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Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement
A comprehensive history of one of the world's deadliest jihadist groups
Boko Haram is one of the world's deadliest jihadist groups. It has killed more than twenty thousand people and displaced more than two million in a campaign of terror that began in Nigeria but has since spread to Chad, Niger, and Cameroon as well. This is the first book to tell the full story of this West African affiliate of the Islamic State, from its beginnings in the early 2000s to its most infamous violence, including the 2014 kidnapping of 276 Nigerian schoolgirls.
Drawing on sources in Arabic and Hausa, rare documents, propaganda videos, press reports, and interviews with experts in Nigeria, Cameroon, and Niger, Alexander Thurston sheds new light on Boko Haram's development. He shows that the group, far from being a simple or static terrorist organization, has evolved in its worldview and ideology in reaction to events. Chief among these has been Boko Haram's escalating war with the Nigerian state and civilian vigilantes.
The book closely examines both the behavior and beliefs that are the keys to understanding Boko Haram. Putting the group's violence in the context of the complex religious and political environment of Nigeria and the Lake Chad region, the book examines how Boko Haram relates to states, politicians, Salafis, Sufis, Muslim civilians, and Christians. It also probes Boko Haram's international connections, including its loose former ties to al-Qaida and its 2015 pledge of allegiance to ISIS.
An in-depth account of a group that is menacing Africa's most populous and richest country, the book also illuminates the dynamics of civil war in Africa and jihadist movements in other parts of the world.
Boko Haram is one of the world's deadliest jihadist groups. It has killed more than twenty thousand people and displaced more than two million in a campaign of terror that began in Nigeria but has since spread to Chad, Niger, and Cameroon as well. This is the first book to tell the full story of this West African affiliate of the Islamic State, from its beginnings in the early 2000s to its most infamous violence, including the 2014 kidnapping of 276 Nigerian schoolgirls.
Drawing on sources in Arabic and Hausa, rare documents, propaganda videos, press reports, and interviews with experts in Nigeria, Cameroon, and Niger, Alexander Thurston sheds new light on Boko Haram's development. He shows that the group, far from being a simple or static terrorist organization, has evolved in its worldview and ideology in reaction to events. Chief among these has been Boko Haram's escalating war with the Nigerian state and civilian vigilantes.
The book closely examines both the behavior and beliefs that are the keys to understanding Boko Haram. Putting the group's violence in the context of the complex religious and political environment of Nigeria and the Lake Chad region, the book examines how Boko Haram relates to states, politicians, Salafis, Sufis, Muslim civilians, and Christians. It also probes Boko Haram's international connections, including its loose former ties to al-Qaida and its 2015 pledge of allegiance to ISIS.
An in-depth account of a group that is menacing Africa's most populous and richest country, the book also illuminates the dynamics of civil war in Africa and jihadist movements in other parts of the world.
352 pages, Hardcover
Published November 14, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 3, 2021
Thurston's one of the only actual left wingers who is versed in security studies stuff. His broader critiques of mainstream counterterror/security discourse is better outlined elsewhere (Jihadists of North Africa and the Sahel) but he is definitely the best place to start for serious reporting on salafism in Africa
June 26, 2023
Discomfiting describes my very visceral reaction to this well written book. How do people like this arise in our world, especially corrupting the grace and wisdom of Islam in their reign of terror and destruction?
Nigeria confronts a myriad of challenges. BH is one. To understand this movement assists in diagnosing the country’s ills and elaborating the solutions.
Nigeria confronts a myriad of challenges. BH is one. To understand this movement assists in diagnosing the country’s ills and elaborating the solutions.
July 3, 2024
Many analysts, skeptical of the explanatory power of religion, dismiss any effort to examine the religious content of jihadist movements; others are even keen to disassociate jihadism from Islam.
Although it is impossible to say whether Boko Haram’s leaders really believe in the group’s message, religion is part of its structure.
Religion does not necessarily refer to individual belief. For some it does, especially in the West where the individual is something, and good for them, but for others it unfortunately is not.
Fringe movements sometimes start out with support from mainstream religious authorities. Dissidents can experience the loss of mainstream support as a critical juncture on the road to violence. As such, religion is a gateway to violence as much as it is a gateway to silence.
This trend fits Boko Haram as well.
It is important to show that Boko Haram’s ideas did not come out of thin air. The movement tried to harness and amplify certain ideas that were already circulating in the religious field, particularly during the period between 1999 and 2003, when northern Nigerian states were intensively implementing Islamic law (shari’a) - a development indispensable to understanding Boko Haram’s emergence.
Overall, Boko Haram (Western Education is forbidden) represents the outcome of dynamic, locally grounded interactions between religion and politics.
No, it is not part of a global jihadist movement. No, it is not the mere product of poverty, poor governance, and disparities between north and south: it is the application and interaction of ultraconservative religious ideas with local politics.
“Nigeria is an important country. It has, by far, Africa’s largest population, 180 million or more people. By 2050, Nigeria may have 400 million people. Corruption is widely seen by Nigerians as their country’s biggest problem. Some $380 billion has been stolen or wasted since the independence. It has one of the fastest growing economies in the world, yet population growth has outpaced economic growth. The result is that most Nigerians are poor. 43 percent of the population is under the age of 15. Between 1980 and 2006, the poverty rate in the North East zone rose from 35 to 72 percent.”
“A significant number of youth in Niger are not ideologically jihadist, but they valorize al-Qa’ida and the Islamic State as heroic, anti-Western organizations. Hardline religious rhetoric can intersect with political and socioeconomic grievances. Preachers and religious entrepreneurs on the fringes of the mainstream Salafi movement then seek to capitalize on a climate of anger.”
“One would almost forget that Muslim civilians themselves are the primary target of violence. A favorite Qur’anic verse being: “chaos is worse than killing.”
Although it is impossible to say whether Boko Haram’s leaders really believe in the group’s message, religion is part of its structure.
Religion does not necessarily refer to individual belief. For some it does, especially in the West where the individual is something, and good for them, but for others it unfortunately is not.
Fringe movements sometimes start out with support from mainstream religious authorities. Dissidents can experience the loss of mainstream support as a critical juncture on the road to violence. As such, religion is a gateway to violence as much as it is a gateway to silence.
This trend fits Boko Haram as well.
It is important to show that Boko Haram’s ideas did not come out of thin air. The movement tried to harness and amplify certain ideas that were already circulating in the religious field, particularly during the period between 1999 and 2003, when northern Nigerian states were intensively implementing Islamic law (shari’a) - a development indispensable to understanding Boko Haram’s emergence.
Overall, Boko Haram (Western Education is forbidden) represents the outcome of dynamic, locally grounded interactions between religion and politics.
No, it is not part of a global jihadist movement. No, it is not the mere product of poverty, poor governance, and disparities between north and south: it is the application and interaction of ultraconservative religious ideas with local politics.
“Nigeria is an important country. It has, by far, Africa’s largest population, 180 million or more people. By 2050, Nigeria may have 400 million people. Corruption is widely seen by Nigerians as their country’s biggest problem. Some $380 billion has been stolen or wasted since the independence. It has one of the fastest growing economies in the world, yet population growth has outpaced economic growth. The result is that most Nigerians are poor. 43 percent of the population is under the age of 15. Between 1980 and 2006, the poverty rate in the North East zone rose from 35 to 72 percent.”
“A significant number of youth in Niger are not ideologically jihadist, but they valorize al-Qa’ida and the Islamic State as heroic, anti-Western organizations. Hardline religious rhetoric can intersect with political and socioeconomic grievances. Preachers and religious entrepreneurs on the fringes of the mainstream Salafi movement then seek to capitalize on a climate of anger.”
“One would almost forget that Muslim civilians themselves are the primary target of violence. A favorite Qur’anic verse being: “chaos is worse than killing.”
January 7, 2026
Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa and the continent's biggest economy (thanks to oil) has been in the throes of Boko Haram, the Jihadist sect known for its extreme and indiscriminate brutality since the 2010s (though the genesis of the group goes back by a little more than a decade before that). While they were notorious in Northeast Nigeria and spilled over into the bordering Cameroon, Chad and Niger, they exploded on to the world scene in the month of April of 2014 for kidnapping 276 school girls aged between 16-18 from Chibok in Borno state in NE Nigeria (I strongly suggest reading the Nigerian author Helon Habila's compelling account on the event). Some 50 girls escaped immediately after jumping off the trucks, but eleven years since, over 100 are still missing and presumed captive. In 2014, the girls were forced to marry the fighters fighting on behalf of Boko Haram, and many were even forced into sex slavery. Kidnapping school children became sort of a modus operandi for the Jihadis, as after Chibok, the group has been accused of having kidnapped 1400 school goers, with the recent episode in the month of November 2025, when it abducted more than 300 children and teachers from Niger's Papiri.
So, was Boko Haram always so brutal known for burning down entire villages, causing untold misery on the socially & economically disadvantaged and resorting to indiscriminate violence to such an extent that even Abubakar Baghdadi of ISIS (ISIL) found the Africans too difficult to work with. To understand the trajectory of Boko Haram, and how they differed theologically and teleologically from the Somali Al-Shabab and Al Qaeda of Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), who better than Alexander Thurston, a scholar of the Sahel lands to read in a thoroughly academic and convincing narrative. Densely packed with footnotes, the work opens up to a vast literature packed in a little over 300 pages.
What's in the Name?
Boko Haram was born sometime in the early 2000s in the northeastern city of Maidugiri. The founder member was Muhammad Yusuf, born in 1970 at a time when the civil war in Nigeria was ending and the oil economy was all set to boom. The early years of Yusuf are obscured, but if one were to read a hagiographical account of him by his son, Yusuf was open hearted, and immersive in seeking knowledge from books as his companions. Though religiously affined, he certainly wasn't as hardline as his once right-hand man and successor Abubakar Shekau. Their early years have thin records, but they nonetheless were influenced by the Salafi thought, and considered themselves theologically distinct from the Qadriyya School of Sufism, Mahdist sympathizers, and Maitatsine's theological system which was rather based on an idiosyncratic reading of the Quran. Salafism, from Arabic 'salaf' (predecessor), when used in a phrase 'al-salaf al-salih' (pious predecessors) has deep resonance with the Sunnis, who considered the pious predecessors as the earliest communities of Islam and looked at in the present as pure. In northeastern Nigeria, salafism was introduced by Abubakar Gumi, whose followers established the Jama'at Izalat al-Bid'a wa-Iqamat al-Sunna (the society for the removal of heretical innovation and the establishment of the Prophetic model), or Izala in short. Izala was determinedly anti-sufi, and spread itself deep in Maidugiri, where Boko Haram was born. But with time, Boko Haram broke away from its spiritual fathers, Izala, when the latter saw nothing much wrong with western education, whereas the former were only getting too radical with the idea of implementing the Sharia. In the early 2000s, when the western media started branding Boko Haram as Nigerian version of the Afghan Taliban, it completely missed the underlying emic dynamics that drove the radical group as a distinct form of protest against Nigeria's political and economic setup and its legacy of corruption and mismanagement and against northern Nigeria's religious elitism.
Boko, a difficult word to translate could be taken to mean 'western-style education', or even 'inauthentic', and is taken from the Hausa Language. Haram means forbidden. Taken together, Boko Haram means 'western-style schooling (more appropriately civilization) is forbidden'. But the name was never really that, as members of the sect contend that it was given more derisorily as a nickname by the outsiders. The name has struck till date, despite it getting changed twice since 2009 after Muhammad Yusuf was killed in a major riot. Efforts by local politicians to rope in Yusuf towards moderation to accept some regulations regarding the implementation of the Sharia came to naught, as Yusuf disagreed to Boko Haram becoming yet another radical group of opposition bought by the system. After Yusuf's death, the mantle passed on to Shekau, who gave the group an official Arabic name 'Ahl-al Sunna li-l Da'wa wa-l-Jihad' (People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad). When in 2015, the radical sect affiliated with the ISIS, the official name became 'Wilayat Gharib Ifriqiya', or the Islamic State of West Africa. Post 2009, Shekau pursued his ambitions with extreme ruthlessness. This escalation led to a regional war in northeast Nigeria before spilling over the international borders into Cameroon, Chad and Niger, especially around the Lake Chad Basin.
Under Shekau, the earlier rhetoric against western democracy, constitutionalism and education were put on the back burner, though never really lost sight of. In their place, striving for territorial gains were upped, and religious activism was wedded with Jihadism. The reason to say that the core points of agitation were never really sight of comes from the Quranic verse (2:191), "al-fitna ashadd min al-qatl", or "Chaos is worse than killing". This is a distillation of Shekau's thought, and is subject to intense scrutiny. Many muslims read this verse as an injunction against precisely the type of rebellion that Boko Haram was mounting, whereas many muslims welcomed the killing of Muhammad Yusuf as they thought it would prevent further chaos. But for Shekau, the chaos the Quran condemns had already come to Nigeria in the form of a heretical system: western democracy, constitutionalism and education. For the leader, the only solution lay in violently opposing the system. To achieve this, Shekau's clarion call was 'izhar al-din', or 'manifesting religion', but extrapolated to violent means to an end. This precipitated a crisis for Nigeria as the problem of Boko Haram scaled up from a local to a national one. The discursive call for unity was rampant killings and intimidation built on the exegesis of parochial scripturalism. Even though turning towards terrorism, Boko Haram never failed to maintain its own victimization at the hands of the Nigerian state.
Between 2013 and 2015, the atrocities reached dizzying heights, and this was exacerbated by the Nigerian state, who in an attempt to bring to end the dastardly acts of Boko Haram deployed more troops, maltreated civilians and constituted the Civil Joint Task Force (C-JTF). The administration of Goodluck Jonathan inadvertently gave Boko Haram the leverage to carve out a declared Caliphate. Working stridently on religious exclusivism, the radicals called C-JTF and its adherents apostate, and forced the peripheralized population to choose sides, or face the consequences. It was only in 2016 that the newer administration in Abuja under Muhammad Buhari drew on the coalition from Cameroon, Chad and Niger, which was backed up by the US, France and Britain that Boko Haram was militarily pushed to the limits. The immediate neighbours of Nigeria who were drawn into the battle had to suffer a massive humanitarian crisis of refugees, shortage of food, starvation, and economic burdens. As the Sahel is a relatively closed space for political and civil society, the long-term repercussions on politics and society is mired in onerous uncertainties. But what is most worrying is that in the absence of political response to the conflict, Boko Haram might follow a trajectory similar to the jihadist peers in Africa: the AQIM and al-shabab. As Thurston puts it,
"AQIM was not always a predatory, transnational group blending criminality and Jihadism: its genealogy reaches back to Algeria's civil war in the 1990s, when the armed Islamic group (GIA) initially enjoyed popular support. The GIA marginalized itself through its involvement in massacres of Algerian civilians, and the Algerian government marginalized the GIA by extending amnesties to more mainstream Islamist resistance movements and by targeting the GIA's leaders. A break away faction of the GIA became AQIM troubling Saharan and Sahelian countries".
The path treaded by Boko Haram is pretty much congruent with the Algerian GIA. The Boko Haram as a group isn't finished yet, and continues to operate through its cells carrying suicide attacks in northern Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin.
Alexander Thurston has written a classic that is an alliance of Nigerian politics and religious influences in sprouting a deadly radical terrorist organization, and this is where Thurston's academic finesse is pointedly sharp in analysis. I have been following his work on the Sahel region, and this book nails it perfectly for the historian, political theorist & scientist and orientalist, and thus its very highly recommended.
So, was Boko Haram always so brutal known for burning down entire villages, causing untold misery on the socially & economically disadvantaged and resorting to indiscriminate violence to such an extent that even Abubakar Baghdadi of ISIS (ISIL) found the Africans too difficult to work with. To understand the trajectory of Boko Haram, and how they differed theologically and teleologically from the Somali Al-Shabab and Al Qaeda of Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), who better than Alexander Thurston, a scholar of the Sahel lands to read in a thoroughly academic and convincing narrative. Densely packed with footnotes, the work opens up to a vast literature packed in a little over 300 pages.
What's in the Name?
Boko Haram was born sometime in the early 2000s in the northeastern city of Maidugiri. The founder member was Muhammad Yusuf, born in 1970 at a time when the civil war in Nigeria was ending and the oil economy was all set to boom. The early years of Yusuf are obscured, but if one were to read a hagiographical account of him by his son, Yusuf was open hearted, and immersive in seeking knowledge from books as his companions. Though religiously affined, he certainly wasn't as hardline as his once right-hand man and successor Abubakar Shekau. Their early years have thin records, but they nonetheless were influenced by the Salafi thought, and considered themselves theologically distinct from the Qadriyya School of Sufism, Mahdist sympathizers, and Maitatsine's theological system which was rather based on an idiosyncratic reading of the Quran. Salafism, from Arabic 'salaf' (predecessor), when used in a phrase 'al-salaf al-salih' (pious predecessors) has deep resonance with the Sunnis, who considered the pious predecessors as the earliest communities of Islam and looked at in the present as pure. In northeastern Nigeria, salafism was introduced by Abubakar Gumi, whose followers established the Jama'at Izalat al-Bid'a wa-Iqamat al-Sunna (the society for the removal of heretical innovation and the establishment of the Prophetic model), or Izala in short. Izala was determinedly anti-sufi, and spread itself deep in Maidugiri, where Boko Haram was born. But with time, Boko Haram broke away from its spiritual fathers, Izala, when the latter saw nothing much wrong with western education, whereas the former were only getting too radical with the idea of implementing the Sharia. In the early 2000s, when the western media started branding Boko Haram as Nigerian version of the Afghan Taliban, it completely missed the underlying emic dynamics that drove the radical group as a distinct form of protest against Nigeria's political and economic setup and its legacy of corruption and mismanagement and against northern Nigeria's religious elitism.
Boko, a difficult word to translate could be taken to mean 'western-style education', or even 'inauthentic', and is taken from the Hausa Language. Haram means forbidden. Taken together, Boko Haram means 'western-style schooling (more appropriately civilization) is forbidden'. But the name was never really that, as members of the sect contend that it was given more derisorily as a nickname by the outsiders. The name has struck till date, despite it getting changed twice since 2009 after Muhammad Yusuf was killed in a major riot. Efforts by local politicians to rope in Yusuf towards moderation to accept some regulations regarding the implementation of the Sharia came to naught, as Yusuf disagreed to Boko Haram becoming yet another radical group of opposition bought by the system. After Yusuf's death, the mantle passed on to Shekau, who gave the group an official Arabic name 'Ahl-al Sunna li-l Da'wa wa-l-Jihad' (People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad). When in 2015, the radical sect affiliated with the ISIS, the official name became 'Wilayat Gharib Ifriqiya', or the Islamic State of West Africa. Post 2009, Shekau pursued his ambitions with extreme ruthlessness. This escalation led to a regional war in northeast Nigeria before spilling over the international borders into Cameroon, Chad and Niger, especially around the Lake Chad Basin.
Under Shekau, the earlier rhetoric against western democracy, constitutionalism and education were put on the back burner, though never really lost sight of. In their place, striving for territorial gains were upped, and religious activism was wedded with Jihadism. The reason to say that the core points of agitation were never really sight of comes from the Quranic verse (2:191), "al-fitna ashadd min al-qatl", or "Chaos is worse than killing". This is a distillation of Shekau's thought, and is subject to intense scrutiny. Many muslims read this verse as an injunction against precisely the type of rebellion that Boko Haram was mounting, whereas many muslims welcomed the killing of Muhammad Yusuf as they thought it would prevent further chaos. But for Shekau, the chaos the Quran condemns had already come to Nigeria in the form of a heretical system: western democracy, constitutionalism and education. For the leader, the only solution lay in violently opposing the system. To achieve this, Shekau's clarion call was 'izhar al-din', or 'manifesting religion', but extrapolated to violent means to an end. This precipitated a crisis for Nigeria as the problem of Boko Haram scaled up from a local to a national one. The discursive call for unity was rampant killings and intimidation built on the exegesis of parochial scripturalism. Even though turning towards terrorism, Boko Haram never failed to maintain its own victimization at the hands of the Nigerian state.
Between 2013 and 2015, the atrocities reached dizzying heights, and this was exacerbated by the Nigerian state, who in an attempt to bring to end the dastardly acts of Boko Haram deployed more troops, maltreated civilians and constituted the Civil Joint Task Force (C-JTF). The administration of Goodluck Jonathan inadvertently gave Boko Haram the leverage to carve out a declared Caliphate. Working stridently on religious exclusivism, the radicals called C-JTF and its adherents apostate, and forced the peripheralized population to choose sides, or face the consequences. It was only in 2016 that the newer administration in Abuja under Muhammad Buhari drew on the coalition from Cameroon, Chad and Niger, which was backed up by the US, France and Britain that Boko Haram was militarily pushed to the limits. The immediate neighbours of Nigeria who were drawn into the battle had to suffer a massive humanitarian crisis of refugees, shortage of food, starvation, and economic burdens. As the Sahel is a relatively closed space for political and civil society, the long-term repercussions on politics and society is mired in onerous uncertainties. But what is most worrying is that in the absence of political response to the conflict, Boko Haram might follow a trajectory similar to the jihadist peers in Africa: the AQIM and al-shabab. As Thurston puts it,
"AQIM was not always a predatory, transnational group blending criminality and Jihadism: its genealogy reaches back to Algeria's civil war in the 1990s, when the armed Islamic group (GIA) initially enjoyed popular support. The GIA marginalized itself through its involvement in massacres of Algerian civilians, and the Algerian government marginalized the GIA by extending amnesties to more mainstream Islamist resistance movements and by targeting the GIA's leaders. A break away faction of the GIA became AQIM troubling Saharan and Sahelian countries".
The path treaded by Boko Haram is pretty much congruent with the Algerian GIA. The Boko Haram as a group isn't finished yet, and continues to operate through its cells carrying suicide attacks in northern Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin.
Alexander Thurston has written a classic that is an alliance of Nigerian politics and religious influences in sprouting a deadly radical terrorist organization, and this is where Thurston's academic finesse is pointedly sharp in analysis. I have been following his work on the Sahel region, and this book nails it perfectly for the historian, political theorist & scientist and orientalist, and thus its very highly recommended.
February 26, 2020
A very well-researched book on the religious, economic, political, and social factors that contributed to the rise of Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria and the neighbouring countries. It goes into great detail discussing the evolution of the group from a small religious sect into one of the deadliest jihadist terrorist groups in the world.
December 7, 2023
Not the most clearly written in terms of timeline, but a helpful resource for understanding the group and its history
September 14, 2025
Thurston's 2018 review of one of the planets more notorious Islamist jihadist insurgent groups is well written and policy oriented despite having at times esoteric descriptions of Islamic concepts and Arabic phrasing. His PhD is in religious studies and it shows but he writes well enough for a political scientist to appreciate.
Boko Haram or "western education is prohibited" started in 2002 in NE Nigeria, a region rife with poverty, unemployment and religious conflict. Mohammed Yusuf rose to prominence by escalating the group into a more active and violent organization by bringing Koranic verse into public debate. His interpretation was more rigid than the normally more conservative Salafist view. ironically, hardliners on his right made him take this stance, drawing criticism from imams and traditional leaders.
His early terrorist activity in 2008 drew enough fear from Nigerian authorities to finally capture and summarily executed him in his father in laws barn in the summer if 2009. His successor, Abubakar Shekau was more violent and took the group to greater success and violence, capturing whole territories in Borno, Ademawa and Bauchi states and even crossing into neighboring countries like Chad, Cameroon and Niger in the Lake Chad region.
Shekau kidnapped and killed Christians, Muslims, police and soldiers alike while freeing BH fighters from jails. Civilian militias or vigilante groups or CJTF rose up to effectively counter BH enough to stabilize the national political system to allow Christian President Jonathan to stay in office until the 2015 national election of Muslim Muhammad Buhari, seen by many as a more effective combatant to the growing threat that grabbed global attention with kidnapping of hundreds of Chibok girls in 2014. U.S., British, French and African Union assets increased bringing in drones, foreign troops who often outperformed Nigerian units due to corruption or lack of equipment.
The war on terror addressed BH in a larger framework, creating the need to confront the group, much like al- Qai'da was.
Thurston concludes that BH can only be truly defeated with political will and dialogue and not just socioeconomic aid or reintegration of former insurgents into society. BH splintered twice into sects, first Ansaru, after AQIM considered affiliation and in 2015 with Islamic State led by Baghdadi. IS never trusted Shekau's hard-line attacks on Muslims living under Nigerian thus Western legal systems.
BH can either go the way of the Algerian spawned AQIM which today is isolated and much weaker in North Africa. Or it might evolve as AL Shabad, the youth, in Somalia and grow resistant and stronger over time better adapting ideology to fit a local context. Strongly recommend.
Boko Haram or "western education is prohibited" started in 2002 in NE Nigeria, a region rife with poverty, unemployment and religious conflict. Mohammed Yusuf rose to prominence by escalating the group into a more active and violent organization by bringing Koranic verse into public debate. His interpretation was more rigid than the normally more conservative Salafist view. ironically, hardliners on his right made him take this stance, drawing criticism from imams and traditional leaders.
His early terrorist activity in 2008 drew enough fear from Nigerian authorities to finally capture and summarily executed him in his father in laws barn in the summer if 2009. His successor, Abubakar Shekau was more violent and took the group to greater success and violence, capturing whole territories in Borno, Ademawa and Bauchi states and even crossing into neighboring countries like Chad, Cameroon and Niger in the Lake Chad region.
Shekau kidnapped and killed Christians, Muslims, police and soldiers alike while freeing BH fighters from jails. Civilian militias or vigilante groups or CJTF rose up to effectively counter BH enough to stabilize the national political system to allow Christian President Jonathan to stay in office until the 2015 national election of Muslim Muhammad Buhari, seen by many as a more effective combatant to the growing threat that grabbed global attention with kidnapping of hundreds of Chibok girls in 2014. U.S., British, French and African Union assets increased bringing in drones, foreign troops who often outperformed Nigerian units due to corruption or lack of equipment.
The war on terror addressed BH in a larger framework, creating the need to confront the group, much like al- Qai'da was.
Thurston concludes that BH can only be truly defeated with political will and dialogue and not just socioeconomic aid or reintegration of former insurgents into society. BH splintered twice into sects, first Ansaru, after AQIM considered affiliation and in 2015 with Islamic State led by Baghdadi. IS never trusted Shekau's hard-line attacks on Muslims living under Nigerian thus Western legal systems.
BH can either go the way of the Algerian spawned AQIM which today is isolated and much weaker in North Africa. Or it might evolve as AL Shabad, the youth, in Somalia and grow resistant and stronger over time better adapting ideology to fit a local context. Strongly recommend.
October 7, 2025
Great book. One thing it reminded me of, and something that perturbed me about Nigeria or the government of Nigeria was a stark unwillingness to examine the past, and see how actions from said past are inexplicably linked to the present. This is not to say that if the Nigerian government atoned for mishandling earlier uprisings in northern Nigeria, there wouldn’t be another ambitious upstart like Yusuf that would have taken advantage of the lack of education and infrastructure development in the region to stir up religious resentment. But! The government dropping the ball on several occasions exacerbated this crisis.
May 28, 2024
Comprehensive and dense, this is an incredibly detailed look at Boko Haram. Describing both internal disputes, militant activities and international attempts at dissolution in detail, it’s a fantastic resource. Written in 2018, I’m going to investigate myself whether Thurston’s assertion that political engagement may be the only method of rectification to assuage Boko Harams attacks was/is accurate.
December 5, 2024
Really well done, well researched, well compiled and thorough while not going crazy on the tangents and keeping the book a reasonable length.
Dry? A little. I also wouldn’t have minded a few more personal touches in the writing to create more of a story. Minor gripes.
Dry? A little. I also wouldn’t have minded a few more personal touches in the writing to create more of a story. Minor gripes.
May 26, 2025
A part of this world that is brutal and scary... A great introduction and informative experience concerning all that!
February 6, 2026
Great genealogy
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews