The assault by Nigerian security forces on violent extremists in the northern city of Maiduguri is proving difficult and bloody. Some 1,000 members of the Boko Haram sect are apparently trapped in an enclave from which a senior police officer said on Tuesday they were laying down a withering defensive fire.
There are those in Nigeria who believe that the authorities should long ago have moved against these extremists and their leader Mohammed Yusuf. Boko Haram has been able to build up a power base and by all accounts a considerable arsenal and intimidate, murder and maim victims throughout four northern provinces, Borno, Bauchi, Kano and Yobe. More worrying is that this is not simply a Nigerian insurrection. Papers found on the bodies of slain sect members show that some come from neighboring Chad and Niger. Other foreign fighters are believed to be holed up in the besieged enclave. Whether Al-Qaeda members are present is another matter. It is not thought Boko Haram, sometimes called the “Nigerian Taleban” actually has any links to Afghanistan. But it seems obvious that the insurrection there has inspired the Nigerian militants.
Boko Haram members are suspected to have been behind last year’s ethnic and interfaith tensions in the north of the country which saw massacres of both Muslims and Christians. Indeed, more recently the sect’s thugs have been butchering Muslims who do not agree with them. The final straw for the administration of Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua in Abuja came when Mohammed Yusuf’s supporters this week carried out a series attacks on police stations and government buildings, during which at least 150 people were slain.
The Nigerian government, struggling to end an insurrection in the oil-rich east of the country, which has already had a serious impact on oil output and revenues, does not need a second violent confrontation to deal with. It must be hoped that the Boko Haram enclave will be overrun quickly and that the sect’s leaders, including Yusuf will be captured and brought to justice. It appears, however, that the security forces may have underestimated the task they face. On Tuesday, a senior police official gave the impression at a press conference that the job was almost done. On Wednesday, however, the militants were defending themselves with even greater vigor.
The worst outcome would be for key Boko Haram members to slip away through the surrounding cordon, to raise the standard of bigotry another day. It may even be that Yusuf had already fled the compound before the police and army assault on it began. Equally, if the sect members continue to put up a stubborn fight against the authorities, they will be hailed as heroes and martyrs. In fact they are no such thing. However much they may be dedicated to their belief, enshrined in their name — Boko Haram, which means “Western education is a sin,” — the barbarous brutality with which they have set out to enforce their principles must rob them of all sympathy. They are bigots and criminals and should be treated as such.
