Nigeria’s counter-insurgency experts try a new approach
By G.P. | ABUJA
NEARLY a year after President Goodluck Jonathan intensified a military campaign to squash Islamist militants of Boko Haram in the north-eastern corner of Nigeria, the rebels are still running rings around his soldiers and terrorising whole communities, which in turn are losing faith in the government. Now a group within Mr Jonathan’s security team wants to try something new. “It’s a stick-and-carrot approach,” says Sambo Dasuki, Nigeria’s national security adviser. “We believe we can win the war against terror by mobilising our family, cultural, religious and national values.” At the same time, however, the conventional military campaign will continue.
Under Mr Dasuki’s “soft approach”, the government will seek to enrol repentant Boko Haram members into vocational schools, psychologists will provide counselling and local imams will give them a pacifist interpretation of the Koran. Education and sports programmes will be offered to disaffected youths who have hitherto been drawn to the sect. Mr Dasuki admits that poverty, injustice and corruption have encouraged disgruntled young locals to back or join Boko Haram, meaning “Western education is forbidden”. It may, in any case, be almost impossible to reverse the trend while fighting rages. Alienated north-easterners, who are nearly all Muslim, deeply distrust the people who have been running Mr Jonathan’s counter-insurgency campaign.
Despite the thousands of extra troops sent in since last May, bolstered by air assaults on Boko Haram camps, the army has failed to make much headway. As a result, public anger across the country has been mounting. Heavily armed Islamists have responded with increasing brutality, targeting civilians and wresting swathes of the rural north-east from the army. Violence linked to Boko Haram has caused the deaths of more than 700 people this year, making it the one of the bloodiest periods since the insurgency took off in 2010. Since last May, some 350,000 people have fled their homes, according to the UN.
Last month Boko Haram committed one of its worst atrocities by killing 40-odd pupils in a pre-dawn attack on a school in the state of Yobe, setting ablaze a hostel whose doors were locked, then shooting or slitting the throats of those who tried to escape. The neighbouring state of Borno, at the heart of the insurgency, has been forced to close all its secondary schools. In a region with the country’s lowest literacy rates, 120,000 students will be affected.
Dr Fatima Akilu, a psychologist who used to counsel homeless youths in London, has been asked by Mr Dasuki to design a programme to rehabilitate Boko Haram members awaiting trial and to dissuade other north-easterners from joining the rebels. “Part of our approach is to offer an alternative narrative to those who have joined the ranks of this group,” she says. “Make no mistake: it is a long term approach, but this programme is what works for this particular group.”
