SNA and AMISOM forces jointly carried out the operation against the terrorist group in this region, all areas captured from Al-Shabaab are calm now,” Iro said.

“There was resistance from the group during the operation, but no casualties. The joint forces are to liberate the rest of the region from the militants soon,” he added.

AMISOM which crossed into the Horn of the African nation in 2007 and which has a long comprised of Kenya, Ethiopia, Ugandan and Burundi troops have registered a string of successes against Al-Shabaab militia who had seized much of the central and southern Somalia.

The latest victory over Al-Shabaab came a day after the Somali and AU forces captured Booco neighborhood, 55 km south of Beledweyne town in Hiiraan region early Saturday.

xinhuanet.com

The Nigerian military looks to be slowly gaining the upper hand in its fight against Boko Haram. But the Islamist terror group isn’t going quietly and has begun using young girls as suicide bombers. We talked to some of those who escaped.

She awoke early in the morning. The baby, just a few weeks old, lay next to her breathing peacefully, his face pressed up against hers. Fatima* heard the voices of women approaching her hut before they came in, grabbed her by the wrists and dragged her outside. Fatima screamed, cried and kept stumbling to the ground.

She knew what these women wanted. She had seen how they had outfitted the other girls with suicide belts, how fighters had driven them to the outskirts of the city in pick-ups and how they had returned without the girls.

Fatima would make for a particularly efficient bomb. A girl with a newborn baby would not arouse suspicion and she could easily push her way into the center of crowds. She could kill a large number of people.

“I won’t do it!” she screamed. “Then we’ll kill you,” the women responded and continued pushing her. “I don’t care, then go ahead and kill me,” Fatima screamed. “I’ve seen so many die.”

The camp commander stood in front of his shack and waited. He was an old friend of Fatima’s father and lived in the next village over. As a child, Fatima and her siblings had helped harvest onions from his fields. “Not her,” he told the women. “She’s too scared. She’ll blow us all up here in the camp!”

Fatima is sitting in a plain room at the UNICEF medical practice in a refugee camp at the edge of the city of Maiduguri, located in northeastern Nigeria. It is late afternoon and the sun is blazing hot. The baby is lying quietly in her lap. “The women were furious. They beat me with sticks and cables,” she says. She lifts up her robe to show the dark welts and scars on her belly and hips.

Fatima has been living here for the last few months. Her forehead is hot and she has a headache and fever — she is worried they might be symptoms of malaria. She says she thinks she is 15 years old, but the teen is not sure.

The story that the young woman has to tell opens a window into a world that generally remains hidden. With its extreme nihilism and complete disregard for human life, it is a world that seems unreal and imaginary. But it is real and it starts just 60 kilometers away from Maiduguri. It is a world that abhors life and pays homage to a religion-tinged death cult created by the most deadly of all Islamist sects: Boko Haram.

Like a Morphing Virus

No other terror organization — not al-Qaida and not Islamic State — has murdered as many people since 2009 as has Boko Haram. The total is thought to be as high as 27,000.

Recently, the Nigerian army — led by the country’s new president, the former general Muhammadu Buhari — has recaptured some territory and pushed back the Islamists. A military coalition made up of Cameroon, Niger, Chad and Benin has reported significant success in their fight against Boko Haram. Military leaders claim that an important leader of the terrorists has been taken into custody and hundreds of hostages have been released. “We have destroyed 70 percent of Boko Haram, says the head of a citizens’ militia that works together with the military.

But the Islamists still haven’t been completely defeated. The group has gnawed its way deep into the land and has spread into neighboring countries. It has also changed strategies, not unlike a morphing virus. Despite its military losses, it has found a way to infect broader society, by using young girls as human bombs.

There are two scars on Fatima’s cheeks that look almost as if they could be dimples. When she was small, her parents had the cuts made as ornamentation. But ever since that fateful Saturday when Boko Haram fighters attacked her village and shot the men, including her older brother, she hasn’t had any contact with her family whatsoever.

The militants packed the women and children into pick-ups and took them into the bush. There, Fatima slept under a tree next to other girls, all of whom the fighters referred to as “slaves.” Fatima speaks with tired eyes but a firm voice.

She says she refused to drink the red liquid they would bring to the girls in a gourd, pouring it out onto the ground when nobody was looking. The girls didn’t know what was in it, but Fatima had seen what it did to her friend.

It was a girl with whom she used to sell milk at the market. As Fatima tells it, the friend writhed on the ground with foam coming out of her mouth. The fighters then put a gun in her hand and told her to shoot Fatima’s aunt in the forehead because she had refused to marry on of the terrorists. The bullet, Fatima said, exploded out of the back of her aunt’s skull.

Working for Allah

Because Fatima repeatedly refused to watch when someone was being executed, the Boko Haram women tied her to a tree and forced her to watch as they taught the other girls to shoot, using goats as targets. She also had to watch, she says, as the women prepared the girls for suicide attacks.

Whenever they lost a battle against the military, the group would send out yet another suicide bomber. Some of them were Boko Haram women who volunteered for the job while others thought it might provide an opportunity for escape. Still others were forced. The women would pull off the girls’ black robes and clothe them in colorful dresses. They would wrap a belt around them which the men would fill with explosives.

“Go where there are lots of people,” the girls were told. “Then push the button.” It is a “holy war,” the fighters said, and they were working for Allah.

They then drove off with the girls, writing their names in a book. The others were told: “Pray for Aisha. Pray that you see her again soon in paradise.” In Fatima’s place, they sent a different girl to her death.

The strategy of using young women as living bombs has proven effective. It is one that reverses all certainties, transforming those who bring forth life into messengers of death — and it sows distrust. If you can’t trust young women in colorful dresses, after all, then who can you trust?

In March, two girls killed more than 20 people in a mosque at the edge of Maiduguri. Just a few days later, a girl blew herself up in front of a military patrol while a second girl tried to run away, but was shot. There were at least 89 such attacks in 2015, the majority of them carried out by women.

During battles in the villages, they run in groups toward the soldiers and then blow themselves up. Last June, two suicide bombers detonated at the Maiduguri fish market. A seven-year-old, who was also outfitted with a suicide belt, was found alive by the police.

Anti-Tank Ditches and Barbed Wire

In the Dikwa refugee camp in February, two more girls killed more than 70 people. A third refused to set off her bomb when she saw her own parents in the crowd.

Maiduguri, where Boko Haram got its start, is a dusty place — provincial and unhurried. Yellow tuk-tuks rattle through the streets and traders sell oranges and watermelons. A poster seeks to recruit new officers for the police force. But the calm is misleading. Maiduguri is surrounded by anti-tank ditches and soldiers have set up checkpoints on the roads leading into the city. Villas and refugee camps alike are surrounded by walls and barbed-wire, giving them the look of prisons.

The city’s population has swelled from its earlier population of around a million people to almost 3 million today. Many of the newcomers fled here from the terror in their villages, but very few of them live in official refugee camps. And they cannot return home because the enemy is still there. The city is populated by an army of the abused.

There are many children among them, such as Gbenga, a 12-year-old son of a taxi driver whose lanky frame is swimming in a huge red T-shirt with the word Prada on the front. One Saturday morning during Ramadan, Boko Haram fighters arrived and kidnapped him, together with a cousin, not far from his home village. “We will show you the path to Allah,” they told him at the Koran school in the terrorist camp. He was informed that killing all infidels was a commandment.

“I knew in my heart that they were wrong,” Gbenga says. He had gone to school after all, he explains. Speaking in their tribal dialect, he and his cousin made fun of their captors, saying: “These bloody Boko Haram.” But one of the Boko Haram women understood them and they were each punished with 10 lashes.

Because the two were still too small to go to war, they were forced to help out in the households of the Boko Haram families. They would care for their small children, serve food and do the washing. One day they were told to fetch water and they took advantage of the opportunity. They ran away.

Later, soldiers interrogated Gbenga and his cousin and the boys told them that they had not been forced to join the fight. They had constantly told the Boko Haram fighters that the weapons were too heavy and they couldn’t carry them. They were lucky that was the case, because the military locks up all who have undergone weapons training at the hands of Boko Haram.

The Birthplace of Boko Haram

Gbenga now lives with his brother in Maiduguri and has even begun going to school again. When asked about his future, he says he wants to become a banker. If you have money, people can’t just do whatever they want with you.

Not far from Gbenga’s new home, in the Railway Quarter, the walls are riddled with bullet holes. There is an empty lot, covered with weeds and blocks of cement, where a mosque once stood. It is from here that Mohammed Yusuf once spread his teachings. A destitute Muslim preacher, he founded Boko Haram as a protest movement.

Yusuf vilified all that is Western and rejects the heritage of Nigeria’s British colonial masters in addition to the abusive behavior of the corrupt elite in the country and across the continent. He considered moderate Muslims to be traitors to the faith and his version of pure Islam promised justice and power to the many poverty-stricken men in northern Nigeria who got nothing from the country’s oil riches.

In the city of Yola, 300 kilometers (190 miles) south of Maiduguri, Adisa, a 15-year-old girl, lies sprawled in a worn, hotel-room easy chair. She has thrown her legs over one of the arms and her feet dangle in the air. She is drinking a cola and gnawing on a toothpick.

A beautiful girl, her braided bangs peek out from beneath a turquoise headscarf and she is wearing a colorful dress. She also speaks a bit of English: The subject, along with math, was one of her favorites in school.

Adisa has traveled here from her village to talk about her time as a prisoner of Boko Haram. When the name of the terror group is mentioned for the first time in our conversation, her voice becomes quiet and she gazes emptily into the distance.

When the fighters arrived and attacked her village, she ran into a cornfield, losing her parents and sister along the way. “I waited for several hours,” she says. When dusk fell and she could no longer hear any gunfire, she left her hiding place. Boko Haram fighters, she says, saw her, chased her down, threw her to the ground, tied her hands, covered her eyes and threw her into the bed of a pick-up.

The camp where she spent five months is called Pita. It’s located at the edge of the Sambisa Forest, which stretches out over 130-square kilometers. It’s likely that the 276 girls who were kidnapped from a school in Chibok two years ago were also taken to this forest area. Adisa says she saw very few other people during the months when she was held captive. She was locked up in a hut made of branches and leaves and men stood guard outside. She could hear their voices as they spoke of a caliphate.

Forced Marriage and Rape

When Adisa had to go to the bathroom, guards always accompanied her. She was given a plate of rice twice each day. Adisa spent her time watching insects and large ants march across the ground, and observed how they carried large loads. She came to think of them as part of a community in which everyone sticks together. She thought about her own family, wondering if they were still alive, and about her village.

“One day, a group of fighters came and stood at the hut entrance,” she says. One of them told Adisa that he wanted to marry her, Adisa recalls. She cried.

“If you don’t agree, then we will kill you,” the man, whose face was covered, told her.

A few days later they fired their guns into the air outside. “You’re married now,” they said, according to Adisa. As a wedding present, they gave her six sets of clothing. Her husband, she says, stayed for three days and raped her.

“I screamed and there were people outside who could hear me, but no one came to help,” she says. In the weeks that followed, the husband was often away: She says he was one of their best fighters.

When he did come home, he would rape Adisa. Then he tried to teach her the Koran by reading it aloud to her. When she refused to repeat his words, he would hit her with a stick on the back, chest, stomach and legs. He would then list off all the things forbidden by Allah — sins like fornication or theft.

Adisa believes her husband was a very young man, still half a child, though he never spoke about himself. She could sometimes hear the other men say they were members of Boko Haram because they thought the Nigerian government was bad or because the police was too brutal — or simply because they needed money.

At the country’s airports, “Wanted Boko Haram suspects” signs are posted showing the men in camouflage uniforms and turbans. Experts believe the Boko Haram can no longer be beat by purely military means. The group has reached critical mass and has built up an infrastructure it can use to constantly recruit new fighters. Poverty, illiteracy and state neglect have created the fertile soil out of which Boko Haram harvests its recruits.

The Deadly Stigma of Boko Haram Babies

Small drops of sweat form on the forehead of Fatima, the girl with the baby from the camp in Maiduguri, as she shares the story of her escape. A few days after she was supposed to set off as a suicide attacker, the military began approaching the camp, she says. She could hear explosions and saw planes in the sky. Fatima and other girls were ordered to beat clear an escape path for the fighters through the undergrowth. No one was guarding them, so the girls used the new path for their own escape.

Fatima ran for five days, drinking out of rivers. By the fifth day, she had grown so exhausted that she was no longer able to carry her baby, so she left it under a tree. When the girls finally reached a road, they were picked up by soldiers and taken to a hospital. One of the soldiers went back and rescued the baby.

They took Fatima to a refugee camp next to the village of Dalori near Maiduguri. People there were afraid of Fatima and her baby. “It’s from a different species,” the told her and they shunned both mother and child.

On January 30 of this year, Boko Haram fighters in cars and on motorcycles ambushed Dalori. They burned down huts, killed 86 people and set children on fire. Residents tried to run away, but three suicide bombers among the fleeing crowd detonated themselves. The military, which has its headquarters not four kilometers away, was only able to recapture the village after several hours.

Fatima moved to another camp and she created a story for herself, a truth that would help her survive. She can neither read nor write, but she can do a bit of math: When Boko Haram kidnapped her, she tells people, she was two months pregnant. She then spent eight months in captivity. Following the birth of her child in captivity, she wasn’t touched for 40 days, she says, as is tradition.

It was at the end of this period that she fled — and she has been back in freedom for four months. Her child, now five months old, is from her husband, she says, who she married just before she was kidnapped. She was reunited with him at the camp. She says that no Boko Haram fighter ever touched her. It is a story that Fatima tells over and over again. She is sticking to it.

Adisa too, the girl from Yola, also ran into the bush one day at a moment when no one was looking. She prayed and thought about her village. During her journey, she met people who told her the village had been recaptured by the army. After a journey of several days, she finally made it to her parent’s mud house. She arrived dirty, emaciated, wearing shreds for clothing and shoes filled with holes. Her father cried.

Death Threats

For weeks, she rested at home. When she did go out once, other villagers stared at her and Adisa ran into her old English teacher in the streets. “Everyone who has lived with Boko Haram are like Boko Haram,” he told her.

Adisa has now been sitting for more than two hours in a hotel room in Yola sharing her story. For the first time during the interview, she starts to cry.

For a long time, she says, she didn’t realize that she was pregnant. But one day, she could hear the neighbors whispering and her aunt drove her to a hospital in Yola. She was pregnant, already in her fifth month — very late for an abortion. “If you don’t kill the baby, then you were voluntarily with Boko Haram,” the Christians in the village said. “As soon as the baby is born, we will kill it,” a young man with the civilian militia threatened. Her father then kept her locked in the house until the child was born.

Those seeking to destroy a society must destroy the fabric of the family and community by penetrating its most intimate corners. Sexual assault is a means that is as common as it is effective. But Boko Haram goes a step further by forcing the women it takes as slaves to also act as suicide bombers.

It exploits women in two ways: The ideology of contempt reduces a woman to her body and degrades her into a kind of empty vessel.

Using girls wearing colorful dresses as weapons of murder who then target the weakest is extraordinarily effective. They sow fear and drive a wedge through society and the hate turns against the weakest. Every woman who is able to escape also becomes the subject of alienation and a target. Their return to their home villages, which should be a joyful occasion, carries the potential for disaster. As a tactic of war, it is unparalleled and unprecedented.

Eight girls who have successfully escaped from Boko Haram have been murdered after returning to their villages — by husbands, relatives or neighbors. There is no estimate as to the number of babies that have been killed.

‘God Gave Me This Child’

“God gave me this child so that I would look after it,” says Adisa as she pats her daughter’s chest. At first, she says she felt bad having the baby in her belly, but now she likes it. Does the baby resemble its father? She doesn’t know: She says she never saw his face.

Adisa would like to go to school and study, in the city if possible. One day, she would like to become a doctor.

She’s now venturing outside the hut again. The village elder announced that they were to leave girls like her alone. But she leaves her baby at home because people stare at it as if something evil were growing inside of it.

“I’m very afraid,” says a friend of Adisa’s who lives a few doors down and also has a small son from Boko Haram. “Once the military leaves, the village elder will no longer have a say. That’s when they’ll come and kill us.”

She checks the time. It’s after 11 a.m., almost midday. Time to go. The two girls have to be home before the curfew begins. They stand up, bind their children onto their backs, and make their way back to their village.

spiegel.de

The Islamic State’s (Isis’s) growing influence in Somalia is a cause for alarm and must be checked by the international community, a Somali military leader has said. Abdul Qadir Mumin, a British passport holder, leads a large contingent of IS (Daesh) fighters in the country who have defected to the jihadist group from al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab.

Sky News unearthed evidence that jihadists are relying more and more on child soldiers to swell their ranks. Boys, some aged between 10 and 15, were recently captured during an IS attack by sea and are being held in prison in Garowe, capital of the Puntland autonomous region.

Mumin’s IS faction is reportedly operating out of the remote Galgala mountains in north eastern Somalia after it was pushed out of a nearby town by Somali forces.

Puntland army chief General Mohammed Saed Hirsi told Sky News: “If Puntland is not helped to fight terrorism, there will be a breeding ground for terror here that will spread to the rest of the world.”

Widespread atrocities

Women and child survivors spoke of their ordeal at the hands of jihadists.

One woman told Sky News: “They throw you around from one man to another man and while that’s happening, they hit you with whips.” A child soldier who tried to escape from IS’s clutches said he was tied up to a tree for 24 hours and beaten with canes.

Another said: “I don’t know the name of the group I was fighting for… they just told us that we would go to heaven.”

Last month, the UN Somalia mission chief Michael Keating said he was “appalled” by the use of child soldiers by al-Shabaab and other jihadist groups in the Horn of Africa. “I am both distressed and truly appalled that anyone is using kids reportedly as young as 14 and sending them off to fight as fodder,” he told CNN.

“The sheer number of them who were sent up to Puntland, that’s what is particularly shocking about it. It’s one thing to have a few kids in the mix, it’s another to have dozens of them being sent up in units,” Keating explained.

ibtimes.co.uk

Members of al-Shabab in Somalia who recently pledged allegiance to Islamic State are moving into the capital, Mogadishu, according to a senior intelligence analyst.

Colonel Abdullahi Ali Maow, a former national intelligence officer who now heads the new Mogadishu-based Somalia Institute for Security Studies, told VOA that some al-Shabab members are fleeing to the capital and to areas near the border with Kenya because they were overpowered in the region of Middle Juba.

Maow said Mogadishu is attractive because, as a city of several million people, it is an easy place to blend in.

This week, Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack in Somalia when an explosion targeted a convoy of African Union troops outside the capital.

But AMISOM military spokesman Joseph Kibet told VOA that Islamic State may not have been behind that attack.

Al-Shabab, however, did not claim responsibility for that attack, as they often do.

An intelligence official who did not want to be identified by name told VOA that al-Shabab is hostile to former members who have pledged allegiance to Islamic State, creating a rift between the two factions. He predicted there may be instances of violence known to the two groups, but left unexplained to the general public.

Colonel Maow, who told VOA the pro-Islamic State al-Shabab members are coming to Mogadishu, said the government plans to treat them the same way it treats other al-Shabab members. But he said the government is concerned that the Islamic State adherents will gain more followers.

“They may not have power now,” he said, “but it complicates the situation.”

voanews.com

At least 20 Al-Shabaab militants were killed Tuesday in a heavy fighting between Somali National Army and the militant group at a military base near Baidoa town in Bay region, 250 km southwest of Mogadishu.

Somali National Army (SNA) Commander in Division 60 based in Bay region, Ismail Khalif Shire told the state media that 20 Al-Shabaab militants attempted to attack their base there were killed during the battle.

“Al-Shabaab militants attacked our army base at Daynunay near Baidoa town in Bay region this morning. The SNA overpowered and shot dead 20 of them on the spot,” Shire said.

He declined to say if there were casualties on their sides. However, Al-Shabaab militants claimed victory in the attack in which the insurgents claimed to have taken over the army base.

The group said that it captured the SNA base of Daynunay and killed 10 government soldiers. Baidoa town is the administrative capital of Southwest State in Somalia.

The latest incident comes after security forces killed at least six Al-Shabaab militants and captured three others in Bur-hakabo town in Bay region this week.

Six of the militants blew up themselves, according to government officials earlier this week.

The militants have recently increased their attacks against AU and Somali forces in the Lower Shabelle region, which has seen a surge of attacks that resulted in the loss of several strategic towns although the militants mainly held those towns briefly.

The AMISOM forces have also increased airstrikes in southern Somalia in the recent past, resolving in the killing of more than 50 militants late last month.

china.org.cn

Cambodia dispatched on Wednesday the third batch of troops to join a United Nations peacekeeping mission in the conflict-torn West African nation of Mali, a senior military official said.

The 309-member group would replace the second team, whose one-year term had come to an end, said Gen. Sem Sovanny, director-general of the Cambodian National Center for Peacekeeping Force, adding that they would work on airport repairs and explosive ordnance disposal.

“Your mission represents Cambodia, so you all must strictly comply with the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces’ code of conduct, Mali’s laws and international laws,” he said during the sending-off ceremony at the Phnom Penh International Airport.

He also advised them to respect tradition, custom, religion and dignity of the people in Mali.

According to Gen. Sovanny, since 2006, Cambodia has sent 3,557 troops to join the UN peacekeeping missions in eight countries, namely Sudan, South Sudan, Chad, Central African Republic, Lebanon, Mali, Syria, and Cyprus.

Currently, some 895 of them are still on their duties in Sudan, South Sudan, Lebanon, Mali, and Central African Republic, he added.

xinhuanet.com

A year ago this week, Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza announced his intention to run for a contentious third term. That was the moment everything changed.

The president’s announcement on April 25, 2015, triggered protests, violence and a failed coup, followed by delays in elections and the withdrawal of opposition parties.

The fallout didn’t stop there. In the past 12 months, over 250,000 refugees have fled the east African nation to neighbouring Tanzania, Rwanda and the DRC: this figure rises daily.

A quarter of a million refugees is no small thing. Equally, we must be mindful that the majority of Burundians remain in the country – this includes over 25,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) in just three districts, who have limited access to humanitarian assistance, according to the International Organization for Migration. It’s likely that there are even more displaced people in harder to reach areas.

A year on, the crisis appears to be going nowhere fast. Granted, there are no huge IDP camps or long queues of people waiting to register as hosts for displaced families. However the security situation remains volatile, with shootings and grenade attacks becoming part of everyday life, particularly in the capital, Bujumbura, where I live.

While things can appear normal, there has been a distinct change in mind-set: these incidents affect you. Some people feel the need to be prepared and on edge. They are wary of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The fear of stray bullets, or a grenade attack, casts a shadow.

At the same time, there have been reports of human rights abuses that seem to increase in frequency. There is now a huge amount of work needed to create an environment where people stop leaving and can feel safe and happy in their homes. As part of this we must support Burundians to tackle the important development issues that are being exacerbated by the crisis.

The economic and health implications of the crisis are indisputable, and could deepen. We have already seen an increase in malaria, with over 1 million cases and 520 deaths reported in the last year. There have been reports of cholera, which is also endemic, along the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika and the Tanzania border.

In the communities where Christian Aid works, people are struggling to access essential medicines such as anti-retrovirals for HIV. Access to sexual and reproductive health services has also dipped, according to our monitoring results and other reports. This will have a severe impact on the wellbeing of some of Burundi’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens.

Difficulties in accessing essential services, coupled with worrying predictions for harvests – due to El Niño weather patterns and conflict-related issues – represent an on-going struggle.

The turmoil has disrupted farming activities in Burundi: recent surveys show that national agricultural production is 10 per cent below average during the current season. Staple food prices in these areas are higher than both the 2014 and five-year averages. With the vast majority of the population dependent on agriculture, the ramifications are huge.

And yet, there is a distinct lack of funding available to support Burundians. An EU suspension of direct aid to the government and a general reduction in economic activity has left the state with even less money for essential services, infrastructure repairs and other necessities.

Things are only set to worsen as funds potentially dry up throughout the year. For a country that was already one of the poorest in the world, Burundi’s ability to cope has been severely threatened.

The UN recently launched a Humanitarian Preparedness Plan in light of the financial need, but current pledges fall far below what is required. It isn’t easy to generate funds for a slow-onset crisis that is aggravating existing problems; particularly since many donors are primarily interested in the number of internally displaced people.

Things might get worse before they get better. So Christian Aid has pledged to keep doing what we can to raise funds. We will also continue supporting local partners that are working with communities to establish ‘Humanitarian Disaster Committees’ which can manage a crisis from the ground up. Extra investment would mean these committees are better placed to address other local problems such as gender-based violence, which has reportedly risen in the last year.

Burundi is a beautiful country full of potential, with many success stories – including Christian Aid’s work to help smallholder farmers reach international coffee markets.

With the right support, I am confident that Burundians can, and will, find a way to improve their situation. However there is a long road ahead and much work needed at the ‘higher levels’, particularly around reconciliation, peace-building and fostering mutual respect.

One year on, it’s vital that we keep Burundi on the international agenda: let’s not turn our backs on this forgotten crisis.

James Robinson is the Burundi Country Manager for the overseas development charity Christian Aid, which works with churches, faith-based organisations and other partners to bring about change in Burundi’s communities.

christiantoday.com