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Tuesday, March 24, 2020

BREAKING: Boko Haram kills almost 100 soldiers in a seven-hour attack in Chad

Issued on: 25/03/2020 - 04:17 GMT/ZULU

Chadian soldiers on patrol near Gamboru village on February 4 © Stéphane Yas, AFP |

by Rashida Adjani and Biodun Iginla, France24, N'Djemina, Chad

Boko Haram jihadists have killed nearly 100 Chadian soldiers in a seven-hour attack on an island army base, in their deadliest assault yet on the country's armed forces.

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President Idriss Deby told Chad television he travelled to the scene of the attack on Tuesday to pay tribute to the 92 dead soldiers, saying it was the first time so many troops had been lost.

The attack early Monday morning in Boma, Lac province, is part of an expanding jihadist campaign in the vast, marshy Lake Chad area, where the borders of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria converge.

Boko Haram launched an insurgency in Nigeria in 2009 before beginning incursions in its neighbouring countries to the east.

"We lost 92 of our soldiers, non-commissioned officers and officers," in the attack in Boma, the president said.

"It's the first time we have lost so many men," he said.

The attack on soldiers on the Boma peninsula lasted at least seven hours, and reinforcements sent to help became bogged down and were also targeted, several military sources told us at France24.

"The camp is on an island where the ways in were controlled by Boko Haram fighters, they were able to leave as they wanted and without being forced out by the army," one security official said.

"The enemy has hit at our defences hard in this zone," the senior officer said.

One military official said army vehicles were destroyed, including armoured vehicles, and captured military arms were carried off in speedboats by Boko Haram.

The base was taken by surprise by the 5:00 am attack, the official said.

Boko Haram has stepped up its attacks in recent months on the islands of the Lake Chad basin where it takes advantage of the vast terrain to launch assaults.

Boko Haram's insurgency has killed 36,000 people and displaced nearly two million in northeastern Nigeria since it began, according to the UN.

Since 2015, countries in the region have cooperated in the Multinational Joint Force, a regional coalition engaged around Lake Chad with the help of local residents formed into vigilante groups.

But the regional militaries are struggling to cope with the jihadist insurgency.

In Cameroon, violence increased in 2019 and early 2020. In Cameroon's Far North, 275 people were killed by jihadist attacks in 2019, most of them civilians, according to a report published by Amnesty International in December.

In Niger, 174 soldiers were killed in three attacks in January and December.

Friday, July 19, 2019

ANALYSIS: Ex-jihadist Tania Joya now fights to 'reprogram' extremists

Date created : 20/07/2019 - 07:09 GMT/ZULU

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Washington

by Suzanne Gould and Biodun Iginla, France24 News Analysts

Tania Joya has devoted her life to "reprogramming" extremists and reintroducing them into society -- a process she understands well as a "former Islamic jihadist" herself.

"My aim is for them to feel a sense of remorse and to train them so that they can be good citizens once they are released from prison, so they can adjust to society," Joya said during a visit to Washington, to present a project on preventing extremist violence.

Born in 1984 near London to a Muslim Bangladeshi family, Joya grew up confronted by racism and the struggles of integration. She radicalized at age 17, after the September 11 terror attacks in New York and Osama bin Laden's call for a global jihad.

In 2004, she married an American Muslim-convert, Yahya al-Bahrumi (born John Georgelas). She began advocating for an Islamic state, for which her three children would be soldiers.

But in 2013, her husband took her and their children against her will to northwestern Syria to join jihadist insurgents. Joya reported her husband to US authorities and, after three weeks, fled Syria to the United States.

Joya settled in Texas, her husband's home state. There, she rejected Islam and changed her life, divorced and re-married.

- Re-programming, giving them hope -

Yahya, her first husband, joined the Islamic State group, which would soon control large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. He was in charge of the group's English-language propaganda, and Joya said he became the "highest-ranking American" in the IS group.

He died in 2017 during fighting in Mayadin, in northern Syria, as the so-called IS "caliphate" crumbled.

However this created a new problem -- Western jihadists or their spouses and children wanting to come home.

Joya realized that she had something to offer. "It's really important to de-radicalize them, rehabilitate" these people, she said.

"It's reprogramming them and giving them a sense of hope in the political process."

It's also important to "get them to understand the psychology and the patterns... what led them to extremism," understanding "the rejection many in the US and Europe faced growing up there, the cultural conflict, the crisis they went through," she said.

"Once it's all explained to them, very logically, they will accept it just as I did."

Joya favors repatriating foreign rebels from the Middle East so they can be judged in their countries of origin.

While that is the US policy, many European countries such as France are wary of taking in the jihadists.

In May and June, 11 French nationals were sentenced to die in Iraq for their affiliation to IS.

Joya has campaigned for the return of Shamima Begum, who joined the jihadist group when she was just 15 but now wants to return home to Britain. However Begum's lack of remorse has turned public opinion against her, and the British government stripped her of her citizenship in February.

Kurdish-run camps in northeast Syria have taken in some 12,000 foreign fighters from 40 different countries, including 4,000 women and 8,000 children whose fathers are jihadists.

- 'Inoculation' against indoctrination -

Countries with jihadists stranded in refugee camps "are responsible for these individuals," said Joya. "We can't just push them off to the Middle East, to the Kurdish people... the abuses they're facing in these camps are only confirming their beliefs of radicalization."

Joya is participating in the Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) program organized by the Clarion Program, a US non-profit dedicated to educating people "about the growing phenomenon of Islamic extremism," according to its website.

The PVE program provides "communication models" that offer "workshops for youth so that before a child is even indoctrinated or introduced to radical ideologies, they've really been inoculated" against religious and ideological extremism, said national program coordinator Shireen Qudosi.

"That goes from gangs, to radical ideologies: antifa, neo-Nazi groups, Islamist extremism," she said.

Biodun Iginla, BBC News

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

BREAKING: Boko Haram kills almost 100 soldiers in a seven-hour attack in Chad

Friday, July 19, 2019

ANALYSIS: Ex-jihadist Tania Joya now fights to 'reprogram' extremists