Kano (Nigeria) (AFP) - Nigeria's President Muhammadu
Buhari is calling for civilian "foot soldiers" in the fight against
Boko Haram, appealing to traditional hierarchies and centuries-old methods to
weed out Islamist plotters.
Eyes and ears on the
ground were vital, he said, as concern mounts over suicide and bomb attacks in
the northeast, particularly in mosques.
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| President Buhari |
"The ward head,
the village head and the local police knew every new entrant into the
community," Buhari said late last month.
"They kept tabs on
them and detected traits of criminality before evil-doers got the chance to act
against (the) common interest. We must go back to those rudimentary acts of
local policing...
"In this new phase
of war, all of us are generals, all of us are foot soldiers, and all of us are
intelligence officers."
Buhari has ordered his
military commanders to end the violence by the end of the year, after at least
17,000 deaths and more than 2.5 million made homeless in six years of conflict.
Human intelligence is
crucial to any counter-insurgency. But claims of military abuses against
civilians in Nigeria, have eroded co-operation and trust.
Boko Haram has also
regularly attacked civilian militia assisting the military.
So Buhari now must
rebuild confidence by restoring the public's faith in the armed forces to
protect them.
In Kano, an alliance of
locals, traditional chiefs and security agencies has shown co-operation can work,
despite sporadic attacks since an almost daily round of bombings and shootings
in 2012, said security analyst Abdullahi Bawa Wase.…
"Several Boko
Haram plots against Kano were uncovered, hundreds of insurgents including
high-profile figures were arrested or neutralised through this simple but
effective strategy of involving every member of the community in maintaining
security," he told AFP.
High-profile targets
included the head of the Boko Haram offshoot Ansaru, Abubakar Adam Kambar,
killed in a military raid on his hideout in March 2012.
The following
September, Boko Haram spokesman Abu Qaqa was shot dead on the outskirts of the
city.
Like many ancient
cities in northern Nigeria, Kano maintains a strong traditional royal
institution led by an emir, who tops a hierarchical administrative structure
involving chiefs at ward, village and district levels.
The emir's function is
largely ceremonial but he still wields enormous influence on people in temporal
and spiritual matters. Last year, he called for people to take up arms against
the militants.
With the current emir
and his predecessor having spoken out against Boko Haram, Kano residents feel
duty-bound to pass on information about suspicious activity.
"Most of the
successes we have recorded against Boko Haram in Kano were through tip-offs
from residents and the local authorities, who report suspicious new characters
in the community," said one security source in Kano.
"Appropriate
security measures" are taken once there are strong grounds to suspect an
individual of belonging to the group, the source added.
Nigeria security
analyst Jacob Zenn said Kano had shown community patrols and information
networks could work but there had been mixed results elsewhere.
"There are some
reports of stopping insurgents but other reports of Civilian JTF (joint task
force) abusing suspects, which is exactly what the 'civilian' community patrols
were intended not to do," he said.
Yan St-Pierre, from the
Modern Security Consulting Group, said localised intelligence was "very
effective if not impeded and... a fantastic way to counter the mobility and
stealth of terrorist organisations".
In Kano, one community
leader said "deep-seated pride" in the city as a centre of commerce
and Islamic scholarship binds the population.
"Boko Haram
threatens both," he said.
"Boko Haram
militants are generally seen as outsiders from the northeast sneaking into Kano
to destroy it, as they did Maiduguri, which makes the people take it upon
themselves to provide information on them."
For St-Pierre, the key
is following-up on tips.
"If authorities
are not willing to act on the provided intelligence, and there have been some
cases in Nigeria, then the best information in the world will be of little
use," he added.
Zenn suggested Buhari
could build on the military's recent focus on cutting Boko Haram supply lines
using community patrols.
"In this way the
civilians do not have to directly inform on Boko Haram members, who could even
be their own family members, which they may avoid doing for fear of
retaliation, but instead can focus on starving Boko Haram of the weapons and
food it needs to support fighters," he added.
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