KANO, Nigeria — In an imam’s quiet office, two
young men in long hooded robes, their faces hidden by checked scarves, calmly
described their deadly war against the Nigerian state. A
member of Boko Haram, an Islamist group that has staged deadly attacks in Kano, in northern Nigeria. “Millions of people in Kano State
are supporting us,” he said.
The
office door was open. Children from the Koranic school adjoining the mosque
streamed past, laughing and jostling. Worshipers from the evening prayer
service, which the young men had just left, poured into the parking lot. If the
police had been alerted in any way, the two young men would have been instantly
arrested, or worse. But neither appeared nervous about possible betrayal.
“It is
not the people of Nigeria, it is only the army and the police who are against
us,” said one of the men, explaining their membership in Boko Haram, the
militant group that has claimed responsibility for killing hundreds in its
battle against the Nigerian government. “Millions of people in Kano State
are supporting us.”
His
bravado notwithstanding, the violent Islamist army operating out of these dusty
alleyways, ready to lash out and quickly fade back, is deeply enmeshed in the
fabric of life in this sprawling metropolis, succored by an uneasy mix of fear
and sympathy among the millions of impoverished people here.
The
group’s lethality is undeniable. Boko Haram unleashed a hail of bullets and
homemade bombs here last month to deadly effect: as many as
300 were killed in a few hours in the group’s deadliest and most organized
assault yet after two years of attacks across northern Nigeria. It was an
unprecedented wave of coordinated suicide bombing, sustained gunfire and
explosions, much of it directed against the police.
But
while Western and local officials cite the militants’ growing links to
terrorist organizations in the region — presenting the ties as a reason behind
the group’s increasingly deadly tactics and a cause for global concern — Boko
Haram is not the imported, “foreign” menace Nigerian authorities depict it to
be.
Since
2009, the group has killed well over 900 people, Human Rights Watch says. Yet
on the streets of Kano,
the government is more readily denounced than the militants. Anger at the
pervasive squalor, not at the recent violence, dominates. Crowds quickly gather
around to voice their heated discontent, not with Boko Haram, but with what
they describe as a shared enemy: the Nigerian state, seen by the poor here as a
purveyor of inequality.
“People
are supporting them because the government is cheating them,” said Mohammed
Ghali, the imam at the mosque where the two Boko Haram members pray. Imam Ghali
is known as an intermediary between the militants and the authorities, and
while open backing for the group can put almost anyone in the cross hairs of
the Nigerian security services, there appears to be no shortage of Boko Haram
supporters here.
“At
any time I am ready to join them, to fight injustice in this country,” said
Abdullahi Garba, a candy vendor who came into Imam Ghali’s office.
Of
course, Boko Haram is feared and loathed by countless residents as well. Its
brutal show of firepower here in Kano, a commercial center of about four
million that for centuries has been a major entrepôt at the Sahara’s edge, has
left many residents in shock. The attackers came on foot, by motorcycle and by
car, throwing fertilizer bombs and pulling rifles from rice sacks, mowing down
anybody who appeared to be in uniform. There were even decapitated bodies among
the mounds of corpses the day after, said a witness, Nasir Adhama, who owns a
textile factory with his family near one of the attack sites.
“When
you saw this road, it was just shed with blood,” Mr. Adhama said. “Everywhere
there were dead bodies. They passed through this place, just firing and
shooting.”
One of
the young men at the mosque said he had participated in the planning for the
attack, asserting that the group had received no outside help.
But a
United Nations report published in January cited regional officials as saying
that “Boko Haram had established links with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,”
and that “some of its members from Nigeria
and Chad had received
training in Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb camps in Mali during the summer of 2011.”
Seven Boko Haram members passing through Niger were arrested with “names and
contact details” of members of the Qaeda affiliate, the United Nations report
said.
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