| Submit your comments on this article |
| Africa Subsaharan |
| Boko Haram atrocities haunt Cameroon's displaced |
| 2016-09-21 |
| [ENCA] KOZA - "Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... butchered nine people in front of me. That day I decided to leave my village," says Rachel Daviguidam, still devastated by the carnage she witnessed in September 2015. One year on and this 30-year-old Cameroon ...a long, narrow country that fills the space between Nigeria and Chad on the northeast, CAR to the southeast. Prior to incursions by Boko Haram nothing ever happened there... ian is still unable to get the images out of her mind. And this mother of seven cannot see herself returning to her village of Golvadi in Cameroon's Far North, an area that has suffered multiple attacks by Boko Haram jihadists based just across the border in Nigeria. Over the past year, Daviguidam and her husband and children have been living in Koza, a small town surrounded by mountains about 100 kilometres from Maroua, capital of the Far North region. About 200,000 Cameroonians from the region have fled their villages in fear of the violence carried out by Death Eaters from Boko Haram, who last year pledged allegiance to the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... group. Jihadists in this region kill, they torch entire villages, they loot and they steal livestock. Sitting on the ground in Koza's stadium, Daviguidam cradles her youngest child, who is just three months old, occasionally breastfeeding him. Around her sit other displaced families. Nearby, hundreds of people are waiting in line to receive food handouts from the International Committee of the Red Thingy (ICRC). Over the past 15 months, the ICRC has organised food deliveries in Koza in a bid to combat malnutrition, says Ibrahim Dit Falke, a local who works for the organization. "Each household receives a package of 50 kilos of rice, 25 kilos of maize flour, 25 kilos of black-eyed peas, 10 litres of oil, a kilo of salt and 12 kilos of enriched flour," he says. In this area where many of the displaced have gathered there have been numerous cases of malnutrition, some of them severe. "We are in an area dominated by farming and agriculture, where most households make their living through agriculture," Dit Falke says. "When you cut a household off from its fields, you cut it off from its livelihood." |
| Posted by:Fred |