Boko Haram Page 16
Unlike AQIM, which had collected millions of dollars in ransom payments by abducting Westerners, Boko Haram had not yet used kidnapping as a tactic. Abductions were in general rare in northern Nigeria, unlike in parts of the south, where ransom kidnappings had become big business. That began to change when a group of Boko Haram members seemed to break off and create their own faction, called Jama’atu Ansarul Muslimina Fi Biladis Sudan, or Vanguard for the Aid of Muslims in Black Africa.11 It would later come to be known simply as Ansaru, and it would be blamed for the kidnappings of the British and Italian engineers and a number of other abductions.
Several theories were offered as to why they had split, with some arguing that they had grown frustrated with the killing of civilians and particularly fellow Muslims by Shekau’s Boko Haram. Others reasoned that the dissidents wanted to more forcefully pursue an international agenda, in line with Al-Qaeda affiliates in northern Africa and elsewhere. A third reason put forth was more opportunistic: those in Ansaru had the connections and the will to try to create a kidnapping market in northern Nigeria and wanted to profit from it as their extremist colleagues elsewhere had done. It is certainly possible that the true story was a combination of all of those factors. Some experts said Ansaru’s leader, or one of them, may have been Khalid al-Barnawi, long a Boko Haram figure who may have run a training camp with AQIM in Algeria and had some form of relationship with the Algerian extremist Mokhtar Belmokhtar.12 The US government would later label al-Barnawi a ‘global terrorist’ along with two other Nigerian extremists: Shekau and Abubakar Adam Kambar, who was also said to be linked to AQIM. Nigeria’s military claimed Kambar was Boko Haram’s main link with Al-Qaeda and Al-Shebab in Somalia.13 How separate Boko Haram and Ansaru truly are has been heavily debated, and it seems the two overlap, particularly when it comes to their foot soldiers. It has been described by some as an umbrella-like arrangement that includes both Boko Haram and Ansaru.
After the May 2011 abductions of the Briton and Italian, there had been no word from the kidnappers or the victims for months, fuelling speculation that they had been carried out by Islamist extremists whose agenda was more complicated than simply collecting a ransom. Abductions in the Niger Delta in the south had tended to follow a pattern, with a ransom demanded shortly after the kidnapping and victims usually released unharmed after it was paid, often following negotiations to lower the price. The silence surrounding McManus and Lamolinara would be broken in August 2011, when a video emerged showing the two men blindfolded and on their knees. They were forced to read a statement in which they said their abductors were from Al-Qaeda and that their governments should meet the kidnappers’ demands. The demands were, however, not listed – a clear set of demands would in fact never be issued, according to the British government – and after the appearance of the video, there was another long period of silence with no word on the victims’ health, where they may be located and what exactly their kidnappers wanted. A second video emerged in December 2011 in which gunmen threatened to execute McManus.14
Britain’s participation in a potential rescue operation had taken root when Prime Minister David Cameron visited Nigeria and held talks with President Jonathan in July 2011. The two men discussed the hostages during the visit, ‘and as a result agreed a package of UK support for Nigeria’s counter-terrorism efforts’, Britain’s defence secretary, Philip Hammond, would tell the UK House of Commons. ‘As part of that package, a sustained operation was conducted to identify members of the group responsible for the kidnapping.’15
By March 2012, after the arrest of three people accused of having conducted surveillance on the victims before their abduction, authorities had discovered that the man behind the plot was someone named Abu Mohammed. Nigeria’s Department of State Services (DSS), a secret police and intelligence unit, described Mohammed as the leader of a faction of Boko Haram.16 A Nigerian security source told a reporter for my news agency that Mohammed had links to both Boko Haram and AQIM and had masterminded the kidnapping with the aim of collecting ransom money, which would be used to finance more operations.17
Nigerian authorities learned that Mohammed’s hideout was located in the city of Zaria in north-central Nigeria, several hundred miles away from Birnin Kebbi, the site of the kidnapping. On 7 March, the authorities launched a raid on the hideout. The DSS said the raid was carried out while Mohammed and his faction were holding a meeting of its ‘shura council’, or consultative body, but that description may imply a more sophisticated level of organisation than the group actually had. During the raid, a number of gang members were believed to be killed, while five were arrested, including Mohammed, who had been shot and injured in the gunfight. A soldier had his throat slit. Those who were arrested, according to the DSS, then began providing information to the authorities that would lead to the raid in Sokoto. The information was said to include a warning: Those keeping watch over the two hostages had been instructed to kill them ‘in the event of any envisaged threat’. The British government would decide a rescue attempt was not only necessary, but that it also required the backing of its special forces, who would participate in the operation.
‘After months of not knowing where they were being held, we received credible information about their location’, Cameron said later in a televised address. ‘A window of opportunity arose to secure their release. We also had reason to believe that their lives were under imminent and growing danger.’
The British government has never said publicly how many members of its elite Special Boat Service were dispatched for the raid, though reports in the British media put the number at around a dozen and perhaps as many as 20. There were also reports of the commandos being stationed in Nigeria for up to a couple weeks before the operation, and British intelligence operatives at one point may have managed to begin listening in on the kidnap gang’s phone calls.18
On the night of 7 March, one of those arrested – the man who killed the soldier, according to Nigerian authorities – led security forces to Sokoto, but any element of surprise may have been sabotaged by the military itself. Before the security team’s arrival the next morning, Nigeria’s military decided it would have to search and cordon off the neighbourhood where the hostages were believed to be held to make sure the kidnappers could not escape ahead of time.19 Residents also said they saw two helicopters hovering overhead in the morning, which would obviously raise suspicions as well.
British forces became concerned that the Nigerian soldiers deployed throughout the neighbourhood had tipped the kidnappers off and decided they could wait no longer. It seems that, before that time, a final decision had not been made to go ahead with the raid since the Italian government had not been notified. The raid would begin shortly before noon, with the British government having given its final approval at 11.15 a.m.20
British commandos were among those who entered the walled-in compound and would be faced with gunfire from someone with an AK-47. They would spot and kill one of the gang members almost immediately after entering, but could hear more gunshots, except now they were muffled and seemed to come from inside a room. Two men then escaped, climbing a ladder over the wall. This all happened within six minutes after the start of the raid.
The soldiers then searched the premises, and after arriving in one section covered by tarpaulin, they went inside. When they entered a room with two beds, they spotted a Manchester United shirt that resembled the one Chris McManus wore in videos released by the kidnappers.
‘They called out for Franco and Chris but received no reply’, Detective Chief Inspector Grant Mallon said when reporting the findings of a British inquest into the death of McManus. ‘To the right there was a metal door to a toilet and they noticed there were bullet holes to it, and the team noticed there were 7.62mm munitions and cases on the floor. The door was partially open and when the soldiers looked inside they could see two white males on the floor and they immediately recognised them as Chris and Franco. Chris was lying to the left of the toile
t. Both men had visible gunshot wounds. It appears they were killed fairly quickly into the engagement.’
The inquest found that the two men could not have been hit by the rescue team’s bullets because those that killed them were a different type. McManus had been shot a total of six times, but died from a single gunshot wound to the head, while Lamolinara was hit four times and also died from a bullet to the head.21
They were eventually able to carry out the bodies, but the operation was far from over, however. At some point, a fierce firefight broke out between Nigerian soldiers and the kidnappers who remained. Residents said the gunfire lasted up to seven hours, though Britain’s defence secretary said it was 90 minutes. According to residents I spoke to in the neighbourhood the day after the raid, there were about 100 Nigerian troops as well as a tank. As the gun battle raged, soldiers asked residents for the old tyres that they set on fire and tossed over the wall. A huge hole could be seen in one of the walls the next day, and residents said the tank had fired a shell into it. Three members of the gang were killed and ‘none were taken alive’, according to Defence Secretary Hammond.22 Nigerian authorities said the wife of one of the gang members was wounded by a bullet and treated at hospital.
Every resident I spoke to claimed they did not know who occupied the house or that the hostages were being held there. The local chief of the Mabera neighbourhood, Umar Bello, told me the same and added that he did not believe the kidnappers were members of Boko Haram. ‘It is just kidnappers. It’s about money’, he said. ‘Their major priority is money, and once they don’t get the money, they have nothing to lose.’
On the day after the raid, with dozens of people circulating through the compound, by then picked clean by looters, and viewing the blood-splattered bathroom where the men were killed, Nigerian authorities had apparently had enough. Three truckloads of agents, including those wearing DSS helmets, arrived in the afternoon and began firing their guns into the air, forcing the crowd to scatter.
The kidnappings would have repercussions beyond Nigeria. It would spark a diplomatic dispute between Britain and Italy, with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano saying that ‘the behaviour of the British government, which did not inform or consult with Italy on the operation that it was planning, really is inexplicable’.23 Britain said there had not been time, since there was a need to act urgently. Underlying the dispute may have been differences in how each country handled such situations. Britain refuses to pay ransoms, while Italy has been willing to do so.24
Beyond that, it would lead to Britain saying that Ansaru was likely responsible for the kidnapping, listing it as a banned terrorist group and proclaiming it as ‘broadly aligned with Al-Qaeda’.25 The supposed kidnapping ringleader, Abu Mohammed, would, however, not be able to answer questions on the group. He died in Nigerian custody a day after the operation from, according to the DSS, ‘severe bullet wounds’ he suffered during the previous raid that led to his arrest in Zaria.26
In the following months, Ansaru would be blamed for a series of other kidnappings as well as attacks, with the new group’s methods becoming more ruthless and its rhetoric increasingly taking on an international tone. It would claim credit for a raid on a police unit in the capital Abuja in November 2012 where a number of Islamists were believed to have been detained in a jail known as the abattoir because it was inside a warehouse formerly used for slaughtering cattle, chains still hanging from the ceiling.27
An attack on a planned contingent of Nigerian troops expected to be deployed to Mali occurred in January 2013, with a homemade bomb exploding as the soldiers’ convoy passed near Okene in Kogi state, located in central Nigeria and where a number of extremists tied to Boko Haram were said to be from. The attack killed two of the soldiers to be deployed to Mali, where a French-led offensive had begun targeting Islamists who had taken control of a huge swathe of the nearby country. Ansaru claimed the attack, and in doing so said it was targeting troops who aimed to ‘demolish the Islamic empire of Mali’.28
One particularly audacious raid in February 2013 saw abductors storm a construction site in the northern city of Bauchi, blow a hole in the gate with explosives, kill a security guard and kidnap seven foreigners, including one Briton, one Greek, an Italian, two Lebanese and two Syrians. An email to journalists purported to be from Ansaru, written in English, said that the attack occurred because of ‘the transgressions and atrocities done to the religion of Allah [...] by the European countries in many places such as Afghanistan and Mali’. It seemed doubtful those were the true motives behind the kidnappings, with ransom money often the ultimate goal, but the statement again showed that the group was seeking to take a more international stance, at least in its rhetoric.29
The following month, on 9 March, another statement would be issued, in both Arabic and English, claiming that the seven hostages taken in Bauchi had been killed. It was accompanied by images of some of the hostages appearing to be dead, and had been distributed by an arm of the Sinam al-Islam Network, which runs an online jihadist forum.30 The process by which the statement was distributed again indicated Ansaru had cultivated some form of relationship with foreign jihadi groups. In the statement, it said it killed the hostages because of attempts to rescue them. It provided a link to an obscure website that carried a story on whether British planes had landed in Nigeria to attempt a rescue, with aircraft having been spotted in Abuja. According to the British government, the planes that were spotted were there to help airlift troops and equipment to Mali and had nothing to do with a rescue bid.31
A shocking kidnapping would occur in February 2013, when a French family of seven were abducted while visiting a national park in northern Cameroon, near the Nigerian border. The victims included the mother and father as well as four children, aged between 5 and 12, and their uncle. The French government said it was believed the victims were taken across the border into Nigeria after the abduction, and a video emerged later in which Abubakar Shekau claimed responsibility for the kidnappings on behalf of Boko Haram. The video also showed images of the family and included the father, Tanguy Moulin-Fournier, reading a statement for the camera. Shekau and the family were never shown in the same frame and it was unclear if they were ever in the same location.32
It marked the first time Shekau’s Boko Haram had taken credit for a kidnapping. In the video, Shekau demanded the release of Boko Haram prisoners in both Nigeria and Cameroon, though there were suspicions all along that what the extremists were really after was money. It was never clear whether criminals had kidnapped the family and sold them on to Boko Haram, whether it was a planned action or if members of the extremist group simply came across them by chance and decided to carry out the abduction. The border with Cameroon in north-eastern Nigeria is porous, and Boko Haram members – like many average residents – are believed to circulate back and forth.
France insisted throughout the ordeal that it would not pay a ransom, though it was an open secret that it had done so to free captives repeatedly in the past in other countries, drawing criticism since the money would obviously provide financing to extremist groups. In the end, someone paid. A Nigerian security source told me the payment was made through the Cameroon government, though the family had been held in Nigeria, but he said he did not know the amount. French news channel iTele reported that 16 detained Boko Haram members were released and $7 million was paid to free the family.33 Another report from Reuters, citing a confidential Nigerian government document, put the ransom figure at some $3.15 million.34 It was never clear who paid the money, whatever the final amount was. The family was released in April after being held for two months through an arrangement that saw them arrive back in Cameroon. They appeared thin and scraggly, but seemed to be in good health considering the circumstances.
The first half of 2013 felt depressingly brutal. Shekau, wearing a knee-length green caftan with an AK-47 dangling from a strap around his neck, appeared in one video denying rumours of a ceasefire deal that had been circulating. T
he camera then cut to another shot where a man identified as an informer was pinned to the ground by others who slit his throat. They beheaded him later in the video.35
In Kano, gunmen opened fire on two clinics where polio vaccination workers had gathered, killing 10 people.36 The attack came after a radio programme revived old conspiracy theories that had previously circulated in northern Nigeria about polio vaccines being a Western plot against Muslims. It was never clear whether the attacks were directly linked to Boko Haram, but they added to the nightmare of death and destruction in parts of northern Nigeria.
The situation was also becoming murkier. A US official who spoke to me in February 2013 on condition of anonymity talked of how little was known of the Nigerian extremists and their intentions. ‘Even in painting a picture of where the lines are between these different groups, and how much of the criminal overlaps into it, all of this stuff is very difficult to determine’, he said.
Beyond the mayhem in Nigeria, there were reports of Boko Haram members showing up in Gao and elsewhere in Mali to fight with the Islamist extremists who had taken control of the northern half of the country there. There were doubts over whether they were truly Boko Haram members, and such doubts continue to exist for some, but a Western diplomat told me in March 2014 that he believed they were.
‘I think they were probably Boko Haram or Ansaru guys, which wouldn’t be all that surprising because we’ve known since the early 2000s that you have Nigerian extremists travelling in ones and twos and fives and sixes up to northern Mali to train with, first, the GSPC [Algeria’s Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat], and then when it morphed into AQIM.’
The US official I spoke with in 2013 pointed out that foreign jihadists are often attracted to like-minded struggles elsewhere, while also raising an issue that would become salient in later months. ‘You will also probably see a certain number of people go, and a certain number of people come back’, he said. ‘A concern is when they do come back, because they can come back with a greater skill set than when they left.’ In other words, they would be better fighters.