Boko Haram Executes Two People For Smoking Cigarettes

The militant Islamist group Boko Haram has taken control of another town in northern Nigeria and executed two people for smoking cigarettes, the International Business Times reports.

Apparently taking a page from ISIS’s tactical handbook, the group has moved from intermittent bombings and kidnappings to more coordinated seizures of territory throughout Nigeria.

The terrorist organization, whose name means “Western education is forbidden,” seized a policy academy nearby their stronghold in Gwoza this week as part of their ongoing campaign to set up an Islamic caliphate in Nigeria. Continue...

“The capture and holding of territory presents a significant evolution in Boko Haram’s modus operandi,” Africa analyst Ryan Cummings told AFP. He said that its latest gains are evidence that the group is ”slowly but surely out achieving its primary goal — the creation of a caliphate in northern-eastern Nigeria governed under sharia law.”

According to the Council on Foreign Relations’ Nigeria Security Tracker, Boko Haram killed over 6,000 people between April 2011 and July 2014, with other estimates as high as 10,000. There is so little hope that earlier this month a group of military wives protested their husbands being sent to fight the insurgents: ”We cannot continue to lose our husbands in the hands of these wicked people called Boko Haram. Many of our women here in the barrack are widows, whose husbands were killed by the terrorists, and that’s why we said no, we cannot continue to watch our husbands being killed just like that.”

“I left Buni Yadi yesterday [Wednesday] because it was no longer safe for me and my family,” said one trader from the region. ”The gunmen shot dead two men for smoking and they also killed a known drug peddler.”

Smoking is considered by many Islamic scholars to be haram, or unlawful, because of prohibitions against harming oneself and wasting money.

Smoking is already banned in public places in many parts of Nigeria, while debate still rages about an unratified comprehensive tobacco bill from 2009, which would ban all tobacco advertising, smoking in public places, cigarette vending machines, sale of individual cigarettes and packs containing fewer than 20 cigarettes, and sale of tobacco products to minors, among other things. Some have raised concern about the increase of tobacco smuggling if the bill is ratified.

“Currently, the security situation in Nigeria is squalid and could get worse through an anti-tobacco law that is not a product of deep thinking,” wrote security consultant Ambrose Jemide. “Very importantly, our legislators need to pass a bill that is equitable and capable of ensuring that criminal gangs and their franchises do not exploit it to their benefit or make the country a smuggling route. Failure to this will yield a law that was passed without taking into consideration the people it is designed to protect. When terrorists and other criminals have access to funds, as may be offered by proceeds of illegal tobacco, it is like trying to put outs fire with a bucket of petrol.”

A delegation from the British American Tobacco Company met with Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission Tuesday, who agreed to work together to combat tobacco smuggling in the region. ”Before we came into the market, over 80 percent of the market was dominated by illicit trade,” said one BATC representative. “But through our memorandum of understanding with the government, we have cut it down to 20 percent.”