Maiduguri
In case anyone thought things weren’t so bad in Nigeria lately…
Suicide bombers blow up a mosque in Maiduguri.
At least 39 people have died after multiple explosions in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri, an emergency official says.
Three female suicide bombers, thought to be aged between 11 and 15, struck on Friday morning, an official with the National Emergency Management Agency told BBC Hausa.
Aged between 11 and 15! Girls! Murderous men sending little girls out to explode themselves and others while the murderous men stay safe.
It follows bomb attacks on a mosque on Thursday, which killed at least 32.
Maiduguri is often targeted by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.
Boko Haram hasn’t yet bragged about doing it.
More than 100 people were killed in three explosions last month in the city, which is considered the birthplace of Boko Haram.
In Thursday’s attack, officials say the first suicide bomber blew himself up inside the mosque, with a second bomber detonating explosives as people rushed to help those injured in the initial blast.
The explosions caused parts of the mosque to collapse, leading to further injuries.
Blew herself up, that apparently should be. And notice the familiar cruelty of timing the second bombing to get the people who rush to help.
Anyway – no, things are still shit in Nigeria.
I’d be interested to know how this came about? It’s certainly possible these girls were committed Jihadis but it’s equally or more possible these were girls whose families were threatened or, unhappily, who were paid a large sum to “persuade” the girls. Sometimes the organisers detonate the bomb by remote control to prevent anyone backing out. All of this gets shoved under the umbrella “suicide bomber”.
Of course the most likely people to get used in this way are those considered disposable – poor farmers who have no idea about the politics of it and, of course, women and girls.
I would too. There have been some foiled suicide bomber children – girls and boys – who have been able to give accounts of what happened, which I think pretty much always involved force. The ones I have in mind were from Pakistan and Afghanistan, I think. But at any rate we know well that Boko Haram kidnaps children; it’s tragically easy to think of ways they could force children to be suicide bombers (just say “if you don’t we’ll slaughter your entire family” for instance). We also know well that Boko Haram kidnaps children and forces them to convert to Islam or (if they’re already Muslim) to Boko Haram-style Islam. I think it’s vanishingly unlikely that these girls were committed jihadis in any reasonable sense – I don’t think Nigerian girls run away to join Boko Haram.
Yes, I agree completely.
I’d like some new terminology for this. “Suicide bomber” seems very inappropriate when these girls have no choice in the matter. It enables mainstream media to erase some of the ways terrorist organisations use gender and poverty to fulfill their aims.
I’ll have to see if I can find the reference, but my recollection of the horrible process is that the girls are acquired either by kidnapping or semi-forced transaction with their families, and then used as sex slaves*. And then they are convinced that since their virginity is gone, they are defiled in God’s eyes. At which point they are presented with the opportunity to regain the salvation of their immortal soul with an act of holy war (eg the “suicide” bombing).
*It’s utterly unclear to me how fundamentalist Muslims decide for a girl whether she is to become a sex slave or have her virginity controlled by meters of cloth and jealously guarded by her male relatives
Can’t recall the title, but I read a book length depiction of a suicide bombing in Iraq a while ago which described the’conditioning’ process by which a male suicide bomber was coerced into doing it. Not quite the visceral horror of the rape thing, but still made me shudder, the way he was described as being broken to it, beaten down. All the coercive ugliness of the worst of the manipulative, insular cults. With explosives, and a final exit as a ruined, browbeaten mass murderer.