Since its official founding in Maiduguri, Nigeria in 2002, Boko Haram has been on a violent crusade to make the country into an Islamic state. In the intervening years since its creation, thousands of people have been killed in mass bombing and night attacks on villages in the impoverished country.
In 2015, Boko Haram was beaten back into the Sambisa forest to the south, near the Mandara Mountains and close to the border with Cameroon. The terror organization, with an estimated 9,000 fighters, still had to eat. With most of the territory in northern Nigeria already plundered and barren of crops and people who have fled, they looked to neighboring countries.
In Mora, Cameroon, the other day, what appeared to be a typical Boko Haram attack began playing out, with the terrorists storming into the village, shooting everyone they happened to come across. But instead of burning houses and taking hostages, they rounded up all the livestock and food they could find and left, reports the New York Times.
The terrorist group that has been rampaging across the region for years, terrorizing the population with unspeakable atrocities, is now on a different kind of hunt. “They need food. They need to eat,” Midjiyawa Bakari, the governor of the Far North region of Cameroon, said of Boko Haram. “They’re stealing everything.”
The American State Department has been reviewing attacks dating back to the first part of 2016, and has concluded that a hunt for food is behind the reason Boko Haram has been going deeper into Cameroon. They point out that trade in parts of northeastern Nigeria and borders regions into the Far North has all but ground to a halt, leaving tens of thousands of people on the brink of famine.
Vendors have nothing to sell, and even if they did, they are afraid to go to the outdoor markets to set up shop for fear of the terror group’s suicide bombers. Farmers have fled their villages, leaving their fields fallow and their homes empty. What cattle they have are taken on rerouted drives to avoid the terrorists, the Hindu is reporting.
They started shooting, shooting, shooting,” Matte Bama tells the Boston Globe, recounting the night Boko Haram raided her town, Amchide. Now she shares a house with 23 others, wondering when she can return home. “They took our livestock,” she said. “They took everything and they left.”
Nigeria’s military contends that they have put Boko Haram on the defensive, forcing them to scrounge for food in the forest during the dry season or go out on raids to find food. They say they have all routes out of the forest blocked. “Their supply routes are blocked,” said Brig. Gen. Rabe Abubakar, a Nigerian military spokesman. “They’re hungry.”
But while emaciated Boko Haram fighters have been turning themselves in by the dozens, along with their hostages, it doesn’t mean the terror threat is over. The starving fighters are still able to carry out devastating attacks as we have seen recently.
