The catalog of atrocities committed by Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram is harrowing.
Hundreds,
possibly thousands, of women and children have been abducted from their
homes. Captives report being gang-raped and forced into sexual slavery.
Young girls have been sent to blow themselves up in suicide attacks.
The relentless slaughter of men, women and children has made Boko Haram
the deadliest terrorist group in the world in recent years.
Why would anyone join such a group?
A
new report by aid agency Mercy Corps seeks to answer that question. The
U.S.-based group interviewed 47 former members about the reasons they
entered Boko Haram and published its findings this week.
The
militant group has thousands of members, including fighters and people
playing other supportive roles, such as smuggling and logistics,
analysts say. Its ranks are made up mostly of young men, but it also has
some female recruits.
The Mercy Corps report paints a complex picture of Boko Haram’s recruitment tactics.
First,
though Boko Haram has lately become notorious for abducting children
and forcing captives to fight or carry out suicide attacks, not all
recruits join against their will.
Most ex-members interviewed by
Mercy Corps fell in the gray area between coercion and choice. Some said
they were threatened; some faced extreme pressure from friends, family
or colleagues, while others saw the group as their least bad option in
impoverished and marginalized northeast Nigeria.
“I officially
joined them when they started killing indiscriminately,” one man told
Mercy Corps. “I needed protection and immunity from persecution by them
so I could continue with my business.”
Second, the group attracts recruits with a blend of religious ideology, social pressure and economic incentives.
The
financial draw is not just about escaping poverty and unemployment,
both of which are high in northeast Nigeria. In fact, the study found
Boko Haram recruits poor and rich, employed and unemployed alike.
Rather,
the group plays on the ambitions of young men who are struggling to get
ahead in an area with scant financial services and pernicious
inequality and corruption.
Several former recruits depicted Boko
Haram as a mafia-style organization, offering young entrepreneurs loans
for small businesses like shops, salons and tailors and then forcing
them to join the group when they couldn’t repay the loan.
One man
told Mercy Corps that his Boko Haram recruiter “started playing me
their preaching tapes to convince me, and he equally started
[financially] assisting me and my parents.” Soon after, his recruiter
made it clear that he was obligated to join Boko Haram because of these
financial “gifts,” so he fled for his life.
Third, nearly half
of the Boko Haram recruits interviewed for the study were women. Some of
them were abducted or coerced by their husbands into joining; others
were recruited voluntarily by friends or family.
Some women told
Mercy Corps that joining Boko Haram provided opportunities for religious
study and status within the militant group.
“I just wanted to learn more of the Quran and my religion,” one woman told Mercy Corps.
The
study provides an important insight into the profile and motivations of
Boko Haram members and offers strategies to stem the flow of recruits.
Mercy Corps urged more access to financial services, reintegration of
former fighters and support for counter-narratives that have already
proved effective against Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria.
But it
should be read with attention to an important piece of context — Boko
Haram has changed almost beyond recognition since it first emerged in
2002.
Before the death of its founder, Muhammed Yusuf, in 2009,
the group was a radical but predominantly nonviolent sect that espoused
strict Islamic governance as the answer to the region’s rampant
corruption. After Yusuf was killed, Boko Haram went underground and
re-emerged as a brutal insurgency under its hardline and elusive new
leader, Abubakar Shekau.
The study found a “marked difference” in
Boko Haram’s recruitment techniques after 2009, Mercy Corps’ Rebecca
Wolfe, who worked on the report, told The WorldPost.
“As Boko
Haram’s tactics became more violent, community acceptance started to go
and people weren’t joining as much as being coerced,” she said.
Further,
some researchers said that the study’s depiction of Boko Haram
attracting wealthier recruits through a coercive micro-lending scheme
was more typical of the earlier days of the group under Mohammed Yusuf.
“Yusuf
was a wealthy man himself, as well as a charismatic preacher,” Virginia
Comolli, the author of Boko Haram: Nigeria’s Islamist Insurgency, told
The WorldPost. “He was able to offer people small amounts of money which
they used to set up small businesses like motorbike taxis and paid the
proceeds back into the group as membership fees.”
“It was both a way of attracting people and attracting revenues.”
Comolli
and other researchers said they had not seen much evidence of such
tactics since Yusuf’s death, but the Mercy Corps study found this
practice of offering business incentives has continued.
“We did
speak with several former members who joined post-2009 who were at least
partially influenced or coerced by the offer of business support,”
study author Lisa Inks told The WorldPost.
The study demonstrates
how Boko Haram, like extremist groups around the world, has multiple
ways to attract, intimidate and coerce recruits, including exploiting
the socioeconomic and political grievances of the area.
“People
are attracted by the violent ideology and by their legitimate grievances
against the state,” Comolli said. “You feel like you are somebody when
you are given a gun and a mission.”
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/boko-haram-recruitment-tactics_us_571265afe4b06f35cb6fc595
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