Description
Although gender-based violence against men and women in the form of sexual violence has been examined in the literature on Islamist insurgency in the Lake Chad region―the Sahelian zone at the conjunction of Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Chad―minimal scholarly attention has been given to gendercide, that is, the gender-selective massacres of civilian men and boys by terrorist groups. The limitation of gender-based violence to sexual violence in the gory Islamist insurgency forecloses scholars from problematising the myriad ways men/boys are not invariably perpetrators but victims of gender-based violence beyond the conventional emphasis on sexual violence. This article transcends the existing scholarly fixation on sexual violence to critically assess the gender-selective killing of civilian men and boys by terrorist groups as a strategy to vitiate competition from potential combatants. Drawing on scholarship on gendercide which frames the phenomenon as emblematic of gender-based violence and on twenty-two ethnographic interviews conducted in Nigeria with victims/survivors and ex-Boko Haram/ISWAP fighters, this article assesses how and why assumptions of gender are pivotal to the selective massacres and victimisation of civilian men and boys. This article expands the understanding of victimisation/victimhood of men and boys in gender-based terrorist violence and advances a reflection of these insights in future counterterrorism and counterinsurgency frameworks in Africa.
