UN details how Boko Haram trains female warriors

BY LAWRENCE ENYOGHASU

THE United Nations, UN on Friday says the plight of 219 Chibok school­girls who were abducted two years ago is a major conflict that is affecting the North-Eastern com­munities, even as fresh facts reveal how the in­surgents have been forc­ing girls and women in their captivity to undergo suicide bombing training.

Fatma Samoura, UN Humanitarian Coordina­tor for Nigeria said that up to 7,000 women and girls might be living in abduction and sex slav­ery.

“Humanitarian agen­cies are concerned that two years have passed, and still the fate of the Chibok girls and the many, many other ab­ductees is unknown,” she said.

Samoura added that the abducted girls had suffered so much at the hands of their captors as they had been on forced recruitment, forced mar­riage, sexual slavery and rape, and have been used to carry bombs.

“Between 2,000 and 7,000 women and girls are living in abduction and sex slavery,” said Jean Gough, Country Representative of the UN Children’s Fund, UNI­CEF.

Women and girls, who have escaped Boko Ha­ram have reported under­going a systematic train­ing programme to train them as bombers, accord­ing to UNICEF.

It said that 85 per cent of the suicide attacks by women globally in 2014 were in Nigeria. In May 2015, it was reported that children had been used to perpetrate three-quarters of all suicide attacks in Nigeria since 2014. Many of the bombers had been brainwashed or coerced.

While describing the meticulous instruction she received from Boko Haram to become a sui­cide bomber, Rahila Amos, a Nigerian grand­mother said her instruc­tors would say “Hold the bomb under your armpit to keep it steady. Sever your enemy’s head from behind, to minimize struggling. If you cut from the back of the neck, they die faster.”

Ms. Amos, 47, said the fighters had come to her village in the morning, firing weapons as they spilled out of cars and rounded up women and children.

Not long after, Ms. Amos, a Christian, said she was forced to enroll in Boko Haram’s classes on the Quran, a first step on her way toward being taught the art of suicide bombing.

After months of train­ing, Ms. Amos said she was finally able to escape her captors when they assembled for evening preaching. She stayed behind, gathering two of her young children and a grandchild so they could make a run for the Cam­eroonian border.

“I don’t want to take a bomb,” she said in­side her refugee camp in Cameroon that stretches across a vast landscape dotted by tents and mud huts. The authorities in Cameroon and Nigeria said that many of the ex­periences detailed by Ms. Amos matched the ac­counts of other women and girls who have es­caped Boko Haram, or who have been arrested before they could deto­nate bombs. Ms. Amos’s assertions are also strik­ingly similar to details recounted by other freed women and girls, includ­ing descriptions of the funeral rites performed before female bombers were sent on missions.

The accounts offer in­sight into how Boko Ha­ram, despite being under military pressure from a multinational campaign to wipe it out, has been able to strike fear across an expansive battlefield that now includes Nige­ria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger.

No longer able to con­trol the territory it once did, Boko Haram is send­ing out women and young girls as newly minted ter­rorists who can inflict a devastating toll.

As the Nigerian military recaptures territory from Boko Haram, abducted women and girls are be­ing recovered. Over and above the horrific trauma of sexual violence these girls experienced during their captivity, many are now facing rejection by their families and com­munities, because of their association with Boko Haram.

“You are a Boko Haram wife, don’t come near us,” one girl reported be­ing told.

“Effective rehabilita­tion for these women and girls is vital, as they rebuild their lives,’’ the UN statement said. The UN notes that children have suffered dispropor­tionately as a result of the conflict.

In November 2014, 300 children were abducted from a school in Dama­sak, Borno, and are still missing.

A UNICEF report, re­leased earlier this week, states that 1.3 million chil­dren have been displaced by the conflict across the Lake Chad Basin, almost a million of whom are in Nigeria. Similarly, Hu­man Rights Watch House reported that 1 million children had lost access to education.

“The abducted Chibok girls have become a sym­bol for every girl that has gone missing at the hands of Boko Haram, and every girl who insists on practicing her right to education,” said Munir Safieldin, Deputy Hu­manitarian Coordinator for Nigeria.

The UN says more need to be done by the Nigerian government and the international com­munity to keep them safe from the horrors other women and girls have en­dured. Safe schools are a good start, but safe roads and safe homes are also needed, it says.