In the gloom of a hilltop
cave in Nigeria
where she was held captive,
Hajja had a knife
pressed to her throat by a
man who gave her
a choice – convert to Islam
or die.
Reuters reports that two
gunmen from Boko
Haram had seized the
Christian teenager in
July in the Gwoza hills, in
the northeastern
Nigeria, where a six-month-
old government
offensive is struggling to
contain an
insurgency by the al Qaeda-
linked Islamist
group.
Boko Haram is abducting
Christian women
whom it converts to Islam
on pain of death
and then forces into
“marriage” with fighters.
The three months Hajja
spent as the slave of a
14-strong guerrilla unit,
cooking and cleaning
for them before she
escaped, give a rare
glimpse into how the
Islamists have changed
tack.
“I can’t sleep when I think
of being there,” the
19-year-old told Reuters,
recounting forced
mountain marches and
watching her captors
slit the throats of prisoners
Hajja had helped
lure into a trap.
Nigerian security officials
say the Islamists
have pulled back after army
assaults since
May on their bases and are
now sheltering in
the Mandara mountains.
From the hills they
have been launching
increasingly deadly
attacks.
Hajja’s account of how
Boko Haram has
adapted and survived in
recent months
underlines the difficulties
governments in the
region face.
The military offensive
launched in mid-May,
and the fact that large
numbers of civilian
vigilantes have supported it,
has triggered a
fierce backlash against
local people by Boko
Haram.
The Islamists dragged Hajja
along rocky
mountain paths and slept in
caves in the hills,
a landscape unfamiliar to
most Nigerian
soldiers, recruited from the
plains.
She ceremonially converted
to Islam, cooked
for the men, carried
ammunition during an
attack on a police outpost
and was about to
be married to one of the
insurgents before
she managed to engineer a
dramatic escape.
She says she was not
Molested.
“They told me I must
become a Muslim but I
refused again and again,”
Hajja told Reuters.
Her family name is withheld
to protect
relatives still living in the
Gwoza area.
“They were about to
slaughter me and one of
them begged me not to
resist and just before
I had my throat slit I
relented. They put a veil
on me and made me read
from the Koran,”
she said.
A man called Ibrahim Tada
Nglayike led the
group Hajja was with. On
one mission, Hajja
was sent to stand in a field
near a village to
attract the attention of
civilians working with
the army. When five men
approached her,
they were ambushed.
“They took them back to a
cave and tied them
up. They cut their throats,
one at a time,”
Hajja said.
Among those who did the
killing was the
)Muslim wife of the leader
Nglayike, the only
other woman in the band of
fighters.
Reuters verified Hajja’s
account of having
been abducted with
independent figures in the
region. Boko Haram shuns
the media and
could not be contacted for
comment.
Hajja says the long-bearded
insurgents lived a
basic lifestyle, eating corn,
millet and
occasionally meat from
animals.
The group, armed with
AK-47 rifles and
pistols stolen from police
they killed, moved
every day around the hills
to avoid being
tracked by the army and
slept in the caves to
shelter from the cold and for
protection
against air assaults.
“They didn’t use phones but
they had a radio,”
Hajja said.
“They would listen to BBC
Hausa or Voice of
America.
“They know the area very
well and many
people help them because
they are afraid or
support their cause,” Hajja
said.
The longer the insurgency
goes on, President
Goodluck Jonathan, a
southern Christian, will
come under increasing
criticism from his
northern opponents as
elections in early 2015
draw closer.
Hajja eventually escaped by
feigning severe
stomach pains. Thinking
her too ill to flee, the
insurgents sent her to
hospital escorted only
by an older woman. Once
she was among
other people, Hajja
threatened to denounce
the group to police,
prompting the woman to
abandon her and flee.
“I finally tore off the veil and
I cried,” Hajja
said.
“So many times I thought
I’d die.”
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