The Islamic Muhajirun movement could not have chosen a more remote portion of Nigeria's otherwise densely populated territory in which to mount its futile rebellion against the secular state.
During the four-hour cross-country drive from Yobe State's capital Damaturu to Kanamma, flat savannah dotted with gnarled baobab trees gradually gives way to the sand dunes, rock and thorny scrub along Nigeria's northern border.
Last year, a 50- to 60-strong group of Muslim dissidents made the trip, hoping to escape from the raucous bustle of life in Nigeria's worldly cities and build a life based on purist Islamic ideals in the Sahel semi-desert.
Now, there are nine fresh graves and a detachment of Nigerian soldiers in Kanamma village, after a week-long uprising in which the rebels torched police stations, seized assault rifles and tried to storm the state capital. Almost all are now dead or in custody, although a handful of them have melted back into the cosmopolitan world they despise, officials say.
The Muhajirun may have wanted to hide themselves away, but their bloody defeat triggered a blaze of headlines and raised fears of the danger that a Taliban-style Islamist movement could pose to Nigeria's stability.
In truth, the tiny, ill-prepared movement seems never to have presented much of a danger to anyone but themselves and Kanamma's perplexed villagers. But the anger which drove this group of educated young men to abandon the comforts of home and school and seek to eke out a life in the harsh landscape around Kanamma could yet breed new uprisings, Muslim leaders warn.
"We'd never seen anyone like these people in the village before," Kanamma's traditional chief, Alhaji Burem Lawan, told a reporter who visited him in his gloomy compound of one-storey mud-brick buildings.
"They said you only have to live by Allah, in the way that they believe in Him," he said. While the villagers are also Muslim they did not share the Muhajirun's interpretation of the faith, he explained.
"They were educated men, some of them graduates. They spoke different languages; Igbo, Kanuri, Hausa, Fulani even Yoruba," his son, Gordo, said.
According to Nigerian officials, the core of the group was made up of young students and graduates, who abandoned their studies in the northeastern city of Maiduguri in order to dedicate themselves to fundamentalist Islam. Around five months ago they began to trickle into the border area, initially setting up a makeshift settlement near the far-flung village of Termuwa, 35km from Kanamma, villagers said.
"When they came they didn't come to the village chief to ask for permission. When we approached them, they said the land belonged to God and the water belonged to God," Gordo said. "We weren't interacting with them at all."
Muhajirun members seem to have been unprepared for life in the desert. They didn't farm and rigged up only temporary homes under trees from brushwood and mosquito netting, Gordo said.
On Dec. 24 the group descended on a small island in a seasonal river a short distance outside Kanamma, and set up a new camp.
A few days later -- for reasons still unclear -- they stormed the village police station armed with catapults and bows and arrows, killing one officer, driving two others away and seizing at least one assault rifle.
When police and military reinforcements were sent to the area, the group reacted by burning down the homes of three local officials.
Around 30 villagers were kidnapped at gunpoint and forced to dig protective trenches on the Muhajirun's island base, all the while being urged to pray with them and accept their vision of Islam, Gordo and his father said.
On New Year's Eve they scrawled "Taliban" on a captured jeep and set off for Damaturu, 150km away, burning a local government compound and raiding a police station armory en route.
The military response was uncompromising. The Muhajirun were driven back from Damaturu and flushed out of Kanamma. Nine were shot dead and later buried in the village, Gordo said.
At least 47 others have since been arrested, seven of them picked up trying to cross the border into Niger. Villagers in neighboring Borno State shot dead seven fleeing rebels. The uprising has come to an abrupt end.
In Yobe State, officials insist that the fighting should be seen as an isolated incident, but some Muslim leaders warned that the Muhajirun's extreme reaction was a symptom of broader dissatisfaction among Nigerian youth.
Ibrahim Datti Ahmad, the influential head of the Islamist pressure group the Supreme council for Shariah, said that educated but unemployed young Muslim men are boiling with anger over corrupt rule in their country.
"These are very sophisticated youth. They are not just the trash that is in government," he said of the "Taliban" rebels.
"I can understand why they did it. I'm not in a position to say whether I support it or not, but they must have their reasons," he said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS