Katiba Macina and Boko Haram: Including women to what end?

This report by the Institute for Security Studies analyses the roles and motivations of women associated with katiba Macina in Mali and Boko Haram in Niger. It details how these violent extremist groups (VEGs) utilise women for recruitment, logistics, intelligence, and operational tasks, while examining the diverse pathways—ranging from voluntary association to kidnapping—that lead women into these groups.

• Women provide katiba Macina and Boko Haram with strategic advantages by serving as human resources, recruitment vessels, and facilitators for the groups' implantation, operations, and survival.
• The pathways to association with Boko Haram in Niger include voluntary joining, coercion by family members, and kidnapping by the group.
• In Mali, women associated with katiba Macina generally do not live in the group's bush camps (markaz) but collaborate from nearby villages or hamlets, though a small number of wives live in mobile settlements near the camps.
• Marital and family ties are primary drivers for association; in Mali, most women collaborated through male relatives, while in Niger, some joined to find husbands or followed existing partners.
• Women may associate with these groups to seek protection from insecurity, to avenge the death of loved ones killed by security forces or traditional hunters (dozo), or to protect their economic activities.
• A small number of women in Niger joined Boko Haram for religious reasons, including the desire to learn the Koran, participate in jihad, or die as martyrs.
• Women's departure from these groups is often linked to the death or severance of ties with a male relative (in Mali), or due to abusive marriages, disillusionment, and fear of death (in Niger).
• VEGs use women to expand their ranks by leveraging their interpersonal skills to recruit family members and by using women as 'bait' to attract men seeking wives.
• Women perform critical support and logistical roles, including domestic work, nursing wounded combatants, and supplying basic necessities or materials like fertiliser for IEDs.
• Women are used for intelligence gathering on security forces and targets, and in the case of Boko Haram, kidnapped women are used as bargaining chips for ransoms or prisoner exchanges.
• Boko Haram assigns women operational combat roles, including acting as armourers, scouts, and suicide bombers; between June 2014 and February 2018, at least 469 women and girls were deployed for suicide attacks in the Lake Chad Basin.

APA

Abatan, J. E. A., & Sangaré, B. (2021). Katiba Macina and Boko Haram: Including women to what end? Institute for Security Studies. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/war-35.pdf

Chicago

Abatan, Jeannine Ella A, and Boubacar Sangaré. Katiba Macina and Boko Haram: Including women to what end? Institute for Security Studies, 2021. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/war-35.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Abatan |first1=Jeannine Ella A |last2=Sangaré |first2=Boubacar |title=Katiba Macina and Boko Haram: Including women to what end? |publisher=Institute for Security Studies |date=March 2021 |url=https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/war-35.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{abatan2021katiba, author = {Abatan, Jeannine Ella A and Sangaré, Boubacar}, title = {{Katiba Macina and Boko Haram: Including women to what end?}}, institution = {Institute for Security Studies}, year = {2021}, month = mar, url = {https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/war-35.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }