Human tide flees horrors of Boko Haram to Chad

BAGA SOLA, CHAD — Women and children, limp with exhaustion, were the first to disembark from the ancient wooden barge. Then came the men, splashing their way through shallow water.

In the next few minutes, 86 tense and bewildered people stumbled ashore on the eastern edge of Lake Chad. They were following in the footsteps of 17,000 other Nigerian refugees who have already fled to Chad.

Behind them, on the far side of the lake, lay the domain of Boko Haram.

This bloodstained Islamist movement is advancing remorselessly, inflicting a human calamity on one of Africa’s most remote regions.

Boko Haram now dominates the Nigerian shore of this verdant oasis on the southern fringe of the Sahara, pillaging and burning entire towns at will.

Nigeria’s army, outgunned and outfought, has lost control of thousands of square kilometres, abandoning the local people to their fate.

Almost 180,000 civilians have responded by fleeing to neighbouring countries. Most have gone to Niger or Cameroon, but Boko Haram’s latest offensive has ravaged the western shore of Lake Chad. Those caught in the vortex have no way of escape except by making the arduous boat crossing.

Shamsia Umaru, 13, stepped ashore clasping her baby sister, Fatima, and her four-year-old brother, Yahya. But Shamsia arrived without her father. “It was Boko Haram who killed him,” she said simply.

When Boko Haram capture a town, the fate of its people rests on whether or not they resist. Those who put up a fight — as in Doron Baga — can expect nothing but pitiless massacre.

Those who succumb are treated differently. The gunmen generally assemble all the local people and announce their home has become part of the new Islamic caliphate they are building across Africa.

Then the inhabitants are divided into different groups. Young men and boys are often taken away for indoctrination and training. Women and girls are likely to be enslaved and used as sexual playthings of Boko Haram fighters. Women may be abducted for use as domestic servants. Middleaged men, meanwhile, run the greatest risk of being summarily killed.

But the fugitives are still coming. In the whole of 2014, only 3,000 Nigerian refugees entered Chad; so far this year, another 14,000 have made the journey.

“We are planning for 30,000 people over the year,” said Irene del Rio, the head of the World Food Programme’s Mao Field Office.

SIA KAMBOU/AFP/Getty Images People stand on the banks of Lake Chad in the village of Ngouboua. Nigeria’s Boko Haram rebels carried out their first attack Feb. 13 inside neighbouring Chad, targeting a village on the shores of Lake Chad as part of a widening insurgency that has...