PART 2: THE LAND ON A FAULTLINE Yet while the schoolgirls may never be heard of again, the group that took them most certainly will be. In t...
PART 2: THE LAND ON A FAULTLINE
Yet while the schoolgirls may never be heard of again, the group that took them most certainly will be. In the three months alone since the raid at the school in Chibok, Boko Haram has carried out nine major gun and bomb attacks, adding another 1,100 victims to the 5,000 it has already claimed since 2009. In its heartlands in north-east Nigeria, it continues to gain the upper hand against the Nigerian military, despite President Jonathan deploying vast numbers of troops.
Like al-Shabaab in Somalia and Isis in Syria and Iraq, a group that was unheard just a few years ago is now a major threat to the stability of the region. But what gave rise to such a vicious, nihilistic terrorist group? Who is behind it? And why does it have such a vendetta against schools and schoolgirls?
Part of the answer can be found in the group's name, which is an expression in Hausa, the main language of Nigeria's Muslim north. While there is debate over whether "boko" is a corruption of "book", or actually just means "false", the term translates roughly as "Western education is sinful".
But it carries far more political and historical baggage than just that. Instead, it speaks to how northern Nigeria straddles Africa's great civilisational faultline, where Islam spread by Arab imams from the north rubs up against Christianity spread by British missionaries from the south.
The divide has long been a touchpaper for conflict, with quarrels that are as much about access to water, grazing rights and tribal differences as religion. However, in the Nigeria of today, it is the classrooom where it is at its starkest. For Christians, education has long been seen as the route to both temporal and spiritual salvation, a message first hammered home by missionaries a century ago. But for more conservative Muslims, secular Western teaching has often been viewed as a bulwark to spread Christian influence.
This pattern can be seen around Chibok itself, a region of mud-built hamlets where both Christians and Muslims scratch a living as farmers, and generally live similar lives. The school where the girls were abducted was set up by missionaries back in 1923 - yet to this day, the majority of pupils are Christians.
"The Chibok people are all very poor, humble people, with very little money," says Dauda Iliya, whose niece, Monday, escaped the abduction after clinging to an overhanging branch as her captors' truck passed under a tree. "But they all send their kids to school, because they take their education seriously."
It is a pattern repeated throughout the region, with literacy rates overall in the Muslim-dominated north just a fraction of what they are in the Christian-dominated south. And as the north has lagged ever further behind - it is poor even by Nigerian standards - it has sown ever greater discontent, partly against the centrla government, but also against the area's traditional Muslim rulers, who have been seen as corrupt and ineffectual.
Not for nothing did Osama bin Laden, in a broadcast released on the eve of the 2003 Iraq war, single out the country's Muslims as being "ready for liberation".
"True Muslims should act...to break free from the slavery of these tyrannic and apostate regimes, which is enslaved by America," he declared. "Among regions ready for liberation are Jordan, Morocco, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Pakistan."
Yet while the schoolgirls may never be heard of again, the group that took them most certainly will be. In the three months alone since the raid at the school in Chibok, Boko Haram has carried out nine major gun and bomb attacks, adding another 1,100 victims to the 5,000 it has already claimed since 2009. In its heartlands in north-east Nigeria, it continues to gain the upper hand against the Nigerian military, despite President Jonathan deploying vast numbers of troops.
Like al-Shabaab in Somalia and Isis in Syria and Iraq, a group that was unheard just a few years ago is now a major threat to the stability of the region. But what gave rise to such a vicious, nihilistic terrorist group? Who is behind it? And why does it have such a vendetta against schools and schoolgirls?
Part of the answer can be found in the group's name, which is an expression in Hausa, the main language of Nigeria's Muslim north. While there is debate over whether "boko" is a corruption of "book", or actually just means "false", the term translates roughly as "Western education is sinful".
But it carries far more political and historical baggage than just that. Instead, it speaks to how northern Nigeria straddles Africa's great civilisational faultline, where Islam spread by Arab imams from the north rubs up against Christianity spread by British missionaries from the south.
The divide has long been a touchpaper for conflict, with quarrels that are as much about access to water, grazing rights and tribal differences as religion. However, in the Nigeria of today, it is the classrooom where it is at its starkest. For Christians, education has long been seen as the route to both temporal and spiritual salvation, a message first hammered home by missionaries a century ago. But for more conservative Muslims, secular Western teaching has often been viewed as a bulwark to spread Christian influence.
This pattern can be seen around Chibok itself, a region of mud-built hamlets where both Christians and Muslims scratch a living as farmers, and generally live similar lives. The school where the girls were abducted was set up by missionaries back in 1923 - yet to this day, the majority of pupils are Christians.
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| A classroom in north-east Nigeria. Even in poor neighbourhoods, education is highly prized among the Christian community |
It is a pattern repeated throughout the region, with literacy rates overall in the Muslim-dominated north just a fraction of what they are in the Christian-dominated south. And as the north has lagged ever further behind - it is poor even by Nigerian standards - it has sown ever greater discontent, partly against the centrla government, but also against the area's traditional Muslim rulers, who have been seen as corrupt and ineffectual.
 |
| Chibok school was built by Christian missionaries |
"True Muslims should act...to break free from the slavery of these tyrannic and apostate regimes, which is enslaved by America," he declared. "Among regions ready for liberation are Jordan, Morocco, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Pakistan."
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