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they had allowed it to emerge in the first place. For the moment, peace returned.

       What Boko Haram Is—and Is Not

      With Boko Haram rated in 2015 by the Global Terrorism Index as the world’s deadliest terrorist organization, there has been no shortage of explanations for its bloody success. Three are especially important. First, as part of a region—the Sahel—considered one of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable, northern Nigeria has poverty and weak governance that, many argue, make it especially susceptible to extremist violence. Second, security analysts and policymakers immersed in the global war on terror tend to see the group’s rise through a global lens, with special attention to its connections (some shadowy, others more public) to groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), to which a portion of the group first pledged allegiance in March 2015. Third, local Nigerian conspiracy theories about Boko Haram’s under-the-table sponsorship by politicians and military men have circulated for years, part of an effort to place the group’s actions within accepted local notions of how Nigerian politics “works” and who wields “real” power.

      What is the truth? Research on the causes of violent extremism finds that simple stories rarely capture the complexities behind how terrorist organizations emerge, recruit, and operate. Take poverty, for example. If poverty were a key driver of violence, Nigeria would be a likely candidate. In 2012, Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that over 60 percent of its citizens lived on less than a dollar a day. And despite more than $600 billion in oil revenue since 1960, many Nigerians lack access to basic social services and infrastructure, such as a steady supply of electricity, safe roads, and effective law enforcement. In the northeast, the story is even bleaker. There the poverty rate was upward of 75 percent before the conflict, and no one is certain how much worse it has gotten. Primary school attendance rates are half those in the rest of the country, and so are average incomes. Childhood vaccination rates hover around 10 percent, and nearly a quarter of children suffered from symptoms of chronic malnutrition even before the conflict. It is not surprising that many domestic and international observers identity the region’s economic circumstances as a key source of Boko Haram’s strength.

      The most visible symbol of these challenges are the ten million children—the almajirai—sent away from home to study in informal schools where they memorize the Qur’an and learn the basics of Islamic theology. Although almajirai are technically the responsibility of their parents and teachers, many live in the most extreme poverty. And, indeed, many leading Nigerian public figures, most famously Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, have argued that the almajirai are especially vulnerable to radicalization.

      But although this relationship might seem obvious, a growing body of research casts a skeptical light on a simple or straightforward relationship between poverty and terrorism. Not only are the poorest countries around the world not especially likely to suffer from terrorist attacks, but individuals in extreme poverty are not particularly likely to join or even support terrorist groups. Indeed, a surprisingly high proportion of the members of groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS have university and postgraduate educations, particularly in fields such as engineering and medicine. Reports in the aftermath of the Hijra Group’s wild ride suggested that some of its members hailed from the wealthiest families in the region.

      These findings line up with what we know about Boko Haram’s efforts to recruit supporters and fighters. From its earliest days, the group has marketed itself as a friend to the poor, targeting young men and families in need of welfare assistance and even extending small business loans to youths willing to aid the cause. Yet researchers who have spoken with former members have found that those who took Boko Haram up on its offers often saw themselves as economically equal to or even better off than their friends and neighbors who resisted.³ In Nigeria as elsewhere, the poorest of the poor do not have a monopoly on feelings of disenfranchisement or a lack of opportunity.

      These findings also hold up in the case of the almajirai. The anthropologist Hannah Hoechner has found that for many Muslims, becoming an almajiri is less a choice of poverty and desperation than it might seem. Hoechner’s interviews with with almajirai and their parents find that many of the families who send their children to these schools distrust Western-style, governmentrun education—and for good reason, given its poor quality.⁴ What limited face-to-face information we have from former fighters confirms that while some almajirai have joined Boko Haram, they make up a small percentage of the group’s membership.⁵ The idea of a radicalization pipeline running directly from Qur’anic schools into Boko Haram’s clutches is a myth.

      There are similar problems with the “international influences” story. To be sure, transnational Islamic extremist groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS have clearly attempted to both influence and take credit for Boko Haram’s rise. Aside from bin Laden’s 2003 declaration that Nigeria was ripe for jihad and the alleged seed money he provided to Mohammed Ali, documents recovered from the al-Qaeda chief’s compound in 2011 suggest that Boko Haram’s leadership had reached out to him as early as 2009. By the early 2010s, US and Nigerian intelligence reports suggest that al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) was providing tangible support, particularly in the form of training members who traveled to camps in AQIM-occupied territory during the 2012–13 crisis in northern Mali. Soon after, both Boko Haram and Ansaru, an AQIM-affiliated Boko Haram offshoot, ramped up efforts to kidnap and ransom Westerners, one of AQIM’s signature tactics. Similarly, many observers have noted a marked change in the style of Boko Haram’s videos following its allegiance with ISIS, suggesting that ISIS’s media affairs personnel had pushed it to adopt their “house style.”

      Although international influences have indeed shaped Boko Haram, this line of argument also tends to disguise the fact that Boko Haram’s goals and actions are mostly shaped by local conditions. Indeed, the group has repeatedly demonstrated an ability to attack the weaknesses of local police and military forces and shift in the face of their strengths. For example, the group followed reports of low troop morale and mutiny in military barracks in the spring of 2014 with an aggressive offensive to take and hold territory, while in the face of an international troop “surge” in spring 2015 it shifted back to terrorism, launching a suicide campaign that used an unprecedented number of women and girls as bombers.

      It is also misleading to assume that Boko Haram’s evolution must have required major outside guidance. For one, it overstates the technical difficulties involved. As we will discuss in more detail later, Yusuf, Shekau, and others in the group’s leadership did try to seek out contact with al-Qaeda in the group’s early years. However, there is little evidence that these efforts translated into much direct assistance.

      What is much clearer is that the group has consistently benefited from the extraordinary mismanagement that has ravaged the Nigerian security services. Indeed, senior military and defense officials stand accused of misappropriating more than $5.5 billion allocated to the fight against Boko Haram in the mid-2010s and failing to prevent the widespread abuse of civilians in military custody. Both have played a key role in Boko Haram’s success. For another, it also neglects the fact that many of Boko Haram’s most effective tactics, especially its large-scale kidnappings of women and girls and their subsequent deployment as bombers, are clearly not borrowed from the al-Qaeda/ISIS playbook. And although by 2016, military setbacks in ISIS’s core Syrian and Iraqi holdings and internal politics within Boko Haram’s leadership had driven some members of both groups into closer collaboration (particularly on matters of theology), evidence of direct military cooperation remains elusive.

      Third, debates within Nigeria about the “real” causes of Boko Haram reflect broader tensions around the balance of national power that have dominated Nigerian politics since before independence. Since the 1999 transition, Nigeria’s political stability has depended on an informal agreement that presidential power would “rotate” between the Christian-majority south and the Muslim-majority north. Following the unexpected death in 2010 of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, a northern Muslim who had not yet completed the first of his two allowable terms, Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, an evangelical Christian from the southern Niger Delta region, became president. Jonathan’s campaign (and eventual victory) for his own term in 2011 was deeply controversial, with Muslim leaders pressuring him to step aside

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