(Daily Beast) The arid town of Gwoza looked like it was finally going to see rainfall after months of drought, but a devastating attack by Boko Haram turned hope to despair. Armed with machetes and guns, the militants roared into the northeast Nigerian town in January 2015. As they jumped from their vehicles, the group began to burn homes and gather the women and children.
Among the young militants was a 15-year-old boy whom we’ll call Ahmed. Months before, Ahmed was abducted from his home in Baga, not long after completing primary school. I met the teenager in an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp at Madinatu, not far away from Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state, where I had spent three days meeting with IDPs and listening.
Ahmed told me he was kidnapped along with two of his neighbors from their compound, and taken to the militants stronghold in Sambisa where he was forced to become a soldier. After just two months training with the jihadists, his recruiters brought him on the mission to Gwoza.
