terrorism – Page 2 – FoRB in Full

A criminal shouldn’t benefit from his/her criminal activities

Posted on 17/04/2024 by cswpress in Nigeria, Sub-Saharan Africa

This article was originally published on the CSW-Nigeria website.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide Nigeria (CSWN) came across an article written by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) titled: Nigeria’s Chibok Girls: Parent of Kidnapped Children Heartbroken – Again, dated 1st April, 2024. There was also an Arise News programme on April 3rd, 2024, on the morning show, titled: Freed Chibok Girls Wed Captors in Borno. The Arise news program dwells on the BBC article but expands it with more insight.

What the two media outlets were saying is that some of the freed/rescued Chibok secondary school girls, abducted on April 14, 2014, by Boko Haram, have chosen to remain with their de-radicalized, former insurgent husbands at an accommodation provided by the Borno State government under its de-radicalisation program.

The BBC article added that seven of such girls are staying in the government-provided accommodation with their de-radicalised insurgent husbands, while other girls are engaged to former fighters they met at the de-radicalisation camp.

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Former governor of Kaduna State Nasir El-Rufai with current Nigerian president Bola Ahmed Adekunle Tinubu.

We must not let Nigeria slide any further into failed statehood

Posted on 14/06/2023 by cswpress in Nigeria, Sub-Saharan Africa

‘Of course, we do consider religion, but I would not tell them that…’. It seems that Nasir El-Rufai, governor of Nigeria’s Kaduna State from May 2015 until May 2023, is no longer hiding his biases.

Addressing a group of Muslim clerics on his penultimate day in office after his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), was declared the winner of the Kaduna State gubernatorial election, El-Rufai spoke extensively about how the APC had capitalised on religion, including by running on a Muslim-Muslim ticket, to secure electoral victory.

‘What we are able to achieve in Kaduna, we’ve now achieved on the national level,’ he added – a reference to the controversial and disputed victory of the APC in the presidential elections in February this year, also via a Muslim-Muslim ticket.

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Five years is too long: the Nigerian government must deliver on its promises to secure the release of Leah Sharibu

Posted on 15/02/202315/02/2023 by cswpress in Nigeria, Sub-Saharan Africa

Leah Sharibu has been the hostage of terrorists for five years now.

She was just 14 years old when she was taken – the sole Christian among a group of 110 schoolgirls abducted from their school in Dapchi, Nigeria, by members of the Islamic State West Africa Province in February 2018.

Those familiar with her case will recall that just one month later all of Leah’s surviving classmates – five died in transit – were loaded onto trucks and returned to their families following negotiations by the government. But Leah was not among them.

The terrorists told her they would only release her if she renounced her faith and converted to Islam in exchange for her freedom. At just 14 years of age, Leah refused to give in to their pressure.

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“We do not sleep with our eyes closed” – how long will the international community fail the people of southern Kaduna?

Posted on 16/11/202218/11/2022 by cswpress in Nigeria, Sub-Saharan Africa

“We do not sleep with our eyes closed; we take a nap, then wake up and keep watch… we are just depending on the grace of God.”

These are the words of a villager from the Maro Ward of Kajuru Local Government Area (LGA) in the southern part of Nigeria’s Kaduna state. In the absence of effective security or government assistance, this is what targeted communities across the state have been forced into: spending their days and nights on alert patrolling, living in fear of terrorists who destroy their crops, take their lives, and abduct hundreds, if not thousands, for ransom.

Kaduna has been an epicentre of violence and banditry for several years now, with attacks on non-Muslim farming communities in the south increasing exponentially with the advent of the current administration amid a general deterioration in security.

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Children running on sand in Nuristan, Afghanistan.

Another terrorist attack reminds us of the Taliban’s failure to protect Afghan citizens

Posted on 24/10/2022 by cswpress in Afghanistan, Asia

This piece was originally published on 14 October 2022 in Sight Magazine.

This time last year saw two shocking attacks on Afghanistan’s Shia Muslim community. First, on 8 October 2021, a suicide bomber affiliated with the Islamic State – Khorasan Province targeted a mosque in the northern city of Kunduz with an attack timed to coincide with Friday prayers which claimed at least 50 lives and injured 100 others. Some estimates placed the death toll as high as 100.

Then, exactly one week later, terrorists bombed another Shia mosque, again timed to coincide with Friday prayers, in the southern city of Kandahar. Estimates of those killed range between 47 and 65, while at least 80 others were said to have been injured.

CSW wrote at the time that the attacks “raised questions about the Taliban’s ability to offer security to citizens of Afghanistan, which they had presented as a key benefit of their rule.” And then, last month, with the anniversaries of both attacks on the horizon, the Shia community was targeted once again.

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