ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the environment of Lake Chad from the early 2000s to the exploitation of the confrontation between Boko Haram and the Multi-National Joint Task Force assembled by Nigeria and her allies to counter jihadi violence. It starts describing the crucial political events of the early 2000s, in Borno and more generally in Nigeria: the end of the military regime, the democratic and multi-party turn, the introduction of a Salafi vocabulary in local and national politics as well as the increasing power, in Federal institutions, of Salafi-leaning figures. From the disagreements regarding future directions for Muslims in the Nigerian Federation, a small literalist group of Maiduguri-based Salafi-jihadi militants developed the core of Boko Haram’s teaching and leadership. The chapter then analyzes how Boko Haram’s violence and the counter-insurgency machine of riverain countries influenced and impacted the landscape of Lake Chad, mostly in terms of social relationships. Mobilizing notions of identity, belonging, trauma, and crisis, the analysis attempts to grasp the many layers and nuances of violence by Lake Chad as they are lived and experienced by dispossessed and displaced communities.
