The CIHA Blog has been following the events in Nigeria related to the kidnapping of schoolgirls from Chibok by Boko Haram, including the storm of media around the world and its subsequent demise. Our internal conversations reflect concerns about the girls themselves, the Nigerian government, and the militarization of West Africa by the United States and others.
At a May candlelight vigil sponsored by the University of Ghana, Legon, for the kidnapped girls, CIHA Blog co-editor Akosua Adomako Ampofo reminded the attendees that every act of resistance is important. Then, she asked what came next. What next for Boko Haram, which was created by disaffection and must be addressed long-term through governance in Nigeria and the sub-region? What next for the kidnapped girls and the lives that they may return to if they are ever able to (or want to) go home? And what next for the vulnerable communities threatened by Boko Haram but still neglected by the state? What can the state do, and what can citizens do? What can the international community do?
Even though the #BringBackOurGirls campaign has largely faded from the public consciousness outside of Nigeria, the question remains whether the campaign was effective in calling the Nigerian government to account, as well as other governments and even NGOs. The campaign itself does not call for militarization. Yet we also join critics in the United States and Africa alike who worry about the use of this campaign to increase the militarization of the continent. This happened in East Africa after 1998, and Mali a couple of years ago, and now Boko Haram and the girls’ abduction is fast becoming a pretext for drawing Nigeria (previously a holdout), as well as Cameroon and other West and Central African countries, much more closely into the orbit of “Western” and “U.S.” securitization. What this may mean is an increasing cycle of action/reaction (as in Kenya and Uganda vis-a-vis Somalia), as well as targeting people who are NOT Boko Haram but get caught up in the web of anti-terror campaigns. Some of this has, of course, been taking place within Nigeria already, but a major concern is that it will be greatly intensified.
The anti-terrorist and militaristic rhetoric that has entered the public debate about the Chibok girls is discussed here by Benjamin N. Lawrance, who details how labeling Boko Haram a terrorist organization does little to address the root problems of poverty and poor governance in Northern Nigeria.
It is critical to give space to the resistance of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, remaining in solidarity with its message and challenge to state ineptitude, while also resisting the militarization that too frequently accompanies any opening against terror. The latter also requires recognizing the many religious voices—Muslim as well as Christian—that have condemned the kidnappings, some while also guarding against militarization.
Anti-Terrorist Rhetoric Won’t Stop Child Abduction and Trafficking
by Benjamin N. Lawrance
The multiple mass kidnapping of schoolgirls and boys at gunpoint in northern Nigeria has provoked shock and disbelief around the world. But the news that a US counterterrorist team was spearheading an AFRICOM operation to locate and liberate the survivors is unwelcome. As scholars and journalists struggle to translate the real-life experiences of Nigerian girls into digestible concepts and sound bites, politicians across the spectrum are promising a robust response to terrorism.
While the events in Chibok and elsewhere are undeniably horrifying, framing child abductions as terrorism is all too easy, and anointing the response as anti-terrorism deeply misguided. To be clear, the actions of Boko Haram – whether kidnapping school-age kids, burning villages, or torching churches – are terrifying and terrorizing. Labeling Boko Haram a terrorist organization, however, doesn’t contribute to combatting future child abductions. Making sense of mass abduction demands we resist anarchic Africa metaphors and push past empty hashtag activism.
As is often the case, the explanation is concealed in plain sight. Self-proclaimed leader Abubakar Shekau tipped his hand in May when on video-feed he threatened to “sell them in the market.” Other sources suggested the students were paid 2000 naira ($12) to “marry” Boko Haram fighters. Evidence is thus mounting that the original 300 girls were kidnapped from their schools because the region in which they live was, and continues to reside, at the dynamic intersection of three enduring social forces – child trafficking, forced marriage, and child soldiering.
Northern Nigeria is embedded in rich and complex trafficking networks that today form part of one of the most vibrant slavery markets in the modern era. NGO, UN, and US State Department reports have documented the persistence of human trafficking in Nigeria and Nigeria’s role as a source, transit site, and destination for women and children. While Nigeria continues to make modest progress combatting trafficking, the scale of the problem dwarfs the numbers of prosecutions and convictions. Richard L. Roberts and I have documented how the neo-liberal ideologies embedded in contemporary anti-trafficking programs replicate the free-trade imperialism of earlier abolitionism. Today, as in the past, the Nigerian economy masks the different forms of unfree labor and exploitation of women and children through apprenticeship, kidnappings, and peonage.
Equally importantly, northern Nigeria is currently engaged in massive state-sponsored forced marriage programs. Over the past several years, literally thousands of young girls and women, including widows, divorcees, and former sex-workers, have been forcibly coupled. The social reality in northern sharia states is shaped by cultural traditions, including fatherly authority (ijbar) and an Islamic value system that permeates every facet of life. Judith-Ann Walker has documented how Nigeria’s judicial system languishes in the shadow of sharia enforcement agencies, Hisbah Boards, which categorize and reinforce women and children as legal minors. Between 2012 and 2013, more than 1,350 women and girls were forcibly wed in Kano alone. The widespread acceptance of various forms of forced marriage has its roots in historical alliances between the state and the religious/traditional authority structures, which conspire to exercise direct and complete control over the lives of youth, the working classes (talakawa), particularly girls and women.
The third dimension, helping making sense of the mass abductions, is the ongoing use of children in violent armed conflict. Stacey Hynd has described how girls battling boys in the streets and fields of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ivory Coast at the turn of the millennium is rooted in a deep historical practice of child soldiering. Annie Bunting has highlighted how young boys and girls form the backbone of numerous illicit and renegade fighting forces throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Recent post-conflict trials of combatants from the Congo documented the intentional recruitment of children. Every day schoolgirls are kidnapped in Uganda and South Sudan to serve as servants, porters, cooks, and of course, as sexual objects.
My experience serving as an expert witness in dozens of asylum claims for women survivors of trafficking and forced marriage in the US and elsewhere offers further insight. Many asylum seekers narrate how, as they approached what their fathers or uncles considered “marriageable age,” they were removed from school and paraded before prospective spouses. It would be a crude oversimplification to suggest that the 300 girls were destined for domestic slavery and forced marriage, abducted or otherwise. But there is compelling anecdotal data to support the view that, as the end of schooling loomed, the girls were increasingly vulnerable to various forms of exploitation.
The abduction of young children, anywhere, anytime, is horrifying; mass kidnapping at gunpoint especially so. But until the international community grapples with the persistence of human trafficking, forced marriage, and the persistent use of children in armed conflict, Nigeria and other countries will continue to be visited by similarly nightmarish events. Enveloping the awfulness with the rhetoric of anti-terrorism is wrongheaded and poorly conceived. More than a decade after George W. Bush’s so-called “War on Terror” dragged the world into two violent and costly wars – unleashing unspeakable horrors – we would do well to question the alacrity with which Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathon embraced “the kidnap of these girls” as “the beginning of the end of terrorism in Nigeria.”
For further discussion of this issue see:
Robert Siegel interviews Benjamin Lawrance on NPR’s All Things Considered
Brent Bambury, CBC’s Day 6, interviews Benjamin Lawrance
Rick Gladstone’s New York Times article from May 7, 2014
Benjamin N. Lawrance is the Conable Chair of International Studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York.