THE men who queue for food in a camp in Bama have something in common: almost all of them are old. Young men who were fit to fight have been either conscripted or killed by Boko Haram, says a commander of the government forces that pushed the jihadists out of this town in north-eastern Nigeria last year.
Now more than 10,000 people live behind the high walls of a former hospital in Bama, which has been converted into a camp for the internally displaced and is guarded by soldiers. Among the throngs, women sit sewing prayer hats and children roll tyres through the dust. But hardly a working-age man can be seen. Data from the International Organisation for Migration show that there are more than two adult women for every man aged 18 to 59 in Bama, which previously sat in the centre of Boko Haram’s self-declared caliphate.
Since they started fighting for an Islamic state in 2009, the jihadists have kidnapped more than 10,000 boys and trained them in boot camps. Those loyal to Boko Haram’s recently deposed leader, Abubakar Shekau, murder Muslims who refuse to join them. But there is another explanation for the discrepancy, and it comes...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2fltqVe
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