Boko Haram and the Children’s Crusade

By Philip Obaji Jr., The Daily Beast

Generations of young Nigerians in the northeast of their country are being shaped by the terrors of the war.

LAGOS — “I was asked to kill my parents on the day I was captured,” said 16-year-old Babagana, a former Boko Haram child slave. "I had no courage, so they killed them in front of me.”

“That is how Boko Haram operates,” he told me when I saw him in March in Borno State. “They first take out your parents so you have no one else to fall back to.”

This may be the most tragic fact about the fight raging in northeast Nigeria:  It is a war waged by children against children. Minors make up nearly a quarter of Boko Haram’s soldiers. Some recruits are as young as 10 and are inducted by raids on villages. They are brutalized and forced to commit atrocities on fellow kidnap victims and even on their own families. Militants kill children who attempt to escape from captivity.

Recently village militias have been enlisting young kids to fight against Boko Haram, as well. And the plague is spreading.

This week, the Nigerian army rescued almost 300 girls and women taken captive by Boko Haram, and even though they were not the Chibok schoolgirls who were kidnapped more than a year ago now, there was a great sense of pride and relief that the Nigerian Army was able to do this.

But many stories have not had such happy endings. Read more here.

Photo: Stringer/Reuters