Muslim Militiamen Battle Boko Haram’s Caliphate
“Allahu Akbar!” local Nigerian militiamen known as vigilantes shout as they go into battle against the Islamist militant group, Boko Haram.
They chant partly to bewilder the insurgents and partly because they too believe in the Islamic faith and that they have God on their side in a war in northern Nigeria that is pitting Muslim civilians against militants trying to set up an Islamic State-style caliphate.
“They become confused about who is saying the slogan, we lie down and hide, and as they approach we then open fire on them,” Tasiu Musa, a 40-year-old father of four in Maiduguri, the capital of the northeastern state of Borno, said in an interview last month.
Musa and thousands of other Muslim volunteers like him have taken up arms to defend their towns and cities from Boko Haram, the group whose name roughly translates as “Western education is a sin.” Armed with flintlock muskets and bows and arrows, the militiamen are winning back territory that the army has failed to recapture in Africa’s biggest oil producer.
“Our town is ruined by insurgency, our people are being killed on a daily basis,” said Haruna Ibrahim, another Maiduguri resident.
Ibrahim, a 32-year-old bricklayer, said the insurgency has wrecked the local economy and cost him his job. Religion has nothing to do with the militants’ cause, he said. A veteran of battles in the towns of Damboa, Meiha and Gombi near Boko Haram’s stronghold in the Sambisa forest, Ibrahim said the militants rob people, shops and banks.
“They relate themselves to Islam and Muslims, but they are killing everyone: Muslims or Christians,” he said. “This will tell you that they are not fighting for Islam -- they are on a rampage to acquire wealth and their ideology is not Islamic.”
The Muslim militiamen are acting out of desperation. As Boko Haram expands its attacks on northeastern Nigeria in its five-year-old campaign to establish Shariah, or Islamic law, in Africa’s largest economy, leaders in the mainly Muslim region have urged residents to fight the militants.
