Introduction

Better known under the nickname Boko Haram (‘Western education is sacrilege’), the ‘Sunni Community for the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad’ (Jama'atu Ahlis-Sunnah Lidda'awati Wal Jihad) emerged as a sect in the Borno region of north-east Nigeria, bordering Niger, Chad and Cameroon. In March 2015, one of the factions of the group paid allegiance to Daesh (ISIS) and decided to be called the Islamic State in West Africa (Wilayat Gharb Ifriqiyah). Some in the media have presented this insurgency as part of a global jihad or, in the Nigerian context, a clash of civilization between Muslims and Christians. But the reality on ground has been quite different. Muslims have been the main victims of the group for a simple demographic reason: they are a majority in the north-east of Nigeria and civilians bear the brunt of the conflict. In fact, Boko Haram has attacked both Muslims and Christians. If the group has sometimes targeted Christian minorities, it has mainly killed Muslims who rejected its doctrine or cooperated with the security forces.

Paradoxically, the realization of this common terrorist threat may have fostered the sense of national unity that propelled both Muslims and Chris tians to vote together for a democratic change in 2015, when President Muhammadu Buhari was elected. Today, Boko Haram, or what remains of it, is very fragmented, and it is important to go beyond the issue of religious fanaticism to analyse properly the local dynamics that explain how the sect mobilized combatants. The group has gone through four principal phases of recruitment, mainly in the region of Borno: firstly, a period of Islamic preaching (da'awah) under Mohammed Yusuf between 2003 and 2009; then, a descent into terrorism under Abubakar Shekau from 2010; a transformation into a guerrilla movement after the declaration of emergency rule in North-East Nigeria in 2013; and finally a spatial expansion of attacks after the launch of an international coalition made up of Nigerian, Nigerien, Chadian and Cameroonian armies in 2015.

Christian minorities in the north-east and Boko Haram: the context

Studying the sociology of a rebellion is always a challenge due to the inherent insecurity. My investigation started along the Niger/Nigeria border as far back as 2005 to analyse the ‘Talebans of Nigeria’, the seeds of a movement that would later become Boko Haram.