The
infamous terror group, Boko Haram, is using female suicide bombers in growing
numbers. Are the Chibok girls among them?
By
Philip Obaji Jr.
Aisha,
nine years old, and her elder sister, Falmata, 13, were both abducted from
their home in Damasak, in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state, during a raid by
Boko Haram militants in March. Their much older brother, Bukkar, isn’t sure
they’ll ever return. He believes they might have been drafted into the
insurgents’ growing army of female suicide bombers. Indeed, he has every reason
to think so.
When
militants invaded Damasak, they burned down houses and demanded children be
handed over to them. Parents who objected were killed, and eventually hundreds
of children—girls in particular—were taken by force.
“They
set our house on fire and walked through the streets kidnapping children who
were under 15 years of age and killing those who were above that age,” Bukkar
remembers. “They were most interested in little girls, whom they plan to use as
suicide bombers.”
Boko
Haram has become notorious for using young female suicide bombers. The majority
of those recognized have been adolescent girls, with some as young as 10. Other
young women are forced to become soldiers and sex slaves.
“Militants
feel it is easier to intimidate and brainwash young girls than adult women.
Besides, these girls come cheap, and most of them are extremely loyal,” says
Yusuf Mohammed, who works with young people affected by trauma in Maiduguri,
the birth place of Boko Haram.
The
use of these young women began not long after more than 200 young women were
kidnapped from their school in Chibok last year, an incident that provoked
global outrage and the #BringBackOurGirls campaign that, so far, has proved
fruitless.
The
corresponding time frame and the age of the suicide bombers killed and captured
since then have prompted speculation that Boko Haram has enlisted some of the
kidnapped girls from Chibok in its jihad. The alleged bomber in a July 2014
attack at a university in Kano bore a marked resemblance to one of the abducted
schoolgirls.
There’s
a strong possibility that after more than a year in captivity, some of the
Chibok girls could have been indoctrinated by their kidnappers to carry out
suicide attacks, but there’s no clear evidence that this is the case. The
government believes the Chibok girls are still more or less together and being
held by the terrorists in a secret location. Meanwhile Boko Haram has abducted
hundreds of young women and girls in other towns and villages in Nigeria’s
northeastern region.
According
to local sources, Boko Haram currently operates suicide bombing training camps
in Kirenuwa town in Marte, 112 kilometers north of Maiduguri, and in Kala Balge
area in northern Borno. Those are in addition to parts of the deadly Sambisa
forest, where the Nigerian military is currently carrying out an offensive
against the insurgents.
These
same local sources say that when women are abducted by the militants the “young
and smart” girls are separated from the older ones and trained on how to handle
heavy weapons or carry out suicide attacks, or both.
Earlier
this month, soldiers who spoke with The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity
said they were shocked when women opened fire on troops who had come to rescue
them in Sambisa forest. The women, they said, killed seven soldiers. A dozen
women died in the firefight.
Indoctrinated
female bombers are persuaded to seek martyrdom for fighting God’s cause.
“They
repeatedly told us that the best jihad is the one in which your horse is slain
and your blood is spilled,” said Rukaya, 13, who was rescued by Niger’s armed
forces from a Boko Haram camp in Bosso, in southeastern Niger along the border
with Nigeria, then taken to a camp for displaced persons in Diffa, deeper in
Niger’s territory. (She spoke to The Daily Beast via her older brother.)
In
the past, Boko Haram gave financial incentives to its bombers. In its
first-ever suicide attack—a 2011 bombing at the police headquarters in the
national capital of Abuja—Boko Haram was reported to have offered the male
suicide bomber the equivalent of $24,870 dollars for the operation, which he
bequeathed to his four children.
It
is doubtful that the rising number of female bombers or their families received
any such largesse.
Over
the past 13 months, there has been a huge rise in female suicide bombings and
huge increase in casualties as well. The attacks have claimed up to 78 victims.
Boko Haram’s first female bomber was a woman believed to be in her early
twenties who rode a motorcycle into military barracks and blew herself up at a
checkpoint in the northeastern city of Gombe last June. In its latest suicide
attack, at least seven people were killed and 33 others seriously wounded when
a female bomber, believed to be 10 years, old blew herself up at a bus station
on May 16 in Damaturu, the capital of Nigeria's northeastern Yobe State.
Last
week, the Borno State deputy governor said Boko Haram had deployed more than
600 women throughout Maiduguri, with the goal of carrying out suicide bombings
in the metropolis. While this number is completely unfeasible, female
terrorists have had the advantage that, previously at least, they attracted
less attention from authorities and could move about largely unquestioned: the
long hijab, or covering, worn by Muslim women can easily hide bombs, and strict
standards of morality make it hard for male security officers to search female
suspects. Last November, two women dressed in full hijabs, which covered
everything but their faces, entered a busy Maiduguri market and detonated
explosives, killing more than 40 people. A 20-year-old woman, who was one of
the suicide bombers, had a bomb tied firmly to her back in the same manner used
by many women to carry their children in northern Nigeria.
More
recently, as vigilance in the region has increased, some women—particularly
teenage girls—have given up the full-length covering for fear they’ll be
mistaken for terrorists. They still wear hijab, but the veils are shorter and
lighter, or mere head coverings along with simple dresses, so that anyone can
see there are no explosives on them.
Meanwhile,
the government says the search for the Chibok girls goes on, and continues to
heap skepticism on suggestions that they may have been pressed into the ranks
of Boko Haram’s women bombers. In an interview on Nigeria’s African Independent
Television in March, President Goodluck Jonathan, who lost his reelection bid,
argued that Boko Haram would have been only too happy to display the corpses of
the Chibok girls for propaganda purposes if they had been killed.
“They
are still alive, because when terrorists kill they display,” Jonathan said.
“But we can’t just move in with artilleries and clear the place because they
may use them as shields, so we are working with the global best practices.”
Kashim
Shettima, who is the governor of Borno, said the abducted girls have been kept
in bunkers, inside Sambisa forest. “We are suspecting that the Chibok girls are
living with the insurgents in bunkers,” Shettima said in a statement presented
at a conference on security last week, I think the military must carry out
their operations beneath the surface of the earth.” He said Boko Haram is also
“known to have dug tunnels to enable them to move from house to house. So, having
been left unchallenged for such a long time, such possibilities cannot be ruled
out, which poses serious obstacles within the forest.”
With
many theories suggesting that the Chibok girls are currently been kept in the
deadly forest, only a complete and effective elimination of the terrorists
there can ascertain whether or not the now-famous girls are dead or alive.
Philip
Obaji Jr. is the founder of 1 GAME, an advocacy and campaigning organization
that fights for the right to education for disadvantaged children in Nigeria,
especially in northeastern Nigeria, where Boko Haram forbids western
education. Follow him @PhilipObaji
Culled
from The Daily Beast
Photograph:
STRINGER/AFP via Getty
