In last week’s Christian Science Monitor, terrorism and insurgency specialists Vanda Felbab-Brown and James Forest published an analysis of Boko Haram, which has escalated violent attacks against Nigerian civilian and military targets over the past six months. Felbab-Brown and Forest argued for a localized understanding of Boko Haram’s insurgent mobilization, refuting claims of pan-West African jihadist coordination between Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the northern Nigerian insurgency:
Senior US officials, too, are worried about such a connection, as well as links to Al Shabaab, in Somalia. As if to verify such concerns, Nigeria has closed its borders to prevent entry by outside Islamist militants.
But in Nigeria, no less than in Pakistan, a fanatical ideology often cloaks far more local economic and tribal rivalries. This deep rooting in very local political contexts and economic ambitions actually hampers the terrorists’ efforts at forging pan-African jihad.
On its surface, Felbab-Brown and Forest’s argument stands up to scrutiny: as a movement with its origins in Nigeria’s marginalization of its northern provinces, Boko Haram relies on northern elites and grassroots to sustain itself. The solution, too, lies in an inclusive, localized approach to governance, resource distribution, and basic service provision. However, Felbab-Brown and Forest underplay the complexity of insurgency mobilization in West Africa.
While Boko Haram’s political goals, economic origins, and cultural affiliations rely on local dynamics, an insurgency’s origins only represent half of the picture. Since the June 2011 police headquarters bombing in Abuja, the northern insurgency–or, at the very least, its affiliates–has rapidly expanded its operational theater, conducting attacks on civilian targets in Borno’s surrounding states, as well as throughout Nigeria’s southern provinces. Boko Haram’s grassroots characteristics may possess a local flavor, but its operations clearly extend beyond its local mandate.
Boko Haram’s local/regional nexus underlines the multi-faceted nature of insurgency in West Africa. Andrew Lebovich, over at al-Wasat, took a look at the AQIM network‘s Janus-faced commitment to organized crime and ideological jihad, placed in the context of a recent AQIM kidnapping in Niger:
But Mouawiya’s testimony implies that there is more cooperation amongst rival units than most people think, and that different units of the group are involved actively in both criminal and jihadist activities. This is not to say that these rivalries don’t exist, but I do think that this data point could show that AQIM’s Sahelian units are more interconnected than most think, to the point of sharing fighters for different operations.
As the Economist’s recent report indicated, it’s hard to fathom that Boko Haram’s small network of operatives have the technical, logistical, and organizational capacity to coordinate the level of violence encountered over the past four months. While little is known of Boko Haram’s internal operations, it may well be that the organization is confronting similar divergences to its colleagues in the Sahel, reliant on a distinction between local grassroots politics and regional operational requirements.
Update: Today, soon after I published this post, the Pulitzer Center’s Joe Bavier released a remarkably well-researched, thorough profile of Boko Haram, entitled “Boko Haram 101.” In it, he details the challenge of determining the northern insurgency’s competing, multi-faceted political goals:
If all of that wasn’t convoluted enough however, there is also a growing belief—particularly in the north—that much of the current violence has little or nothing to do with Yusuf’s disciples. This theory holds that while a small number of nihilist, Islamist elements certainly exist in the north, Boko Haram has become little more than a brand name, a murky confluence that now also includes criminal opportunists as well as disgruntled political bosses and their henchmen. “Boko Haram has become a franchise that anyone can buy into. It’s something like a Bermuda Triangle,” said Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima.
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