Boko Haram insurgency: A Visual History

The Boko Haram insurgency began in July 2009 when Nigerian security forces crushed a rising by the Salafist sect in Maiduguri and killed its founder Mohammed Yusuf in custody. Under Abubakar Shekau the group returned in 2010 with bombings, prison breaks, attacks on churches, schools and markets, the abduction of 276 Chibok schoolgirls in April 2014, and the seizure of a territory the size of Belgium declared a caliphate. A regional offensive by Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon in 2015 retook the towns; the group split in 2016 into Shekau's faction and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), which killed Shekau in 2021 and now dominates the Lake Chad basin. Over 40,000 have died and 2.5 million been displaced; the insurgency continues.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Boko Haram insurgency. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Deaths per year in the Boko Haram conflict

Timeline of the Boko Haram insurgency

1. 2009
   Maiduguri uprising; Yusuf killed
2. 2011
   UN headquarters bombed in Abuja
3. 2014
   Chibok kidnapping; caliphate declared
4. 2015
   Baga massacre; regional offensive; ISIS allegiance
5. 2016
   Split; ISWAP formed
6. 2018
   ISWAP overruns Metele base
7. 2021
   Shekau killed by ISWAP
8. 2024
   ISWAP resurgence around Lake Chad

Yusuf, Shekau and the return

Mohammed Yusuf preached in Maiduguri from 2002 that Western education (boko) was forbidden (haram) and the Nigerian state apostate. Clashes in July 2009 killed some 800; Yusuf was shot by police on camera. His deputy Shekau rebuilt the movement in exile and struck back with the assassination of officials, the Bauchi prison break (2010), the UN headquarters bombing in Abuja (2011), and massacres of students at Buni Yadi and elsewhere. A state of emergency in 2013 pushed the group into the Sambisa forest and the Mandara mountains.

Chibok and the caliphate

The kidnapping of 276 girls from Chibok on 14 April 2014 sparked the global #BringBackOurGirls campaign; Shekau said he would sell them. Boko Haram overran Gwoza, Bama and dozens of towns, declared a caliphate in August 2014, massacred up to 2,000 at Baga in January 2015 and pledged allegiance to ISIS in March. Chadian and Nigerien troops and Nigerian forces, aided by South African contractors, retook the territory before the March 2015 election that brought Muhammadu Buhari to power; the army 'technically defeated' the group, in Buhari's phrase, but suicide bombings by girls continued.

ISWAP

ISIS replaced Shekau with Abu Musab al-Barnawi, Yusuf's son, in 2016; Shekau's faction kept killing Muslims indiscriminately while ISWAP built a quasi-state on Lake Chad, taxing fishermen and attacking army bases (Metele, 2018). ISWAP fighters cornered Shekau in Sambisa in May 2021 and he blew himself up. ISWAP now leads the insurgency, with thousands of fighters, drones and links to the Sahel; the army's super-camps have ceded the countryside, and 'bandits' and other jihadists spread violence across the north-west. Over 100 Chibok girls remain unaccounted for.

The UN estimated in 2021 that the conflict's indirect toll of 350,000, mostly children under five, dwarfed direct killings.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Sokoto Caliphate (1804 to 1903)
• Kanem-Bornu Empire (1380 to 1893)
• British Empire (1583 to 1997)
• Second French colonial empire (1830 to 1980)
• Third Portuguese Empire (1822 to 1999)
• Belgian colonial empire (1885 to 1962)

Wars of the same era and region

• Nigerian Civil War (Biafra) (1967 to 1970)
• Somali Civil War (1991 to present)
• Algerian Civil War (1991 to 2002)
• Liberian civil wars and Sierra Leone Civil War (1989 to 2003)
• Burundian Civil War (1993 to 2005)
• Second Congo War (1998 to 2003)

8 surprising things about the Boko Haram insurgency

1. 'Boko Haram' is a nickname; the group calls itself 'People Committed to the Prophet's Teachings for Propagation and Jihad'.
2. The Chibok kidnapping drew a tweet from Michelle Obama and made 'BringBackOurGirls' a global hashtag; over 100 girls remain missing.
3. Boko Haram used more female suicide bombers than any group in history, hundreds of them, many children.
4. The Baga massacre of January 2015 was reported at up to 2,000 dead, one of the group's deadliest attacks.
5. Shekau was declared dead by the Nigerian army at least four times before ISWAP actually killed him.
6. South African mercenaries flew helicopter gunships in the 2015 offensive that broke the caliphate.
7. Maiduguri, the group's birthplace, sits on the site of the old Bornu empire's capital region.
8. The Lake Chad basin's shrinking waters and 30 million people make it one of the world's most vulnerable regions.

Sources

• Boko Haram insurgency Wikipedia
• Boko Haram Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Nigeria Security Tracker Council on Foreign Relations
• Alexander Thurston, Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement (2017) Princeton University Press

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