Jungle-Based Boko Haram Strikes With Impunity

To understand Boko Haram and why it has been so hard to fight one must look to the other side of Africa - to the Lord's Resistance Army.

The LRA, founded by a mystic, Alice Lakwena, in 1986 in the face of Ugandan military atrocities in the north of that country, has mutated into a vicious shadowy movement that specialised in extreme atrocities and the abduction of young women in border areas straddling four countries.

Boko Haram, Nigeria's ultra-violent extremist Islamist movement, was born about half a decade ago as the child of corruption and inefficiency in the country's mostly Muslim north.

Its name translates as "Western education is a sin".

Weapons seized from the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda in 2012

But Boko Haram was part of a retreat by large numbers of disenfranchised Muslims in the face of what they perceived to be the corruption of northern politicians by the Christian-driven south.

They believe the answer to Nigeria's inexorable collapse into poverty among the masses since independence in Britain in 1960 is to establish an Islamic state.

Led by Mohammed Yusuf, it used non-violence.

Lakwena's LRA used sticks and stones and thought themselves bulletproof.

But in the face of state crackdowns, religious conflicts in Nigeria's northern towns and encouraged by the metastasizing ideology of al Qaeda in northwest Africa, Boko Haram soon switched to violence.

The scene of a Boko Haram bomb attack in Nyanya, Nigeria

Just as the LRA took up arms - it went into a bloody paroxysm after their "prophet" gave herself up - Boko Haram's violence escalated rapidly after sheikh Yusuf died, allegedly in state custody.

Amid growing violence the two movements drifted into the wilderness, preying on the towns that gave birth to them.

The LRA has plagued Gulu in northern Uganda. Boko Haram has repeatedly laid waste to part of Madaguri and surrounding villages in Borno state.

Counter attacks meant they have set up bases in far-flung jungle hideouts. The LRA in the Central African Republic, Boko Haram in the Adamawa mountains of neighbouring Cameroon.

The West has offered help to the Nigerian authorities; the US in the form of specialist negotiators, police and military advice, while the UK already has training teams on the ground and counter-terrorist officers from Mi6 and Special Forces.

But similar resources have been used to little effect against the LRA - which continues to terrorise people across borders.

The West might help with some electronic surveillance. Perhaps a drone or two.

The LRA has abducted about 2,400 people, mostly girls, over the last six years as sex slaves, for forced breeding, and as domestic slaves.

It hides in the mountains and jungles and strikes with near impunity.

So, now, does Boko Haram.

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