Boko Haram: understanding the context

Boko Haram insurgency has caused the death and displacement of thousands of Nigerians. Its means of terror has evolved from the use of crude weapons to bombs, kidnappings and the use of children as suicide bombers. Its reach has expanded beyond Nigeria into neighbouring West African countries and it has pledged allegiance to Al-Qaida and Islamic State. To address this security concern, its cause should first be ascertained. This paper argues that to do this, Boko Haram should be located in northern Nigerian historical context/environment. This paper reviews economic greed and grievance, extreme religious ideology and political opportunity in historic insurgencies in northern Nigeria. It finds that while the interplay of different factors shaped these insurgencies; it was political opportunity that ignited their onsets. Finally, the article submits that as long as these factors remain the same, military quelling of Boko Haram will not prevent a re-emergence of its likes.     

Opprobre,discours clivants et sociolectes induits par Boko Haram au Cameroun

RÉSUMÉ

Le phénomène Boko Haram au Cameroun est générateur de représentations discriminatoires. Il vient renforcer des clivages et produit de nombreux sociolectes. Des qualificatifs discriminants et négateurs jettent l’opprobre sur autrui, accusé d’être de connivence avec les insurgés. La secte a été considérée comme un complot des gens du Nord, une rébellion armée visant à renverser le pouvoir central de Yaoundé. Le problème a investi la sphère publique. Les prises de paroles montrent bien que le Nord du pays s’est dressé contre le Sud. La situation a ensuite pris les allures d’un conflit interconfessionnel, intraconfessionnel, opposant des musulmans contre des chrétiens. Le renforcement des clivages fait en sorte que les ressortissants du Nord et les populations musulmanes rentrent plus facilement dans la catégorie des usual suspects. Le fait de mettre la “rouelle” au cou du voisin, du compatriote ou du coreligionnaire impacte fatalement sur le vivre-ensemble.     

“They cut my son’s head,legs and hands before me”: pre- and post-terror experiences among returnee victims of Boko Haram in Orlu,Imo State

ABSTRACT

This research note offers first-hand accounts of the plight of “non-indigenes” who became victims of Boko Haram terrorism in the North, and their resettlement back in their “homeland” in Orlu (Imo State). As “strangers” in various towns of the North, they were victimized by Boko Haram and had to develop various strategies to survive. Many of them, however, returned to their “homeland” only to become victims of new forms of social exclusion, as “strangers in their own land.”     

The ugly face of the state: Nigerian security forces,human rights and the search for Boko Haram

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that the aggressive and gratuitously violent insurgency in northeastern Nigeria – Boko Haram – is the entirely understandable consequence of more than a half-century of misrule by what I call the parasitic and predatory Nigerian political class. Evidence of widespread human rights abuses including extortion, rape and theft comes from investigations by various international human rights organizations, international non-governmental organizations, church groups, press reports and interviews. I focus primarily on incidents and practices in the northeast but examples are adduced from other parts of the country as well. I discuss the policy of coercion and brutality embedded in the very nature of the colonial and post-colonial state using Crawford Young’s concept of bula matari (the state as rock crusher).     

Comprendre Boko Haram à partir d’une perspective historique,locale et régionale

RÉSUMÉ

Ce numéro spécial s’intéresse à l’insurrection de Boko Haram dans les pays du bassin tchadien en se concentrant essentiellement sur les dynamiques locales, d’une part, en regardant au-delà de la perspective sensationnaliste et à court terme des médias, et d’autre part, en explorant des thèmes qui transcendent le temps et les frontières disciplinaires. Notre postulat de base est que la lecture des actions de Boko Haram à travers le prisme des termes aujourd’hui à la mode tels que “terroristes” ou “djihadistes,” ne peut offrir qu’une perspective limitée du phénomène. Plutôt qu’un modèle superficiel dérivé de la pensée de la “guerre contre le terrorisme,” les approches développées par les auteurs de ce dossier thématique se concentrent non seulement sur les facteurs religieux, mais aussi sur la violence de l’État et les facteurs sociaux, politiques et économiques qui soutiennent l’adhésion à l’insurrection, ce qui présente un parallèle avec les “bandits sociaux.”     

Boko Haram : un cas d’école de l’échec de l’islam politique au Nigeria

RÉSUMÉ

Cet article analyse quelques-unes des raisons pour lesquelles Boko Haram s’est avéré incapable de gouverner les territoires qu’il a pu contrôler avant son allégeance à l’État islamique et son retrait dans les marécages du lac Tchad en 2015. L’échec politique du groupe ne tient pas seulement à sa fragmentation, sa criminalisation, son manque de cadres qualifiés et la pauvreté d’une insurrection “low cost.” En effet, le caractère prédateur de la secte est tout à la fois une cause et un symptôme de sa désorganisation et de son incapacité à gouverner. Se réclamant de la légitimité du djihad d’Ousmane dan Fodio à Sokoto, le mouvement n’a jamais cherché à ressusciter l’Empire du Borno pour lever l’impôt et rendre une justice très rudimentaire. Ainsi, le cas de Boko Haram témoigne à sa manière de l’échec de l’islam politique et des tentatives d’extension du domaine d’application de la charia au Nigeria depuis la fin de la dictature militaire en 1999.     

Beyond poverty fixation: interrogating the experiences of internally displaced persons in Nigeria

Abstract

This paper draws on fieldwork at three camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Northeast Nigeria. It interrogates the pre-displacement experiences of participants, their transition to and experiences of internal displacement, vignettes of life at IDP camps, their relationship with host communities, the non-universality of experiences of sexual and gender-based violence among female IDPs (despite the particularities of experiences of women and young girls) and the resilience and agency of IDPs. The paper argues that scholarly engagement with IDPs and their social conditions should go beyond fixation on or fetishisation of poverty. Overall, the paper contributes to the empirical literature on conditions of internal displacement in sub-Saharan Africa.     

Les éleveurs de la rive nigérienne du lac Tchad face à Boko Haram: entre mobilités forcées et revendications identitaires

RÉSUMÉ

La crise sécuritaire qui sévit actuellement dans la région de Diffa (Niger) et singulièrement dans le bassin du lac Tchad, du fait de l’insécurité causée par les islamistes de Boko Haram, a bouleversé les activités pastorales et perturbé les mobilités des éleveurs au sein de cette partie du Niger. À partir des données in situ collectées auprès des éleveurs sur la base d’une méthodologie d’enquêtes terrain dans une zone où l’accès est physiquement difficile, cet article met en lien des trajectoires historiques sur la longue durée et les vécus quotidiens des pasteurs et agro-pasteurs de la rive nigérienne du lac Tchad dans cette situation d’insécurité inédite liée à Boko Haram. Nous verrons notamment comment cette insécurité a engendré des dysfonctionnements sur certains systèmes pastoraux, a exacerbé les tensions intercommunautaires sur fond d’anciens clivages ethniques et a ravivé les revendications territoriales entre groupes pour le contrôle des zones pastorales et l’affirmation identitaire.     

Problems in applying counterterrorism to prevent terrorism: Two decades of violence in Northern Ireland reconsidered

The terrorism of 9/11 elicited a range of different reactions from around the world, including the sentiment that 9/11 was just deserts for America's presence abroad as an unwelcome, overweening world policeman. To help determine the prevalence of this perspective, the authors surveyed a sample of 335 well-educated, English speaking Sri Lankans. Most respondents (73%) thought that the United States brought the 9/11 attack on itself. Reasons for this view included the United States's unilateralism as the only superpower, its involvement in other countries' affairs for its own benefit, and its support for Jews in Israel at the expense of Muslims. Yet the sample's overwhelming sympathy for the U.S. after 9/11 (83%) and to a lesser extent, its anger (52%), as well as agreement regarding the need to punish those who planned and carried out the attack (91%) indicate ambivalence towards the U.S. Implications for how the U.S. should address anti-American attitudes are discussed.‐     

Between Russia and Estonia: narratives of place in a new borderland

The Russian–Estonian border has undergone radical changes in the past two decades – from an integrated borderland between two Soviet republics to a border between nation-states and the new EU external border. Until the present day, it is a discursive battlefield that reflects the difficult relations between Russia and Estonia after the restoration of Estonia's independence. While much research has concentrated on antagonistic projects of identity politics and state-building from a top-down perspective, this paper asks how people living in the borderland make sense of the place they live in and negotiate shifts in the symbolic landscapes. Based on life-story narratives of Russian-speakers, it analyzes different ways of narrating and framing place and argues for a consideration of the plurality and ambivalences of place-making projects on the ground. Furthermore, it argues for a more balanced account of continuity and discontinuity in memory narratives by taking into account how the socialist past continues to be meaningful in the present. As the interviews show, memories of the socialist past are used for constructing belonging in the present both by countering and by reproducing national narratives of boundedness.     

Contextualized violence: politics and terror in Dagestan

Despite the escalating terrorist actions, there is no polarized constellation in the Islamic politics of Dagestan. Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) officers regard the corrupt Dagestan authorities to be significantly responsible for the massive conversion of youths to terrorism, and began to contact with moderate Salafis to isolate the “forest brothers” (armed Salafis) in 2010. Exploiting the FSB's soft strategy, secular intellectuals requested to reform the Muslim Spiritual Board of Dagestan by electing a legitimate mufti. Having seen the incompetence of intra-Sufi opposition (non-Avar sheikhs) in the War on Terror, the Spiritual Board jumped on the bandwagon of dialog strategy in 2012. The secular authorities of Dagestan, indifferent to intra-Muslim politics, limit their activities to the call for dialog between the secular authorities and the forest brothers. In this way, political actors hijack the master narrative of the “War on Terror” and these narratives are imported to local politics.     

Conflict dynamics and agonistic dialogue on historical violence: a case from Indonesia

This article contends that the type of high-level political consensus needed to reach a peace agreement is often insufficient for rebuilding and transforming wider social relations. Consensus-focused processes tend to suppress divergent views and experiences of conflict, particularly among grassroots conflict actors, and risk deepening social divides by homogenising diverse memories of past violence, with potentially dangerous consequences. In response to these concerns this article advances an understanding of agonistic dialogue and explores an example of such dialogue in communal conflict in Indonesia. Building on an understanding of effective dialogue as sustained, intensive and relational, this article also underscores the need for effective dialogue to have politico-institutional support and to be locally driven and owned by actors who are legitimate and trusted in the eyes of conflict protagonists.     

Culturalism and the rise of the Islamic State: faith,sectarianism and violence

This paper looks at the ways in which culturalist discourses have influenced our understanding and representation of the rise of the so-called Islamic State. It argues that, in keeping with older narratives on the motives of ‘bad’ Muslims, its political and economic objectives have been overlooked and/or downplayed. Instead, I propose, there has been a strategically efficacious focus on its appeal to Islam, on its sectarian rhetoric and on its use of violence. By continuing to emphasise the ethical over the political in these ways, the culturalism that underpins the dominant representation of the Islamic State’s emergence has, I conclude, served three key purposes – the mobilisation of the ‘good’ Muslim, the exculpation of Western foreign policy and the legitimisation of force.     

Sexual violence in armed conflicts: research progress and remaining gaps

Research on conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has grown rapidly over the last decade. This article consolidates existing social science research on CSRV according to two lines of inquiry: its causes and its consequences. Overall, research has considerably advanced our knowledge of the causes of CRSV, particularly in four aspects: purpose, context, individual motives and intra-group dynamics. However, there is a need to better understand the societal consequences of CRSV, in particular how it affects relations in families, and within and between communities. Overall there remains a shortage of empirical, in particular mixed-method, designs to produce research which is relevant for policymakers and practitioners.     

Seeing/being double: how African immigrants in Canada balance their ethno-racial and national identities

With increased transnational ties to their homelands, immigrants' ontology now verges on being double – and, consequently, on seeing double – most of the time. This double consciousness, and the attendant dearth of fixity in identity among immigrants, has led some to wonder where the allegiance of minority immigrants, in particular, lies. Can these immigrants be loyal to both their ethno-racial identity and their host national identity? Is the identification with one's ethno-racial background and national identity a zero-sum game in which one side of the loyalty equation gains only at the expense of the other? This study examines these issues, using African immigrants (specifically, Ghanaians and Somalis) in Canada as a case study. In particular, we use multinomial logistic regression to predict the factors that prompt these immigrants to identify as: ‘just Canadians’, ‘just Ghanaians/Somalis’, or as ‘Ghanaian-/Somali-Canadians’. The study is significant not only because of the lack of research on African immigrants' identity formation in Canada, but also because immigrants' identity has significant bearing on their settlement and integration in host societies.     

Negotiating justice: legal pluralism and gender-based violence in Liberia

The plural legal system in post-conflict Liberia expresses tensions between modern and customary institutions. This article seeks to understand how Liberians navigate choices in the plural legal system to address gender-based violence cases. By asking how and why people make the choices they do, we highlight how Liberians solve tensions between institutions, by creating flexible categories that allow them to pursue a course of action that does not compromise their ability to access social networks and resources.     

Self-Efficacy,Religiosity, and Crime: Profiles of African American Youth in Urban Housing Communities

Youth reporting independently elevated levels of religiosity and self-efficacy tend to abstain from externalizing behavior. However, little is known about the ways in which religiosity and self-efficacy interrelate to impact youth externalizing. Drawing from a sample of African American youth from public housing communities (N = 236), we use latent profile analysis to identify subtypes of youth based on self-reported religiosity and self-efficacy and, in turn, examine links with crime. Compared to youth in other subgroups, those classified as both highly religious and highly self-efficacious reported less involvement in minor and severe delinquency, but not violence.     

Myron Echenberg and African Studies in Canada

Myron Echenberg's scholarship resides on the frontier of both African Studies in Canada and historical research in general. He has helped not only to establish African history as a valid field for historical study but also to transform the parameters of history as a discipline, both the opening up of the study of non-Western societies and the increasing focus on newer kinds of history. He made his mark with a prize-winning study of the social history of African soldiers in the French army; and he spent the latter part of his career doing original work on medical history. The profound influence of his work is celebrated in this special issue. Three of the contributions to this issue, all dealing with medical history, are by Echenberg's former graduate students; two contributions are by close colleagues. In both his teaching and his writing, Echenberg has contributed to an understanding of the social issues of our time; but perhaps more important, he has through his teaching and his mentoring very much enriched the educational experience and well-being of his students and his colleagues.     

History education in schools in Iraqi Kurdistan: representing values of peace and violence

The Kurdistan Regional Government has implemented a wide range of reforms in Iraqi Kurdistan’s education system since its establishment in 2003. This qualitative study utilises critical discourse analysis to investigate the content of History Education (HE) textbooks (grades five to eight) and to assess how far peace education values and principles have been integrated into the curriculum. The ME’s top-down approach has faced significant resistance from teachers and it fails to consider the importance of hidden and null curricula. It focuses on the history of Iraq, Kurdistan, and Islam, glorifies war, excludes different narratives or interpretations, and fails to foster critical debate or enquiry. The curriculum appears to encourage violence and foster divisions between Muslims and non-Muslims, and the null curriculum is regulated to maintain the dominance of the group in power.     

Colonial legacies,armed revolts and state violence: the Maoist movement in India

Abstract

This article examines the connected histories of armed tribal and peasant revolts in colonial and postcolonial India with reference to the ongoing Maoist conflict in rural and tribal areas of central and eastern India. The article makes two interrelated arguments about the violent continuities that endure from colonial to postcolonial contexts: (1) the nation-state system, in its efforts to establish control and influence, creates a hierarchy of citizenship engaging in the hostile policing of marginalised subjects, thereby engendering armed revolts and political violence; (2) the postcolonial state’s response to these armed revolts by marginalised subjects who challenge its sovereignty and monopoly over violence, is equally violent and repressive. Most significantly, the state’s response is legitimised in the same colonial idioms and justifications that mark epistemic and physical violence against the third world.