ake distinctions between civilians and combatants. Internees knew that compared to life in the trenches, a concentration camp offered relative safety, but internment had its own price. Even where they had spent decades as part of a community, foreigners’ businesses were ransacked or shuttered, or their assets seized by governments. Internees were not soldiers, but instead a new kind of low-grade hostage. Not expected to fight or die, they only endured.
- The Wealth of the Prosperity Gospel in Central African Republic.
- Uganda’s Far-Flung Troops.
- Wounded Eagles: how Boko Haram capitalizes on the rot at the core of the Nigerian army.
- The Data Sublime.
- What ISIS Really Wants, and…
- What The Atlantic Gets Wrong about ISIS, and…
- End Times and ISIS.
- Explaining Boko Haram’s strategies and expansion:
Boko Haram’s relentless attacks against individuals tied to the Kanuri establishment demonstrate its antipathy toward the northeast’s existing hierarchy. In areas it has captured, Boko Haram has allegedly seized the property of local notables and allocated it among its followers. The contours of a vicious class struggle within Kanuri society are readily evident.
In addition to the northeastern elites, Boko Haram’s worldview is at odds with rural Kanuri communities. Salafism – both its peaceful and violent varieties – remains primarily an urban phenomenon in Nigeria’s northeast. Cities tend to have a higher concentration of youths bereft of established kinship networks and therefore attracted to the universalist message espoused by Islamic revivalists. Conversely, the countryside serves as a bastion of traditionalism, with many Muslims practicing syncretic forms of Islam that incorporate elements of indigenous religions.
Boko Haram’s transition to a largely rural-based insurgency has placed the Salafi-jihadi movement in an operational environment where the majority of inhabitants regard it as an alien interloper. Rather than adjust its messaging to appeal toward the wary peasantry, Boko Haram appears to have elected to pursue a strategy of armed coercion in order to secure local compliance. This approach helps account for the surge in civilian fatalities as well as Boko Haram’s seemingly growing reliance on conscription and monetary compensation to replenish its ranks.
- To Shill a Mockingbird: How a manuscript’s discovery became Harper Lee’s “new” novel.
- Droning On, on a theory of the drone.
- War Punished Gaza.
- When Americans Lynched Mexicans.
- The Colour of Muslim Mourning.
- Anti-Sikh Violence in the Pacific Northwest’s History.
- The Husband Did It, on Gone Girl.