Women and the War on Boko Haram: Wives, Weapons, Witnesses

by Hilary Matfess

For over a decade, Boko Haram has waged a campaign of terror across northeastern Nigeria. In 2014, the kidnapping of 276 girls in Chibok shocked the world, giving rise to the #BringBackOurGirls movement. Yet Boko Haram's campaign of violence against women and girls goes far beyond the Chibok abductions. From its inception, the group has systematically exploited women to advance its aims. Perhaps more disturbing still, some Nigerian women have chosen to become active supporters of the group, even sacrificing their lives as suicide bombers. These events cannot be understood without first acknowledging the long-running marginalisation of women in Nigerian society.

Having conducted extensive fieldwork throughout the region, Hilary Matfess provides a vivid and thought-provoking account of Boko Haram's impact on the lives of Nigerian women, as well as the wider social and political context that fuels the group's violence.

Genres: Nonfiction, Africa, Nigeria, Politics, War

288 pages, Paperback

Published November 15, 2017

Reviews

[Tinea · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you only read one book on Boko Haram, make it Born on a Tuesday. But if you have time for two, the second one should be this (and if three, I recommend "Eat the Heart of the Infidel": The Harrowing of Nigeria and the Rise of Boko Haram, from which Matfess pulls most of her historical references anyway).

The essence of Matfess's contribution on gender and women's agency in NE Nigeria can be found in this challenging article by Dionne Searcey on girl survivors of forced human-carried bombings: people make the best choices they can within the confines of the limits of the choices they understand are available to them. Within horribly confined, foggy and disinformed limits, and within a no better wider world of poverty, violence, and radical misogyny limiting rights and wellbeing for girls in some NE Nigerian cultural spaces: girls make the best choices they can. They make choices. Within horrible limits.

The implication of acknowledging women's agency in the Boko Haram crisis is profound, because it causes a series of myths to fall down. The largest myth, being, of course, the white knight heroism of the Nigerian government as savior-protector against the Evil Other, irrational, outlier Boko Haram. Matfess places Boko Haram within a damning cultural, political, and economic context in which girls and women make awful but logical choices. Bluntly, where child marriage through dowry sale is common, how is Boko Haram's 'sexual enslavement'-- codified as it often is, with dowry and marriage-- always and definitively a worse choice? Where the Nigerian military razes farmland, encloses displaced people in locked starvation camps, and massacres 'military-aged' boys and men in the name of 'liberating' villages in what may amount to an ethnic cleansing of Kanuri people, how is Boko Haram's territorial conquest always and definitively a worse choice? Where the civilian vigilantes (CJTF) provide rare protection, valiantly bear-hugging person-borne bombers to mitigate blasts with their bodies, but also recruit children and demand all forms of payments; and where aid agencies regularly break scandals of staff siphoning aid, neglect of people in their care, or, again and again and again, sexual abuse and exploitation, over and over: how is the protection and resource supply offered by Boko Haram always and definitively a worse choice?

Matfess documents these things. As an aid worker in Nigeria, we had to tiptoe so carefully about them to maintain access (supplied at the whim of the government, sometimes violently withdrawn, while simultaneously targeted by Boko Haram). It felt, in NE Nigeria, that there were no good institutional actors: a systemic form of corruption took the place of a functional state, the economy consisted of oil barons in mansions literally overlooking camps in famine, and a pervasive racial hatred and misogyny were baked into every level of relationship, from the neocolonial aid and weapons disbursements to national, state, and village/camp governance, to violent hierarchical control within many families. People who spoke clearly-- Nigerian writers and activists, Human Rights Watch or MSF advocates, and the many local NGO staff I worked with who were methodically bulldozed over for honesty and refusal to play the game-- suffered terribly, or their work suffered terribly. It is good to read Matfess's book, as it speaks these things clearly.

Once Matfess deconstructs these myths and centers the agency of women and girls, she outlines the frame of a response to Boko Haram that addresses its drivers. First, acknowledge and fund and prioritize the strategies of women-led and especially Kanuri-led organizations in NE Nigeria, like FOMWAN and the #BringBackOurGirls parents. Address human and economic rights, participation and justice: freedom of movement of IDPs, access to agricultural lands and livelihoods, legal protections and equality for women and girls, accountability and holistic improvement of military, government, education, aid...-- and address the toxic masculinity, patriarchy, and misogyny at every level of power that forces girls, boys, men, and women to make horrible choices within horrible limits.

[Sookie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The political turbulence and rise of boko haram has been ignored by mainstream for years. It came into prominence when young girls were kidnapped from village to become young brides and some were lost to the group forever.
Maftess explores various incarnations and mutations of violence against women. The disproportionate way women get treated in these parts and how many of women under boko haram went in voluntarily. It's not just systemic exploitation of women but it's the structural exploitation that drove women to arms of boko haram. Being in boko have them security; decent food, marriage, a bit of income to the family that took care of them. While some walked into this life voluntarily there are hoards who didn't.

Maftess explores rehabilitation programs set by international charities and the lack of funding that's inhibiting the speed. One noteworthy and troubling trend that's observed is in the way many of social organizations ignore women freed from boko isolating them as someone who are still working on behalf of the organization. A social worker says that she believes ex-boko women would convert men to boko ideology thus dangerous to society at large. In this way the displaced women have no access to help from the very system that is set up for help.

The women suffer as victims during war or used as tools to build comaradier (gang rapes). The author concludes this book by pleading to charities to increase funding and access to women who are in need of help but are unable to access because of social stigma.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this engaging and well-written book, Hilary Matfess looks at the role of women in Boko Haram and how they have been affected by the insurgency. While the Boko Haram insurgency in northeastern Nigeria has gained global prominence primarily with the abduction of the Chibok girls in 2014, Matfess offers a much more complex analysis of the place of women in this conflict. Without denying the high levels of victimisation suffered by women, at the hands of both Boko Haram and the Nigerian security forces, she also explains how they have occupied important roles as (moral) supporters to Boko Haram and can be important actors in strengthening social and economic resilience of local communities, if changes are made to ensure greater gender-sensitive programming in humanitarian and DDR projects and improved women participation. The most powerful message though of the book is that violence against women is not merely an outcome of the Boko Haram insurgency, but rather that it builds on long-standing practices in Nigeria of the marginalisation of women and toxic masculinity. It issues a clarion call to place the autonomy and equality of women at the centre of policy responses to the insurgency and in future peacebuilding efforts.

[Kristiane Width · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful, interesting and thought provoking book to a terrorist group often overlooked due to the media focus on ISIS

[Nick Moz Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating insight in to the gender dynamics of Boko Haram. And the role women play in the insurgency, not just as victims but as active participants.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the general message of this books really resonated with me, I was a bit confused with some of the referencing or lack thereof with some of the claims Matfess made.

[Minna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oikein hyvä tietokirja naisten roolista Boko Haramin toiminnassa. Naisten osa konflikteissa on paljon muutakin kuin uhrin ja kärsijän, pidin siitä, miten haastattelut korostivat naisten omaa toimijuutta. Hyvää taustoitusta niistä taloudellisista ja sosiaalisista syistä, jotka saivat naisia liittymään mukaan myös vapaaehtoisesti sekä ylipäätänsä yhteiskunnallisesta tilanteesta Nigerian eri osissa.