The oldest scars were
smooth and dark, diagonal stripes across the right side of Ismail Ahmed’s back,
beneath an open sore. The fresher w
ounds were still pink.
Mr. Ahmed had been
arrested by the Nigerian army on suspicion of helping Boko Haram, but the tears
he shed were for his brother, Umaru. The soldiers had shot him dead, he said.
The men had been hiding
in the mountains outside Gulak, northeastern Adamawa State, when the army
advanced with vigilantes in February to recapture the town from Boko Haram.
“The vigilantes said we
should come down and nothing would happen to us,” Mr. Ahmed said. “I went back.
I stayed in my house for three weeks. Then the soldiers came and blindfolded me
and took me to their base.”
He spent four days in a
military prison, where he was flogged, and eight days in a police cell in the
state capital Yola, before he was released without charge last week.
His brother, a farmer,
had been hiding in another village and had waited longer to come down. His
family did not learn that he was dead until a neighbour called last week.
“They said he was trying
to get home when he met the soldiers who took him away and killed him,” Mr.
Ahmed said.
Nigeria’s armed forces,
with help from neighbouring Chad, Niger and Cameroun, have recorded a series of
victories in recent months, retaking ground from the insurgents after years of
routs and humiliating inertia.
Yet many Muslims who
were displaced by the fighting are afraid to go home for fear of harassment from
the military or reprisals from their Christian neighbours, who bore the brunt
of Boko Haram’s savagery.
Saleh Jibril, who fled
to a refugee camp in Yola, said that a friend had found his wife floating in a
river with her hands tied behind her back after she tried to hike through the
mostly Christian district of Michika, about 20 miles south of their home in
Gulak, in March.
Salihi Ateequ, a member
of the Adamawa State Muslim Council, said that his sister, Hinidiyatu Tijjani,
also went back to Michika soon after it was liberated, to check on their mother
who had stayed behind.
“She spent four days in
Michika, but as she was coming back she was ambushed,” Mr. Ateequ said.
She was carrying an
infant baby on her back. Both were hacked to death with cutlasses.
“The Christians in
Michika believe the Muslims invited Boko Haram to come and kill them,” Mr.
Ateequ added. “So now it’s vengeance and every Muslim is a target.”
The tensions in Michika
predate Boko Haram. The town already had two market days, one on Saturday for
Christians and one on Sunday for Muslims. It also had two rival water
companies, selling plastic sachets of drinking water. GBM (God Bless Michika)
Water was launched in 2012, residents said, because Christians refused to
drink, or were unable to buy, the Muslim-owned Kaigama brand.
The road to Michika
district was scarred with burnt-out shops and churches when The Times visited
last week. School buildings were partially collapsed and the central mosque had
been bombed by aircraft during the Nigerian advance.
At least four major
bridges had been destroyed and a Boko Haram tank, emblazoned with the
insurgents’ black logo, sat where it had been abandoned.
At a church in Bazza,
the insurgents decapitated a life-size, fibreglass statue of St. Peter and
burnt the parish records office.
In Michika, they painted
over shop signs and notices, as if the very words were an affront to their
mission to prohibit western education. Arabic words were scrawled on the walls
and a bank appeared to have been looted.
“The shops are all
closed,” said Cosmas Tizhe, a university lecturer. “Even if you have money,
there is nothing to buy.”
Most of the people left
there were either women or vigilantes. Local officials said that women returned
before their husbands because they were less likely to be killed by Boko Haram
and less likely to be suspected by the army.
“In the villages, almost
all of the houses are burnt,” Peter Salihu Gogura, Michika’s Commissioner for
Housing and Urban Development, said. “If the government comes in to rebuild
these houses, definitely we can have peace, but if the government doesn’t act,
we will have problems.”
Mr. Gogura, who has both
Muslim and Christian names, said that the indigenous Christian Higgi tribe had
a proud history of coexisting with the migrant Muslim traders, but warned that
Boko Haram had strained relations to breaking point.
“When somebody goes home
and sees his house has been razed and he has nothing to eat and nowhere to lay
his head, it’s not easy,” he said. “My fear is that as human beings, if you go
home to nothing, and you know the people who caused this, you may not see eye
to eye with them.”
For Umaru’s widows, the
decision not to go back was easy. “There is nothing for us to go back to,” said
Hawa, 39. But Mr Ahmed said he had no choice.
“I have to get back to
prepare the fields,” he said. “All we can do is pray to God to join our minds.”
