Professional Soldiers ® - Nigeria - Violent Islamic Sect Boko Haram

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Nigeria - Violent Islamic Sect Boko Haram

Difficult to get the moderates to cooperate when the government ignores their pleas for help against such AK/RPG toting radical sects. And so it goes... :(

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Quote:

Nigerian Death Toll Rises to 700
AP, 2 Aug 2009

The Nigerian authorities disregarded dozens of warnings about a violent Islamist sect until it attacked police stations and government buildings last week in a blood bath that killed more than 700 people, Muslim clerics and an army official said.

More than 50 Muslim leaders repeatedly called the police, local authorities and state security to urge them to take action against Boko Haram sect militants but their pleas were ignored, Imam Ibrahim Ahmed Abdullahi said.

“A lot of imams tried to draw the attention of the government,” Mr. Abdullahi said, drawing nods from the several other Muslim scholars sitting with him as he spoke Saturday in the battle-ravaged city of Maiduguri. “We used to call the government and security agents to say that these people must be stopped from what they are doing because it must bring a lot of trouble.”

On July 26, militants from the sect attacked a police station in Bauchi State, inciting a wave of militant violence that spread to three other northern states. The Nigerian authorities retaliated five days later by storming the group’s sprawling Maiduguri headquarters, killing at least 100 people in the attack, half of them inside the sect’s mosque.

About 700 people were killed in days of violence last week in Maiduguri alone, according to Col. Ben Ahanotu, the military official in charge of a local anti-crime operation.

The death toll from the violence in other northern areas was not known.

The imams were not the only ones to raise the alarm. Colonel Ahanotu said he recommended several times that action be taken against the group but received no orders to do so. “I complained a lot of times,” he said.

International concern is growing over the ability of Al Qaeda affiliates to cross the porous desert borders of countries like Niger into Nigeria.

It was not clear why the authorities did not act sooner. Boko Haram was not discreet and Mohammed Yusuf, its leader, had been arrested several times before, most recently in 2008 after his followers attacked a police station. Mr. Yusuf was killed Thursday.

Ali Modu Sheriff, the governor of Borno State in the notheast, said he was not sure he could bring enough evidence to court against the sect. “It’s not that people did not hear or that our government did not know that these followers of Mohamed Yusuf did exist,” he said. “They did exist, but we don’t know what they stand for.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/wo...tml?ref=africa

While the theme of the AP item above is the failure Nigerian authorities to foresee the problem and act (this is central and deserves its own attention, and I intend to get that Andy McCarthy book
http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/...ad.php?t=24353 ),
and I do not want to derail us from that, a little detail on the group and situation:

Nigeria: An Islamist Sect Leader is Killed

July 30, 2009 | 2137 GMT
Mohammed Yusuf, the leader of the Nigerian Islamist sect Boko Haram, died in police custody July 30 following his capture by Nigerian security forces. The sect, whose name translates to “Western education is a sin” in the local Hausa language (the group has also been referred to as the Nigerian Taliban), has been fighting running battles resulting in hundreds of deaths in several northern and middle belt states of Nigeria since the Nigerian security forces raided one of Yusuf’s compounds July 26.

Nigerian security forces will enforce a state of emergency that can be expected in the northern and middle belt states of the country that have experienced recent clashes. Army personnel, paramilitary mobile police and regular police will likely maintain a heavy presence with little restraint in Borno, Bauchi, Kaduna, Plateau, Taraba, Yobe and Zamfara states to prevent subsequent clashes from spiraling out of control. A state of emergency in those states could be maintained for months while order is restored, but even so, tensions will not fully dissipate.

Intercommunal clashes that have involved Boko Haram (which publicly aimed for the adoption of Shariah throughout Nigeria) and Christian militias have been a frequent occurrence in Nigeria’s northern and middle belt states. Though the Boko Haram leadership has now been removed (top Yusuf deputy Abubakar Shekau also was killed earlier July 30), the group has not been eliminated entirely. But with Nigerian security forces sure to keep a heavy presence in states where the group had a foothold, the sect will be constrained in mounting any significant reprisal.

www.stratfor.com

An update:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6260X420100307

Up to 300 feared dead in central Nigeria clashes

Shuaibu Mohammed
JOS, Nigeria
Sun Mar 7, 2010 2:21pm EST
Reuters) - Nigeria's acting president Sunday ordered the security forces to hunt down those behind clashes involving Muslim herders and Christian villagers in which more than 300 people may have been killed.

The latest unrest in Nigeria's central Plateau state comes at a difficult time, with acting leader Goodluck Jonathan trying to assert his authority while ailing President Umaru Yar'Adua remains too sick to govern the oil-producing nation.

Villagers in Dogo Nahawa, just south of the state capital Jos, said Hausa-Fulani herders from surrounding hills attacked at about 3 a.m. (10 p.m. EST), shooting into the air before cutting those who came out of their homes with machetes.

A Red Cross official said at least two other nearby communities were also targeted, in an area close to where sectarian clashes killed hundreds of people in January, but that it was too early to give an overall death toll.

A Reuters witness counted more than 120 bodies -- most lying in Dogo Nahawa, others taken to mortuaries in Jos -- but Plateau State Commissioner for Information Gregory Yenlong said more than 300 people, including women and children, had died....

Some of the bodies seen by the Reuters witness -- including those of women and children -- were charred, others had machete wounds across their faces. Aid workers said some had been shot.

"The shooting was just meant to bring people from their houses and then when people came out they started cutting them with machetes," said Dogo Nahawa resident Peter Jang, women crying behind him.

POLITICAL UNCERTAINTY

Four days of sectarian clashes in January between mobs armed with guns, knives and machetes killed hundreds of people in Jos, which lies at the crossroads of Nigeria's Muslim north and predominantly Christian south....