Boko Haram
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- Boko Haram
Boko Haram is seeking a ransom of nearly £40m for the release of the 219 schoolgirls that it kidnapped from the Nigerian town of Chibok two years ago, sources close to the group have told The Sunday Telegraph.
The terror sect is thought to have issued the demand during secret contacts with the government of President Muhammadu Buhari, who has said he is willing to negotiate for the girls' freedom.
The group's leader, Abubakr Shekau, had previously demanded the release of jailed comrades in exchange for the girls.
But a deal along those lines - brokered by the Red Cross - fell through after Nigerian prison officials said that commanders on a list given to them by Boko Haram were not in their custody.
Details of the new ransom request emerged ahead of the second anniversary of the girls kidnapping on the night of April 14, 2014, when they were abducted by Boko Haram gunmen posing as soldiers.
Despite their case receiving global attention because of the celebrity-backed #bringbackourgirls campaign on social media, diplomats and sources close to the negotiations say they are no closer to knowing the girls' whereabouts.
The Nigerian military has made significant gains against Boko Haram in the last 18 months, raiding a number of the sect’s camps in Nigeria's vast Sambisa forest, and freeing at least 1,000 women and children taken in other mass abductions.
Yet in none of the raids have any rescued prisoners or captured fighters been able to give any convincing accounts of meeting or seeing any of the Chibok girls.
That indicates they are still being kept well away from other captives, and that their kidnappers see them as having huge symbolic value as hostages - thanks partly the publicity given to them by the social media campaign.
"I think they are probably in clusters rather than all in one place, but probably not far from each other," said Shehu Sani, a Nigerian senator and civil rights activist involved in peace attempts with Boko Haram. "Boko Haram knows they are a prized catch."
One source close to Boko Haram said that around three months ago, Boko Haram sent a message saying it would exchange the girls for a ransom of 10bn Naira, the equivalent of around £36m.
"The ransom demand has split the government," said the source. "Some think it would be worth it just to resolve the Chibok situation, but others say it will simply allow Boko Haram to hire yet more insurgent recruits."
The same source also said that a month after the ransom demand, Boko Haram had secretly passed the government a new video tape showing 15 of the kidnapped girls.
"The girls are asked what their Christian names are and what their new Muslim names are," he said, referring to the "conversion" that Boko Haram forces Christian prisoners to undergo. "They are also asked if they have been raped or mistreated, but they say no - they look relaxed."
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- Elangwe Pauline
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- Boko Haram
Cameroon—Boko Haram fighters have kidnapped and conscripted thousands of young men and women since 2013. Soldiers from a regional force composed of fighters from Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon continue to liberate captives by the hundreds during an operation to flush the terrorists from their remaining hideouts, but those formerly held say their struggles are far from over.
Hamidou Mohamat, 21, says he was seized from the Nigerian town of Kumshe three years ago.
Boko Haram forced him and his three brothers to join them, and those who tried to escape were killed, he says. The fighters attacked schools and markets, and ordered him and others to transport stolen food and goods to Boko Haram camps in the bush. He says the militants attacked farmers, cattle ranchers and businesses.
Mohamat arrived at the Minawao refugee camp in northern Cameroon unarmed, and is cooperating with the military.
The military says anyone caught with weapons is arrested and charged before a military tribunal. But others who turn themselves in, as Mohamat did, are held in special camps for investigation. VOA was not allowed to visit those camps.
Former captives say they are being met with stigma and suspicion.
Eighteen-year-old Yazan Imra came to Minawao after regional troops raided the Boko Haram camp where she had been held for two years.
Boko Haram fighters forced them and their children to the camp, she says, where the boys were used as domestic workers and taught how to operate guns and explosives. The women and girls were used as sex slaves and forced to cook for the fighters.
She wiped tears from her face as she spoke, and held her crying 16-month-old baby in her arms. She says she doesn't know who the father is.
Alain Myogo, Cameroon's senior military official in the area, says traumatized refugees are getting counseling and other special attention.
He says the military is working with humanitarian groups to take care of their health needs and provide them with food. The global objective, he says, is to free all those who have been held in bondage by Boko Haram and bring peace to their communities.
VOA
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Cameroon says a regional force arrested more than 300 Boko Haram fighters and freed at least 2,000 people in the first five days of an operation to flush the terrorists from their remaining hideouts along the borders of Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
A thousand soldiers from the regional force, composed of fighters from Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon, returned from the Walasah area in Nigeria to their base at Mora, Cameroon.
Cameroon General Bouba Dobekreo, one of the commanders, said Tuesday that 17 villages had been freed. He said soldiers destroyed a Boko Haram logistics base and training center, plus vehicles, and had seized huge stocks of weapons and other materiel. He said they were ready to go farther into the hinterlands and do away with Boko Haram.
Dobekreo said people freed from Boko Haram strongholds had been handed over to the Nigerian army or had left the area with the soldiers' protection.
Among the returning soldiers was Eyong Levis, who said he and five other soldiers had been wounded by a land mine.
"Where I am now, I am getting better and I am determined that when I will be strong, I have to go there because those men are not armies," Levis said. "They are just rebels, and I am determined to finish with them. I hope that by the end of this year, Boko Haram will be history."
Beya Jude, a 47-year-old father of four, said he had crossed into Cameroon because so many people in his village died during the raids.
"On Saturday in the morning, they called us," he said. "We gathered our children, our wives and others. I brought my family all here."
Hundreds of Nigerian refugees were sent to the Minawao refugee camp in Cameroon.
Raids organized by the joint force since December have increased the number of internally displaced persons and refugees in Cameroon from 150,000 to more than 200,000.
More than 1,000 humanitarian workers have also been deployed to attend to the refugees and internally displaced.
(VOA)
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The ongoing Boko Haram incursions in the Far North Region of Cameroon has resulted in mass displacement of villagers in the boarder communities to Nigeria.
The number of displaced Cameroonians has now reached 170 000 persons, mostly from the localities of the three main departments affected by the incursions of Boko Haram - Mayo-Sava , Mayo Tsanaga , Logone and Chari.
These statistics were presented on Monday, April 4, 2016 , by the Director of the International Organization for Migration (IOM ), for Western and Central Africa Richard Danziger , during an audience granted by the Prime Minister of Cameroon Philemon Yang in Yaounde.
The Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria – now in its sixth year – has spilled over into Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
Militants have targeted civilians, razing villages and killing residents. An estimated 20,000 people have been killed, and more than 2 million displaced, according to U.N. figures.
Cameroonian troops have joined Nigerian soldiers this month in fresh operations to chase militants from remaining strongholds around Lake Chad and in the Sambisa forest in northeast Nigeria.
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Chiefs of defence staff of the Lake Chad Basin Commission and the Republic of Benin have taken part in a special meeting in Yaounde that evaluated the activities of the Multinational Joint Task Force fighting Boko Haram.The high level forum, which is the first ever since the force fully went operation in 2015, was presided over by Cameroon’s Minister Delegate at the Presidency in charge of Defence, Joseph Beti Assomo.
The security bosses made frank proposals aimed at efficiently eradicating the Boko Haram terrorist group. Minister Beti Assomo saluted the collaboration and strong cohesion between the different deployments that are fighting the Nigerian Islamic sect phenomenon in three different sectors. Joseph Beti Assomo said decisions taken at the Yaounde meeting will mark a mile stone in the fight against terrorism.
The conference revealed that Boko Haram has been reduced to uncoordinated attacks, landmines and suicide bombings. The Executive Secretary of the Lake Chad Basin Commission, Sanusi Imran Abdullahi in his keynote address attributed the successes recorded by the Multinational Joint Task Force to high level of engagement and synergy between troops of the different countries involved.
Some of the key issues handled during the security discourse included amendments to some provisions of the organic text of the force and the reorganisation of the sectors of country as well as intelligence sharing.
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Adama Simila wears a knife tied to his belt by a piece of rope, his only protection against Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamist insurgents who have repeatedly targeted his home town in remote northern Cameroon. While the threat once came from heavily armed, battle-hardened jihadists crossing from neighbouring Nigeria, today Simila knows he is more likely to die at the hands of a teenage girl strapped with explosives. "We're here to look out for suicide bombers," said the 31-year-old, a member of a local civilian defence force in the town of Kerawa. After watching its influence spread during a six-year campaign that has killed around 15 000 people according to the US military, Nigeria has now united with its neighbours to stamp out Boko Haram.
A regional offensive last year drove the insurgents from most of their traditional strongholds, denying them their dream of an Islamic emirate in north-eastern Nigeria. An 8 700-strong regional force of troops from Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria is seeking to finish the job. Now, increasingly on the back foot, Boko Haram is retaliating with a deadly guerrilla campaign against civilians, and ordinary people like Simila have become the last line of defence. "I'm not scared. They are people, we are also people. We must die to live," said Simila, who was at the Kerawa market in September when two girls detonated themselves, killing 19 people and injuring 143 others.
A nearly identical bombing at the same market followed in January. Outside Nigeria, Cameroon has been hardest hit by Boko Haram, which now operates out of bases in the Mandara Mountains, Sambisa Forest and Lake Chad -- areas straddling the borders between Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad and Niger. Since August 2014, the sect has carried out 336 attacks in Cameroon, according to the Cameroonian army, which has lost 57 of its own men while defending the north. Of 34 recorded suicide bombings killing 174 people, 80% were carried out by girls and young women aged 14 to 24 years. Girls abused as sex slaves by the group are psychologically damaged and therefore more vulnerable, the army says. Boko Haram also uses girls because they are thought less likely to arouse suspicion, although that may be changing now.
"The goal now is to stop Boko Haram incursions into villages, stop them from planting IEDs, and stop suicide bombings," said Lieutenant-Colonel Felix Tetcha, a senior officer in the army's operation against Boko Haram. Cameroon has thrown vast resources into protecting the north. In total nearly 10 000 of its troops are deployed against Boko Haram. The army's Rapid Intervention Brigade (BIR), comprised of its most professional, best equipped soldiers, patrols a high-risk 400km stretch of the border with Nigeria. The US military backs them with equipment, training and intelligence gathered from American drones flown out of a base in the town of Garoua.
A Reuters reporter saw a small American military camp inside another BIR base in nearby Maroua. Still, the terrain is mountainous and Boko Haram has rigged many roads with explosives designed to kill soldiers. Army officers are convinced that some fighters from Boko Haram, which pledged allegiance to Islamic State last year, have been trained at IS camps in Libya. Armed incursions by Boko Haram fighters have dropped. But the army does not have enough soldiers to deploy in every town in northern Cameroon, and suicide bombers strike regularly, often several times in a single week.
"The border is under control, but it's still very porous," said Lieutenant-Colonel Emile Nlaté Ebalé, head of operations and logistics for the BIR's mission in the north. Faced with such an asymmetrical threat, Cameroon's army has turned to so-called vigilance committees for help. As the blazing midday sun beat down on Kerawa, Bouba Ahmada walked along a dry, scrub-lined creek bed, an ancient flintlock musket slung around his neck. "Here is Cameroon, over there is Nigeria," he said, gesturing towards the abandoned homes just across the dusty expanse. "It's empty. Only Boko Haram stays there." Made up of men and boys armed with machetes, home-made rifles or bows and arrows, these self-defence forces have the blessing of the local government. They accompany the army on patrols and intelligence gathering missions, question travellers, and denounce to the military anyone deemed suspect.
Last week they intercepted two female suicide bombers and handed them over to the army before they were able to detonate. "We are not 100% dependent on this information, but this information is crucial," said Lieutenant-Colonel Tetcha, who is not only defending Cameroon but also a growing number of Nigerians. Close to the border sits the UN-run Minawao camp, home to nearly 57 000 refugees who have fled Boko Haram in Nigeria. "Everybody suffers in this place," said James Zapania, a 24-year-old camp resident from Gwoza, Nigeria. "We're not worried about Boko Haram coming here, we're worried about food." Refugees like Zapania often receive a chilly welcome from suspicious local villagers, many of whom view them as collaborators or even underground Boko Haram fighters.
According to one Cameroonian officer, the army has removed a number of individuals from Minawao for "activities not in line with the behaviour of a normal refugee". Suspicion is everywhere. And while Boko Haram infiltrators make up only a tiny portion of fleeing refugees, many, including the Cameroonian military, fear that desperation provides fertile ground for recruitment. "We need to act quickly. There are young people with no work who could be vulnerable. When people are hungry, they are easily approached," said Colonel Didier Badjeck, a Cameroonian military spokesman.
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