Northwestern Nigeria: A Jihadization of Banditry, or a 'Banditization' of Jihad?

AuthorBarnett, James

Northern Nigeria is presently suffering from two devastating conflicts. In the Lake Chad basin in the country's northeast, a 13-year jihadi insurgency that has killed nearly 350,000 (1) and displaced several million rages with no end in sight. (2) The faction of "Boko Haram" known as Jama'at Ahl al-Sunnali-Da'wa wal-Jihad (JAS) is in disarray after the killing of its longtime leader Abubakar Shekau in May 2021, but it is not yet a totally spent force. The rival Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) faction, meanwhile, remains strong and controls large swathes of rural Borno on all sides of the capital, Maiduguri. (3)

In northwestern Nigeria, (a) a complex and volatile insurgency is roiling a region the size of the United Kingdom, leading, shockingly, to more civilian deaths in 2021 than the conflict in the northeast. (4) Well-armed bandits are terrorizing communities and wearing down overstretched security forces, getting rich through criminal activity such as kidnapping for ransom, and assuming de facto sovereignty over swathes of the region. Most of the militants are Fulani herdsmen who claim to be fighting to redress the government's neglect of pastoralist communities. (5) But their insurgency, to the extent the violence can be classified as such, is fractured into dozens of competing bandit groups loosely organized around warlords of varying power. (6)

Though these two conflicts are distinct, Nigerians fear that the insurgencies will overlap and jihadis will cooperate with bandits in a classic example of a "crime-terror nexus" or possibly convert the bandits (who are mostly Sunni Muslim) into jihadis themselves. (b) While there is a voluminous academic literature on the jihadi landscape in Nigeria, far less has been written about Nigeria's banditry crisis, which contributes to a hazy understanding of this potential crime-terror nexus. (c) What has been written on the bandits (including by these authors) has generally included only a few details regarding how bandits and jihadis interact. With such limited data to draw on, analysts have been left to speculate about the interactions between bandits and jihadis. For example, in a recent article, Jacob Zenn and Caleb Weiss suggest that the "Boko Haram" splinter group Ansaru is liable to integrate into conflict-torn communities, as al-Qa'ida franchises have elsewhere in West Africa, in order to expand throughout the northwest, potentially producing an "arc of insurgency" in West Africa. (7) As Zenn and Weiss note, jihadis have successfully coopted bandits in other West African countries such as Burkina Faso, a process Heni Nsaibia of the Armed Conflict Location Event Database (ACLED) dubbed "a jihadization of banditry." Nsaibia argues that jihadis may provide more than just money or weapons to criminals: "From the perspective of armed bandits, rallying militant Islamist groups could also serve as a means to 'morally' justify plundering and pillaging as part of a greater cause." (8)

Concerns of a crime-terror nexus in Nigeria are logical and merit serious consideration. This study aims to begin filling the data gaps that have so far hindered such consideration by offering detailed insights into the overlapping worlds of banditry and jihadism based on the authors' extensive fieldwork Each of the authors has traveled widely across northern Nigeria, accessing conflict zones that have otherwise been off-limits to researchers and gaining exclusive interviews throughout 2021 and early 2022 with some of the most powerful bandits, former jihadi commanders, and residents of jihadi enclaves, among others.

In assessing bandit-jihadi relations, the authors use the framework of Erik Alda and Joseph L. Sala, (9) who lay out three stages of potential nexus between criminals and terrorists:

Coexistence, in which criminals and terrorists "coincidentally occupy and operate in the same geographic space at the same time." (10)

Cooperation, in which criminals and terrorists "decide that their mutual interests are both served, or at not least severely threatened, by temporarily working together." (11)

Convergence, in which "each [ie criminals and terrorists] begins to engage in behavior(s) that is/are more commonly associated with the other." (12)

The authors find that jihadis have coexisted and intermittently cooperated with bandits in the northwest, with cooperation being limited to short-term, mutually beneficial exchanges of material or skills (for example, jihadis offering training in explosives or advice on negotiating kidnap ransoms). However, there has not been a convergence of banditry and jihadism in a manner analysts might expect. Bandits have begun conducting certain types of operations, namely mass kidnappings, that are generally associated with Nigerian jihadi groups, but this is not necessarily a result of sustained cooperation between bandits and jihadis (as discussed later in the article). With regard to a larger strategic and/or ideological convergence, the authors find evidence that jihadis have converted to bandits, but they have not seen the process work in the opposite direction, with no major bandit ever electing to become a jihadi and remaining one. (d) The authors assess there are several reasons behind jihadis' failure to coopt bandits:

* Nigeria's bandits have grown so powerful that they are not in desperate need of cooperation with jihadis Get alone a need to convert to jihadism).

* The bandits' gangs are so numerous and loosely organized, and bandits fight among each other so frequently over parochial issues, that jihadis would have difficulty coopting more than a handful of gangs at a time.

* Additionally, differences in the modus operandi and objectives of bandits and jihadis render jihadism unappealing to bandits: While bandits have no coherent political agenda and have managed to grow rich and powerful by plundering Muslim communities in the northwest, jihadis are deeply committed to a revolutionary political project and, particularly in the case of ISWAP and Ansaru, seek to gain popular support from the sorts of vulnerable Muslim communities that bandits prey on.

Nevertheless, the uncommon conversion of bandits to jihadis has not precluded jihadis from benefiting from operating alongside the bandits. Jihadis have established sanctuaries in the northwest--Ansaru has an enclave in Kaduna state, and JAS and possibly ISWAP are regrouping in Niger state. However, these benefits are not without challenges. Jihadis must navigate complex relationships with powerful bandit gangs that are disinterested if not outright averse to jihadi ideology.

This article will attempt to address the question of bandit-jihadi relations through the perspectives of both bandits and jihadis. To this end, the article begins with a general overview of both Nigeria's jihadis and bandits. Then, the authors explain the factors that would, theoretically, push bandits and jihadis to cooperate if not converge. In the subsequent section, the authors analyze why such convergence has, in fact, been lacking, focusing on four primary factors that hinder greater bandit-jihadi cooperation. In the next two sections, the authors offer case studies: first from the perspective of bandits, examining several powerful warlords as a way of adding nuance to the question of what bandits do (and do not) hope to gain from working with jihadis; and second from the perspective of jihadis, assessing the degree to which Nigeria's three primary jihadi outfits (JAS, ISWAP, and Ansaru) have cooperated with and coopted bandits in their attempted efforts at expansion in the northwest. The article concludes with a call for greater nuance in discussions of the crime-terror nexus, both within West Africa and globally, while the authors also caution Nigerian and international policymakers not to rely heavily on counterterrorism paradigms in approaching the escalating crisis in Nigeria's northwest.

Conflict Actors in Northern Nigeria: Jihadis and Bandits

Jihadis

The three primary jihadi outfits that operate in Nigeria today--JAS, ISWAP, and Ansaru--each emerged from the original JAS or "Boko Haram" that gradually evolved from a mass political preaching movement into a jihadi insurgency between approximately 2002 and 2009- At no point in history have the insurgents officially called themselves "Boko Haram." This name, which translates loosely from Hausa (the lingua franca of northern Nigeria) into English as "Western education is haram (forbidden)," was initially a pejorative used by the movement's detractors (13) and has since become the popular name among Nigerians and many analysts for Shekau's JAS faction if not all jihadis in Nigeria. (e) For purposes of this article, "Boko Haram" is used to refer to the movement--first a salafi preaching movement and then a violent jihadi organization starting in 2009--up to the point of its splintering in 2015-2016. (f) By 2016, two distinct factions had emerged that remain active today: the faction of the now late Abubakar Shekau, referred to as JAS (the official name for the "Boko Haram" group since 2009) and now led by one "Bakura" as described below; and the ISWAP faction, officially recognized by the Islamic State and originally led by Abu Musab al-Barnawi (who himself likely died in late 2021, only a few months after Shekau). (g) A third faction that split from "Boko Haram" back in 2012, Ansaru, will also be discussed in detail toward the end of this article.

Jihadi violence in Nigeria has historically been concentrated in the country's northeast, particularly Borno state. The "Boko Haram" movement formed in the Borno state capital, Maiduguri, in the early 2000s and built its strongest networks and popular base in that city and elsewhere in Borno. (14) As a salafi preaching movement and later salafi-jihadi insurgency, "Boko Haram" naturally disavowed any ethnonationalist or regionalist agenda and saw itself as a vehicle for Muslims across Nigeria and...

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