Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 51
PART ONE
THE GWOZA HILLS BEFORE BOKO HARAM
Introduction
When I first came to Gwoza in November 1994, a man in a bar asked me whether I was not
scared to visit the people living in the hills. It turned out that the man was not from Gwoza,
and I wondered where he had got this idea from. It somehow seemed an anachronism to still
think that way. I later came across similar ideas, about the people of the hills being viewed as
dangerous, something which fed into the well-known ancient prejudice of plains people
believing mountain people to be primitive or backward and therefore unpredictable, which
would render them potentially rebellious.
I soon forgot about this, but two decades later during the Boko Haram period, one of my
academic colleagues said that his Gwoza collaborator believed that the Dghweɗe of the hills
were potential recruits for Boko Haram, because of the perception that they were 'backward'.
The idea that people of the hills were backward and primitive has been prevalent in the
Mandara Mountains since the time of slavery, and is linked to the history of Islam and the
trans-Saharan trade. Over several centuries, non-Islamic populations had fallen victim to the
aristocratic societies south of Lake Chad. The Wandala had been vassals of Borno 1, and the
non-Islamic populations of the plains and foothills were more exposed to slave raiding, as
were the montagnards. It seems that the later period had become fixed in the collective
memory, also in terms of the resilience of the montagnards. Interestingly, the prejudice of
backwardness survived into the Boko Haram period, with the assumption that the Dghweɗe
were easy prey for radical preaching. The reality is, of course, a different one, and we have to
resort to montagnard history to understand it, and in order to develop a historical
understanding we have to work our way back in time.
Part One deals with how I experienced the Gwoza hills in hindsight, that is before the arrival
of Boko Haram, by relying on information I gathered as a result of my regular visits between
late 1994 and early 2010. Now, following the period of that still peaceful recent past, the
remoteness of the mountainous setting provides a safe hiding place for the Boko Haram
terrorists. As a result, some of its ecological sustainability might have changed as well, such
as for example the agricultural terraces which are presumably eroding faster since they have
been kept in disrepair. The same applies to the remaining vernacular architecture, which
might well have been destroyed or neglected beyond recognition. The cultural landscape in
the Dghweɗe area had already changed significantly before Boko Haram took control, and we
will learn more in Part Three about the various aspects of its immaterial and material
traditional past.
Also, the administrative structure has more or less completely broken down, and we don't yet
know what the current situation is in the hills. It would still be far too dangerous to go up
there and see for ourselves. We will learn below that the division between the eastern and
western part of Gwoza was already an issue long before Boko Haram. The intramountainous
eastern plain, with the international border going through the middle, has been until very
recently a Boko Haram roaming area. Even at time of writing towards the end of 2020, there
is no military security in place. Nevertheless, in late December 2017 I heard that Boko Haram
had started to run out of resources, including munitions. We thought that they might soon
have to start farming for themselves in order to survive, but then learned that they were
exploiting the remaining local Traditionalists. The question is, for how long will they be able
1
The pre-colonial 'Bornu' empire split up in 1902 when Dikwa became part of the German colony of
Cameroon and it became the Borno emirate/Borno sultanate and the Borno state after independence.
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