Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 32
had heard from their internal networks of local news providers, often consisting of people
who had recently travelled.
These internal news networks also confirmed cross-border attacks of Boko Haram into
neighbouring Cameroon, which started to be reported by the media. It appears that by late
2013 and early 2014 the whole mountain area and eastern plain was controlled by Boko
Haram, who, according to my friends, retreated into the hills whenever the Cameroonian
army tried to retaliate in the eastern plain. Massacres by Boko Haram were reported by the
media during this period in the eastern plain, where hundreds died. My friends added that
fleeing villagers could be killed by mistake by the Cameroonian army when they tried to
temporarily cross the international border for safety. Eventually Boko Haram also took
Gwoza town and declared it a caliphate, and I refer to this as the second phase of devastation.
This means that from August 2014 until end of March 2015, Gwoza town and with it the hill
area remained under the total control of Boko Haram.
The only exception was a place called Ndololo, a deserted settlement on the highest elevation
of the Zelidva spur. I was shocked when I heard from my friends that thousands of mainly
Christians were allegedly hiding up there. Unlike the southern massif of the Gwoza hills
where the Dghweɗe lived, the Zelidva spur of the northern massif had been increasingly
abandoned since the 1950s. However, after independence a small mainly Christian minority
had established itself successfully in Divili (see Figure 2) and it now formed a place of safety
for other Christians from the adjacent plains who could also go and hide there. The refugees
subsequently retreated from Divili altogether, and moved higher up to Ndololo as the better
hiding place.
The hills remain unsafe
Unlike the Dghweɗe area, the Zelidva spur is extremely difficult to reach, but crucially it has
permanent water on the top. In late 2014 I was informed that Boko Haram finally managed to
get up there too, and killed many, but withdrew again. After the recapture of Gwoza town by
the Nigerian army in 2015, Ndololo was still under the control of the Christian minority while
the southern massif of the Gwoza hills remained infested by Boko Haram insurgents. Of
course this was a consequence of the difficulty of the terrain in the whole of the Gwoza hills,
with its lack of roads, the possibility of finding hiding places in caves, and so on. Also, the
eastern plain remains, at time of writing, entirely unsafe for the return of those who have fled
the area. This situation pertains, even though the Buhari government, after declaring technical
victory in late 2015, has been trying to push for exactly that.
It is difficult to say whether the populations of the Gwoza hills who fled will ever return, and
how life will be for them when they eventually do. I managed to remain in contact with some
of them throughout the last couple of years of devastation. Much of the information I hold
about this most recent time of devastation is based on weekly or monthly phone calls.
Sometimes I heard about attacks shortly before they appeared in the Nigerian or international
press. From late 2012 onwards I kept a diary of the press releases dedicated to the
northwestern Mandara Mountains, on my website www.mandaras.info, under the subdirectory
Information to Share. Also, the little charity Dzga Learning Support continued to exist, and
with the help of Stella's friends we went on to collect money to support some families of close
friends who had fled to various places of safety so they would have a better chance of
survival, and we tried to help them in sending their children back to school.
The latter was the most important objective of our help, because Boko Haram had forced a
generation of children and youth in the northeast of Nigeria to abandon their education. The
fact that some young Muslims from Dghweɗe might also have become involved in this most
destructive and deadly activity seems like an irony of history, considering their parents'
generation had already rejected Western education, but the difference was that the older
generation did not see education as forbidden or sinful, only that they feared that schools
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