MOHAMMED JAAFAR, a commander of Nigeria’s Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF), recalls his first arrest with relish. It was in 2013, shortly after the vigilante group had been formed to fight the Islamist rebels of Boko Haram. A distressed neighbour appeared at his door in Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram, reporting that a radicalised relative was hiding in his house. “I knew I was now a target,” Mr Jaafar says. So he summoned his men, scaled his neighbour’s wall and seized the suspect, who was an emir: one of Boko Haram’s spiritual leaders.
Many Nigerians are proud of such derring-do on the part of the CJTF, which has swollen into an army of over 26,000 in Borno, the state worst affected by the insurgency. As north-easterners, its members claim to know the suspects in their communities, saving innocent bystanders from being rounded up by ill-informed regular soldiers. They tried to protect their towns when Nigerian troops fled the front line (a common occurrence until early last year). Some fought bravely alongside the army, too. As Boko Haram advanced on Maiduguri in 2014, for example, the vigilantes helped avert the fall...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2dcBSZl
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