The Terrors of the North: Jihadists, Bandits and Vigilantes Grow Stronger in Nigeria
NEED TO KNOW
The Terrors of the North: Jihadists, Bandits and Vigilantes Grow Stronger in Nigeria
NIGERIA
Last fall, about 50 motorcycles carrying jihadists were ridden into Mafa, a village in Yobe state in northeastern Nigeria, where they began firing at individuals at a market, at worshippers, and at people in their homes, before burning the village to the ground.
More than 170 people were killed in the incident that was meant to demonstrate the power of jihadist terrorist group, Boko Haram, and its splinter group, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), terrify those in the remote northern regions, and pay back villagers for security operations by Nigerian forces and vigilantes intended to defeat them.
“This is the first time our community has faced such a devastating attack,” Buba Adamu, a local chief, expressing grief and fear, told the Associated Press. “We never imagined something like this could happen here.”
Boko Haram fighters have killed 35,000 people and displaced 2 million since launching an insurgency to establish Islamic law, known as Sharia, in the early 2000s. They became notorious internationally for committing abuses against girls and young women they had captured, according to Amnesty International, most famously with the kidnapping of the hundreds of schoolgirls known as the Chibok Girls.
For more than 20 years, the government’s forces have been trying to defeat the group, with mixed success.
Since 2023, Nigerian military leaders said, more than 120,000 terrorists and their families have surrendered to Nigerian troops. Around half were children who otherwise would have become the next generation of terrorists.
“The terrorists were reproducing children who would take over from them,” said Chief of Defense Staff Gen. Christopher Musa in the Vanguard, a Nigerian newspaper. “These children were born into violence, and if they remained in that environment, they would grow into more violent individuals.”
Also, Nigerian military leaders recently said that their counter-radicalization program, called Operation Safe Corridor, has prevented 60,000 young people from joining Boko Haram.
Musa and other Nigerian military leaders may be playing up Operations Safe Corridor because his forces have otherwise often fumbled their anti-Boko Haram activities, argued Responsible Statecraft. A joint force of troops from Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria, for example, has launched six campaigns since 2014 against the group. Most were short and ended before they could defeat the terrorists.
Meanwhile, a crime wave involving ransom payments, cattle rustling, and illegal mining have also swept through northern Nigeria, wrote Deutsche Welle. These criminals are not necessarily jihadists. Operation Safe Corridor won’t likely stop them because their enterprises are too lucrative in areas where economic development and opportunities are lacking.
As a result, the attacks go on: For example, last month, Boko Haram attacked a Nigerian military base on the border with Niger, killing 20 soldiers.
The problem now, say analysts, is that these criminal and also jihadist groups are getting stronger.
In 2016, the group split, with one faction, ISWAP, becoming a part of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. But after years of conflict with its rival, ISWAP recently regrouped, according to the International Crisis Group. Meanwhile, armed criminal gangs in the north have joined with the jihadists to terrorize civilians.
In Mafa and elsewhere, villagers have long been aware the government’s fight against the gangs and the extremists doesn’t keep them safe. Jihadists such as ISWAP, for example, have regularly ‘taxed’ the villages and openly shop in their markets.
As a result, villagers around the region, including in Mafa, formed vigilante groups and began killing members of ISWAP and Boko Haram. The villagers were warned an attack in reprisal for the vigilantism was coming and fled. But then they were told it was safe to return. It wasn’t.
After the massacre, the villagers found this note left by the group, the New York Times wrote.
“You have been lulled into a false sense of security, mistakenly believing that the Army of the Caliphate’s restraint – our decision not to trouble you, pillage your property, or disrupt your commercial activities and farming – implies weakness,” the note read. “You have grown bold and boastful.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
As Protests Swell, Serbian Leader Says He Gets It
SERBIA
Hundreds of thousands of anti-corruption protesters filled the streets of Belgrade on Saturday in Serbia’s largest public demonstration in decades, with the government saying that it has heard the demonstrators, the BBC reported.
As many as 325,000 protesters are estimated to have filled the main streets of the capital, coming from all over the country even as the government tightened the borders and shut down public transport.
A deafening sound of whistles, drums, and vuvuzelas filled the air during the demonstration, the Associated Press reported. Some protesters carried banners that read, “He’s Finished!” Crowds chanted “Pump it Up,” a slogan adopted during the past four months of student-led protests.
While Serbian media reported clashes between demonstrators and police that led to 56 people being injured and 22 arrests, the demonstration remained largely peaceful, with protesters emphasizing their calls for transparency and justice.
Since November, Serbia has been grappling with near-daily protests following the fatal collapse of a concrete and glass canopy at the railway station in the northern city of Novi Sad, which was renovated and reopened in 2022.
The demonstrations initially began with calls for full disclosure and accountability over the incident but broadened into a wider movement against alleged government corruption and negligence and calls for populist President Aleksandar Vučić, in power for 13 years, to resign.
The protests have spread across more than 200 cities and towns and have drawn support from various groups, including lawyers, military veterans, taxi drivers, and farmers.
In response to the months-long unrest, Serbian prosecutors have indicted at least 16 people – including former Construction Minister Goran Vesić – but no trials have begun.
The crisis has also resulted in the resignation of Prime Minister Miloš Vučević, although he remains in office pending parliamentary approval of his resignation and the election of a replacement.
In response to Saturday’s rallies, Vučić acknowledged the public outrage: “All people in the government have to understand the message when this many people gather,” he said. “We will have to change ourselves.”
However, he insisted that most citizens do not support a so-called “color revolution,” according to Radio Free Europe, referring to mass demonstrations that have brought down governments in other countries such as Georgia.
Vučić, who has dominated Serbian politics since 2012, insists he will not step down nor give in to “blackmail.”
While he has described the student-led protests as “well-intentioned,” he has accused the opposition parties of attempting to force the creation of a “fraudulent interim government.” He has also blamed foreign actors for the demonstrations.
Opposition parties and politicians have claimed that Serbia’s political crisis can only be resolved through the formation of a transitional government and new elections.
Still, observers noted that the students are mainly calling for the truth behind the Novi Sad disaster, adding that they will not stop until they have secured justice for the victims.
Iran-backed Houthis Vow Retaliation After US Strikes
YEMEN
Houthi rebels in Yemen have vowed retaliation after US military strikes killed at least 31 people and injured more than 100 others over the weekend, NBC News reported.
On Saturday, the US launched the strikes in response to the Houthis’ renewed threats to attack international shipping in the Red Sea in response to Israel’s latest blockade on the Gaza Strip, which has halted the flow of aid into the Palestinian enclave.
The Iran-backed group – which has taken over part of Yemen – has launched attacks against shipping vessels crossing the Red Sea and other nearby waters since the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas began in October 2023.
Houthis had previously suspended those attacks in January following a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, the Wall Street Journal added. That ceasefire expired earlier this month.
Saturday’s strikes targeted Houthi military infrastructure in the capital, Sanaa, and strongholds in Saada and Taiz. The group’s political bureau condemned the attack as a “war crime” and declared that its forces were “fully prepared to respond to escalation with escalation.”
US President Donald Trump has accused the Houthis of waging “an unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence, and terrorism” against American and allied vessels.
He also warned Iran to “immediately” end its support for the group or face consequences.
Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi rejected Trump’s accusations, saying the US has “no authority or business dictating Iranian foreign policy.”
The head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami, insisted that Tehran was not directing Houthi operations – but warned of a response if Iran itself were targeted.
The strikes mark the start of a broader military campaign, with a US defense official noting that additional actions are planned over the coming weeks.
The US decision to strike came after the Houthis claimed responsibility for shooting down an American MQ-9 Reaper drone last week and pledged to “expand operations” against US and Israel-linked ships.
Meanwhile, Russia and Iran have called for an immediate cessation of hostilities. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged diplomatic de-escalation, while the Kremlin’s statement emphasized that “the use of force in Yemen must stop immediately.”
Security analysts suggested that the US campaign could destabilize the Houthis but may not eliminate their capabilities without ground intervention.
The Cheering Section: Pro-European Union Protests Sweep Rome
ITALY
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Rome over the weekend, waving the European Union’s blue flags in a show of support as the bloc moves to rearm to help Ukraine in its war with Russia amid tensions with the United States over the conflict, the Associated Press reported.
The pro-EU demonstrations – launched by Italian journalist Michele Serra – saw more than 30,000 people in the Italian capital, according to the organizers.
The initiative received support from many center-left opposition parties, with organizers saying it united Italians across the political divide, noted Italy’s Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA).
Italian far-right Prime Minster Giorgia Meloni has reluctantly backed an EU plan to rearm Europe over concerns that the proposal by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen might weigh on Italy’s giant national debt, diverting much-needed funds to weapons spending.
Von der Leyen recently proposed a defense spending-package of more than $870 billion, which will require EU nations to increase their national spending on defense and security.
Saturday’s protests are the result of tensions between the EU and its traditional ally, the US, over the Trump administration’s foreign policy, especially the war in Ukraine and tariffs.
“We are here to defend freedom and democracy,” one participant at the demonstration told the newswire. “These are concepts that we got used to over 80 years, but in reality they need to be defended, we cannot take them as a given.”
While protesters claimed that Saturday’s rallies sought to “defend freedom and democracy,” Italy’s right-wing government dismissed them.
Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani described them as a “symbolic event,” noting that support for Europe requires “concrete reforms.”
Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini of the Eurosceptic Lega (League) party criticized the protests and claimed that officials are working “to change this Europe, which crushes workers, farmers, and entrepreneurs with its absurd rules.”
DISCOVERIES
The Chemistry of Life
Water – the essential ingredient for life – may have existed in the Universe far earlier than previously thought, long before the first galaxies appeared.
In a new study, a research team conducted a series of simulations where they found evidence that the building blocks of life appeared just 100 to 200 million years after the Big Bang – a discovery that reshapes our understanding of cosmic history, researchers said.
“Before the first stars exploded, there was no water in the Universe because there was no oxygen,” Daniel Whalen, an astrophysicist at Britain’s University of Portsmouth and lead author of the study, said in a statement. “Only very simple nuclei survived the Big Bang – hydrogen, helium, lithium, and trace amounts of barium and boron.”
Whalen and his colleagues used computer models to simulate how the first stars – massive, short-lived beacons of nuclear fusion – produced heavier elements, such as oxygen, which then combined with hydrogen to form water molecules.
They explained that when these stars reached the end of their lives, they exploded as supernovae that spewed out heavy elements into space. This process resulted in vapor clouds of water that ranged from Earth’s mass to Jupiter’s mass – depending on the size of the dying star.
The simulations showed that this early water wasn’t just randomly dispersed across the void: It eventually concentrated in dense clumps of gas – known as cloud cores – which are the birthplaces of new stars and planets.
The discovery has major implications for the search for life beyond Earth.
“Although the total water masses were modest, they were highly concentrated in the only structures capable of forming stars and planets,” added Whalen. “And that suggests that planetary discs rich in water could form at cosmic dawn, before even the first galaxies.”
The team is now wondering whether this early water survived the violent conditions of galaxy formation and still exists today, with further investigations to include exploring whether these early water molecules produced billions of years ago could still be present in modern planets – or even on Earth itself.
The study paves the way for future research using instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope to search for second-generation stars and their potentially water-rich planets.
“The chemistry of life as we know it requires liquid water,” Avi Loeb of Harvard University, who did not participate in the study, told New Scientist. “And that you can get only on a planet or some object that has a surface with an atmosphere.”