(Reuters) - 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.
Two
gunmen from Boko Haram had seized the Christian teenager in July as she picked
corn near her village in the Gwoza hills, a remote part of northeastern Nigeria
where a six-month-old government offensive is struggling to contain an
insurgency by the al Qaeda-linked Islamist group.
In a
new development, Boko Haram is abducting Christian women whom it converts to
Islam on pain of death and then forces into "marriage" with fighters
- a tactic that recalls Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army in the jungles of
Uganda.
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 in the face of Nigerian military pressure.
"I
can't sleep when I think of being there," the 19-year-old told Reuters,
recounting forced mountain marches, rebel intelligence gathering - 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 on the semi-desert plain and are now sheltering in the
Mandara mountains, along the Cameroon border around the city of Gwoza. From the
hills they have been launching increasingly deadly attacks.
The
rugged mountain terrain - as fellow al Qaeda allies found in Afghanistan - has proven an advantageous base for
a movement that once styled itself the "Nigerian Taliban" and sees
all non-Muslims as infidels who must convert or be killed.
The
United States designated Boko Haram a terrorist group on Wednesday. Western
governments are increasingly concerned about the wider threat posed by the
group, which wants to create an Islamic state in a religiously mixed country of
170 million and which has ties with al Qaeda's north African wing.
Hajja's
account of how Boko Haram has adapted and survived in recent months underlines
the difficulties governments in the region face. The spread of the threat was
underscored by the kidnap on Thursday of a French priest in Cameroon, an attack France believes may have involved Boko Haram.
The
following day, Nigerian troops raided a base for the group in the Gwoza hills.
The army said it killed 29 Boko Haram fighters and was "closing in"
on the rebels.
FORCED
TO CONVERT
The
group, whose name broadly translates as "Western education is
sinful", has killed thousands during a four-year insurgency against the
Nigerian state, targeting the police and armed forces as well as politicians
and then turning on Christians in the predominantly Muslim north of the
country.
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 militants have killed hundreds in the past few
weeks, including in massacres of school children.
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 raped.
"If
I cried, they beat me. If I spoke, they beat me. They told me I must become a
Muslim but I refused again and again," Hajja told Reuters in an interview.
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 in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, where she is now
living.
At
least a dozen teenagers like her remain in captivity, Michael Yohanna, a
councilor in Gwoza's local government told Reuters. Some have married
commanders, recalling Kony's LRA, which abducted thousands of "wives"
in a 20-year war in Uganda before a truce in 1986. Kony remains a fugitive.
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. "I thought my heart would burst out of my chest,
because I was the bait."
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 none of its members could be
contacted for comment.
Hajja
says the long-bearded insurgents lived a basic lifestyle, eating corn, millet
and occasionally meat from animals they stole and which she slaughtered.
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 and jump and shout if they heard
about Boko Haram attacks."
"TOOTHPASTE
EFFECT"
Forced
out of cities and semi-desert bases since Jonathan declared a state of
emergency in May, the militants have mostly retreated to hills and forests on
the Cameroon border.
"It's
the toothpaste effect: squeeze one end and it comes out the other. They have proven
resilient and are adapting faster than the military," a Nigerian security
source said.
Army
commanders denied Boko Haram had any control over the Gwoza mountains: "We
are curtailing their activities and I can assure you that ... the insurgency
will soon be a thing of the past," Lieutenant Colonel Adamu Garba Laka
said.
But a
Nigerian general asked Cameroon this month for help in fighting Boko Haram, and
the backlash against civilians has made the conflict deadlier than ever.
According
to one security source, in the five months after Jonathan declared a state of
emergency in the northeast there were 1,708 deaths in 83 violent clashes,
compared with 667 deaths from 117 incidents in the previous five months.
Pushing
the conflict into poor rural regions, like Gwoza, where Hajja was seized, runs
the risk of radicalizing more disenchanted youths and drawing more people into
the violence.
"Gwoza
has disintegrated. We have no schools, no hospitals, no government offices
functioning," said councilor Yohanna.
"I
worry that youths will take the law into their own hands. It will become a war
between Christians and Muslims."
Insurgents
moved freely through the hills and even into the town of Gwoza, Hajja said.
Fighters made trips to collect cash, ammunition and weapons from the Sambisa
Game Reserve, a forested region where Boko Haram has established camps.
Informants,
mostly farmers, would warn them of approaching army patrols, Hajja said, adding
that the rebels also appeared to have sympathetic contacts among the troops -
something Nigerian military commanders deny.
"They
know the area very well and many people help them because they are afraid or
support their cause," Hajja said.
On once
occasion, Boko Haram commanders were able travel from Maiduguri, the state capital
on the plain north of Gwoza, to meet the guerrilla group in the hills.
Hajja
said her unit carried out dozens of attacks, killing police and anyone
suspected of aiding authorities.
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.
He
risks growing resentment from a northern population who believe he is out of
touch with their troubles.
It is
also becoming a drain on Africa's second largest economy - Nigeria allocates a fifth of its
budget for security.
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."
(Additional
reporting by Isaac Abrak in Abuja and Ibrahim Mshelizza and Lanre Ola in
Maiduguri; Editing by Tim Cocks and Alastair Macdonald)
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