EDITORIAL: Imperatives for reintegration of terrorists into society

Amid continued bloodbaths from insurgency across the country, the federal government announced its plan to reintegrate some “repentant” Boko Haram members into society in April. This undoubtedly came as a rude shock to many. The initiative, anchored by the Operation Safe Corridor, is one of the non-kinetic strategies of Nigeria’s counterinsurgency campaign.

There are 774 people involved, who have undergone deradicalisation processes and religious reorientation. They received training in vocational skills such as tailoring, shoe-making and farming for self-employment purposes. There are two major perspectives on this approach.

On one hand, the rehabilitative approach appears to be rooted in a humanitarian yet pragmatic orientation. First, the sheer volume of militants or insurgents — hundreds of thousands — is such that no state possesses the capacity to take an absolutely punitive approach to them. Very few states outside the US have spaces for incarcerating significant portions of the population.

Given their variegated degrees of involvement in terrorism — as assassins, domestic servants, logistics coordinators, informants, etc. — it is reasonably foreseeable that after serving prison terms, with the exception of the kingpins, many persons with nexuses to or involvement in terrorism will return to society at some point in the future. Therefore, the question is at what stage in the carousel do we wish to reintegrate them and how much are we willing to spend from the collective purse on the large-scale warehousing of massive numbers of terrorism suspects?

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Second, there is the growing realisation that some of these militants — many of who are barely literate — were fed a wrong ideology pertaining to Islam. This played a catalytic role in their involvements in terrorist activity. Consequently, there is a chance that with rehabilitation they would likely renounce their ways and reform before being released back to society.

On the other hand, there are those who want a more punitive stance in the treatment of terrorism suspects. First, they argue that terrorism is ongoing in Nigeria and the conditions do not exist to begin to rehabilitate persons suspected of involvement. Second, the idea of reintegration offends the sensibilities of victims and Nigerians who have endured over two decades of violence. Third, this orientation favours a kinetic approach in the treatment of terrorism suspects.

This orientation is neither formed nor sustained in a social vacuum. The number of victims of terror attacks is alarming and increasing by the day. The effects spread across the civilian populace and the military. In Borno State, 68 women out of the 416 women/children abducted by Boko Haram in the Ngoshe attack last month, have been shared to the commanders of the hoodlums as booties of war and sex slaves. It happened after their 72-hour ultimatum for a ₦5 billion ransom elapsed. Their new threat is the killing of those remaining.

All over the North-east, North-west and North-central, insurgency has created countless numbers of orphans, widows, widowers and humanitarian challenges bigger than what the Nigerian State can handle. Consequently, working in tandem with partners, Nigeria launched an appeal fund of $516 million to help in catering for the needs of millions of internally displaced persons earlier this year. IDPs are estimated at 2,333,190 people in Nigeria.

The emotional burden of families, arising from the killing of their loved ones and material losses in the burning of houses and other properties, is simply unbearable. The death toll from insurgency under President Bola Tinubu’s administration in two years is 10,217, according to Amnesty International.

Residents of 30 villages in Zamfara State have reportedly been abandoned, as troops have withdrawn from the areas. Bassa, Bokkos, Barkin Ladi, Mangu and Riyom local government areas in Plateau State, and numerous villages in Benue State, have become routine killing fields, with several communities razed. The insurgents kill and escape without trace.

It is difficult to give a comprehensive account of the extent of devastation across Nigeria from terrorist activities. The billions of naira in appropriations in the war against terrorism and loss of officers and soldiers of the Nigerian military, including high-ranking generals, are two examples.

It is tempting to conclude that given how daring the terrorists are, they deserve only the full wrath of the law, and reintegration is foolhardy. However, socio-scientific evidence on the persistence of radicalised individuals, particularly foreign fighters around the world, concludes that there is a tendency to exceptionalise “jihadis” and consider them unfit for the return to society.

Historically, this has not necessarily been the approach taken by states. For example, David Malet’s article in Terrorism and Political Violence published in 2015 concludes that “the primary factor that accounts for the persistence of the jihadis was not one endogenous to their movement, but rather the policies of their home and host states that prevented reintegration and created cohorts of stateless actors that perpetuate in weakly-governed conflict zones elsewhere.”

In other words, failing to create a pathway to reintegration can only lead to further conflicts and violence in Nigeria and other countries. A policy aimed at reintegration is not a carte blanche and should not apply equally to all categories of terrorists or insurgents. A lot depends on how they joined, what roles they played, and their levels of involvement in the atrocities of such groups.

The Nigerian government has to be clinical in its assessment and profiling of the major players within various insurgent groups. What are these groups? Who are their ring leaders? A sound reintegration policy would be multi-dimensional: the systematic targeting of the kingpins to neutralise those who continue their dastardly violence, while giving room for the followers with lesser roles to accept the intervention of the judicial system alongside rehabilitation.

Against these backgrounds, we welcome the president’s charge to Plateau State elders, led by Governor Caleb Mutfwang, who visited him last Wednesday, to dust off the White Papers and Gazettes on the crises in the state for the implementation of their realistic recommendations. Mr Tinubu said, “If you identify and you know the name(s) of the troublemakers; agents provocateurs who want to continue killing and instigate killing, let us know.” Indeed, the instrumentality of state power should be used to deal with such people.

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It is worth emphasising that simply copying the deradicalisation strategies that have worked in Algeria, Egypt, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia without understanding the context must be avoided. In Algeria, for instance, the initiative was implemented in 2005 after its civil war, to ensure stability. The people had a say in a referendum that approved it. More importantly, former terrorists played critical roles in winning over hardliners in outreach programmes, using radio broadcasts and other messaging platforms.

A reintegration strategy can only be effective from a position of strength — when it becomes clear that the state will neutralise the kingpins and anyone who persists in terrorism. This makes it very costly to refuse to embrace peace.

A reintegration policy has to be driven by evidence, data, surveillance capabilities and transparency. Those seemingly reformed have to be banned from their previous areas of operations where old habits may resurface with criminal peers. They have to report to case officers at pre-determined interviews and should be tracked and arrested if they fail to do so.

Planning, organisation and the implementation of reintegration must be constitutive of where ex-insurgents return to and what livelihoods they have. Overall, rehabilitation has to be driven by science, to avoid an unending war.