Inside a mud-brick hut on the edge of a camp for people displaced by terrorism, an ex-Boko Haram fighter is explaining what drew him to the group.

“I joined because I had no choice,” said the former militant, Bahana Alhadji. Then aged 22 and struggling to make a living fishing on Lake Chad, he told The Telegraph that joining the group gave him status, camaraderie and a reliable source of food. “When I was there, we were given rations every week. They made me feel welcome.”

As a kind of perverse signing bonus, Alhadji was given three teenage ‘wives’. The group is notorious for systematically enslaving young women and girls and forcing them into marriages with its fighters.

It is easy to see how groups like Boko Haram appeal to young men like Alhadji. Life in the Lake Chad basin is precarious, the government provides no basic services, and opportunities for improving your position are scarce.

Over five years Alhadji rose to become a senior commander, taking part in what he euphemistically called “military operations” (really raids targeting defenceless villages), and battling the local ISIS-aligned offshoot as well as the Chadian and Nigerian militaries.

“I have killed many people,” he said blithely, a broad grin spreading over his face as he recounted his exploits.

“The toughest fighting was with ISWAP,” he said, referring to the Islamic State’s West Africa Province, which was formed by a faction that broke away from Boko Haram in 2015.

It is now its chief ideological rival but it is outmatched in terms of sheer brutality, Alhadji said. ISWAP, he explained, largely spares civilians. Boko Haram shows no such mercy.

The conflict between these groups, which are both vying to establish Islamic states in this lawless corner of Central Africa, has exploded in recent months, with each seeking to dominate the region’s lucrative trade.

The groups are behaving less like jihadists and more like warring mafias, unleashing a wave of kidnappings and extortion as they attempt to fill their coffers.

This turf war has plunged an already inhospitable region into humanitarian catastrophe, collapsing the regional economy and fuelling a worsening hunger crisis, with women and children being hit hardest.

Propaganda videos produced by both sides show all out warfare over the islands of Lake Chad.

Though it has shrunk dramatically in recent decades, the lake still measures hundreds of square miles and straddles the borders of four countries.

One recent clip from a Boko Haram raid on an island held by ISWAP makes the footage coming out of Ukraine or the Middle East look tame by comparison. In it, a boatload of heavily armed fighters chase down an enemy vessel, guns blazing. Less than two frenzied minutes later, all that’s left of their target is a cloud of blood hanging in the water.

In the villages and displacement sites that dot the arid landscape around the lake it is not hard to find people who have been on the receiving end of this violence.

Mariam Abakar Koukouy is one of them. Ten days before we met she fled a Boko Haram attack on her village, and she is now trying to build a new life for herself, her husband and seven children on the outskirts of Kafia, just north of the lake. Almost everyone here has been affected in some way by the terrorists.

“We were taken by surprise,” she said of the night raid, still clearly shaken by her experience. “Forty attackers stormed the village armed with guns. I heard the sound of their weapons, grabbed my children and hid in the bathroom.”

It was clear what the attackers were after.

“They were kidnapping people and taking their belongings, women and children,” she said.

“They ransacked our home, taking our things as well as my farming equipment. They tied up others so they could loot their houses.”

When one of her neighbours managed to wriggle free of their bindings and escape, confusion broke out among the fighters, she said.

“Everyone took advantage of that moment to flee the village. I did not bring any possessions with me – my husband fled without any clothes.”

Two of Mariam’s neighbours were among those kidnapped, but later escaped. She and her family now live in a hut built by an aid agency but they rely on begging to eat.

“It’s very hard to beg to feed the family. I don’t know where to turn – I feel like a chicken that’s had its head cut off.”

Even in Kafia Boko Haram is an ever-present threat, and Mariam lives in constant fear of another attack.

“I’m scared, I can’t sleep,” she said (the jihadists mostly come out at night). “I’m worried about my children’s safety [...] I can’t even go out to collect firewood.”

She has good reason to be fearful, and doubts the family will ever return home.

Ngbouboua has been the target of numerous attacks dating as far back as 2015, when Boko Haram spilled across the Nigerian border into Chad for the first time.

Mariam’s own eldest daughter, Yaka, 17, was wounded when Boko Haram suicide bombers struck the local market in 2017. Only a child at the time, she suffered a fractured leg and her foot was damaged so badly that it eventually had to be amputated to stop an infection. Her bandaged stump made fleeing her village even more difficult.

And in 2022, as many as 40 soldiers were killed when waves of Boko Haram fighters attacked a Chadian military outpost there – one of the worst losses of life suffered by the army in the conflict.

Boko Haram’s insurgency has claimed an estimated 350,000 lives and forced millions to flee their homes since it first erupted in northern Nigeria in 2009.

As of February 2026, some 3.3 million people remained displaced internally in Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger, according to the UN’s migration agency.

Kidnappings for ransom are a key part of the terrorists’ operation, and staggering numbers of people have been abducted, particularly in Nigeria, where it has become an epidemic.

In just this part of Chad, there have been 319 kidnappings recorded since January, 63 of them in April, according to the International NGO Safety Organisation.

A typical ransom payment ranges between 100,000 and 500,000 Central African Francs (about £130 to £660) – a huge amount in a country where around 87 per cent of the rural population lives on less than a dollar a day.

The terrorists do not discriminate. Christians, Muslims, men, women, children, aid workers or foreigners, all are considered valid targets.

To get their loved ones back families might have to sell their land, livestock or other assets, leaving them more vulnerable. Sometimes whole villages or ethnic groups will band together to cough up, but no one ever admits to paying for fear of being accused of helping the terrorists.

Most people kidnapped by Boko Haram never return. If the ransom is not paid, the victims are simply executed. Some have gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid this fate.

A few huts away in Kafia, Saleh Yusuf Issa, a 40-year-old fisherman, sat on a woven mat in the shade of a tree – temperatures at this time of year regularly hit the mid 40s and the heat is hard to escape.

Saleh has lived here for 12 years since fleeing when Boko Haram attacked his village on the lake.

But a week earlier he had been abducted when Boko Haram fighters stormed the village of Toumun, where he was staying overnight after a day fishing.

“There were 21 people – they were armed up to their teeth. They had guns, they had bombs,” he said.

Saleh and his fellow captives were chained together and forced to march in the direction of the Nigerian border, travelling at times by boat.

Over two days, they were beaten and tortured viciously, exposed to the punishing sun, and eaten alive by mosquitoes.

Saleh quickly lost hope of ever seeing his family again – they would never be able to afford the ransom.

“I thought I was going to die. We had all heard the stories that they slit people’s throats. So I just thought ‘that’s it, I’ve left my family behind’.”

Then, on the second night, Saleh noticed that the shackles binding him and another captive to the rest of their group had become loose.

Choosing their moment carefully, the two broke free, ran into the dark and did not look back. Saleh said he did not stop running until he was back in Kafia, lifting his feet to show the deep cuts and gashes that are evidence of his ordeal. He is still traumatised by the experience.

“Whenever I close my eyes I am taken back. I can see the scenes in front of me, the way we were tortured,” he said.

A commotion nearby seemed to break his train of thought – a bright green chameleon was jerkily making its way along a tree branch, causing a stir among the children who had gathered to listen to his story.

Saleh no longer feels safe fishing in Toumoun, and refuses to leave the village to work for fear of being kidnapped again.

This fear was common among the people The Telegraph spoke to.

In Kafia alone, seven people have been kidnapped by Boko Haram in the last three weeks.

One had their throat cut on camera, with the video sent to the villagers as a warning: pay up or suffer the same end.

One managed to escape, while another returned after a ransom was paid. The other four are still missing.

It is difficult to overstate how heavily the explosion of terrorist activity has hurt the local economy.

Nine in 10 people in the Lake Chad basin depend on fishing, livestock and farming for their survival, according to a 2022 report from the Institute for Security Studies (ISS).

There should really be enough food to go around. The lake supports about 120 species of fish and is surrounded by tracts of rich, fertile soil. Reeds grow in abundance and are used as a versatile building material.

But what was once a hub of agricultural activity and trade has deteriorated into deep poverty, and over 10 million people are now heavily dependent on humanitarian aid, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

Meanwhile the terrorist groups are making a fortune.

ISWAP alone raises an estimated £31 million every year by extorting fishing communities on the lake, bringing in an extra £1.6 million annually in levies on smoked fish shipped from the lake, according to the ISS report. The terror group even has its own fleet of fishing boats which it rents out.

On the banks of a smaller lake near Baga Sola, one of the province’s biggest towns, a group of fishermen are preparing to go out on the water.

One was busy repairing their boat – a rudimentary craft with a wood-framed hull and a skin made from old plastic barrels. Another was stringing a line with dozens of tiny hooks.

The youngest of the group was 20-year-old Ali Hassan. He was kidnapped along with several others while fishing on the lake and only escaped two weeks ago.

He remembers his ankles being shackled, and said he was taken “very far away, towards Nigeria”. He endured in captivity for 21 days before escaping.

Though he is free, he lamented that fishing in his usual spots had become much too dangerous.

“Here we are safe but I worry that one day the armed groups will take over this area as well,” he said.

The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of more fishermen – two teenage boys – whose boat was dragged to the launch by a camel that seemed to appear out of nowhere.

Without wasting any time they boarded their craft and vanished through a gap in the reeds.

The disruption to so many people’s livelihoods has caused a severe hunger crisis.

All together, there are now 7.4 million people facing acute food insecurity (level three out of five on the UN-backed IPC hunger monitor’s scale) or worse, in the Lake Chad basin.

In technical terms that means that millions are having to go without food on a regular basis, but in practice that means clinics are filling up with children and mothers whose bodies are shutting down because they haven’t had enough to eat.

In the malnutrition ward at Baga Sola District Hospital, which is run with support from the International Rescue Committee (IRC), sixteen beds were arranged in order of severity with the worst cases at the end of the room, closest to the nurse’s station. All but one of them were occupied.

To be admitted here a child has to be suffering from severe acute malnutrition, which is determined by measuring the circumference of the upper arm. Anything less than 10cm – slightly bigger than a £2 coin – meets this classification. It is a horrific and dangerous state for a child to be in.

In one of the beds closest to the nurse’s station sat Zara Ousman, who brought her two-year-old daughter Abouma into the clinic after she started vomiting.

“I was scared, she was losing so much weight and she stopped eating,” she said. “When we arrived a day ago she was so weak I was worried she would die.”

The family has been short of food for a while.

“Sometimes we eat once a day, but most of the time we don’t have any food,” she said.

While Abouma had made good progress since arriving at the clinic, being given therapeutic milk through a feeding tube, her mother was worried about what would happen after they left.

“My main concern is that when I go back, my husband still won't have any work and we won't have enough food – not just for me and the baby but the rest of the family.”

Her concern was shared by doctors at the clinic.

Dr Djimasra Altonan, who helps oversee the hospital, explained that if a child suffers multiple episodes of acute malnourishment, it can turn into chronic malnutrition, better known as stunting.

“This will have longer term effects, impacting their brain development and also their physical development,” he said.

“A child who's been malnourished and therefore doesn't fully develop – it's a burden on the parents and a burden on society because they can't contribute.”

Stunting can also interfere with the development of the pelvis, with serious consequences for maternal health, he added.

“A lot of women can't deliver naturally because their pelvis is too small, and they have to be brought in and need surgical help.”

Most of Dr Altonan’s patients are displaced people or refugees who have fled the conflict.

“They would have lived on the islands where they’re able to fish or they farm but had to flee because of the insecurity. They come here and live in the IDP sites and they don’t have the same opportunities to access food or make money.”

The hunger crisis, he said, had been exacerbated by deep cuts to humanitarian aid in recent months.

The World Food Programme once provided additional supplementary feeding programmes, but “that doesn’t exist anymore,” he said.

There are now many the clinic cannot help, and the situation is continuing to deteriorate.

Mouktar Dorsouma, a Senior Project Manager for the IRC based in Baga Sola, said: “With the cutbacks, everything has been put on hold.”

In less than six months the lake region has already registered the same number of malnourished people that had been expected over the course of a year, he said.

“Children are simply falling into malnutrition, because there is no food.”

In the village of Tagal, a short drive along an unmarked sand trail from Baga Sola, a young mother has had to watch her daughter succumbing to malnourishment.

“For the past year I have noticed my child showing signs of illness caused by a lack of food, due to the fact that it is impossible to go fishing on the islands,” said Youngou Mahamat, 32. Her two-year-old, Baba, lay motionless in her lap, oblivious to the flies circling around them.

The family’s diet, she said, now consisted almost entirely of maize.

“In the morning we eat maize flour porridge, in the afternoon we eat maize balls, and the same for dinner.”

The IRC has given the family medicines and nutritional supplements, but it has only slowed the child’s decline.

The family is among the internally-displaced, and has been here for 10 years since Boko Haram sacked their village, Blarigui, in a night raid.

Youngou’s husband, Hassoun Ibrahim, remembers the attack all too well.

“We saw people dressed in black entering the village from the north and south. Those on the north side were burning houses whilst those on the south side were firing their weapons. We grabbed our children in a hurry and fled with them.”

Hassoun and his family were able to escape, but his younger brother, who lived on the edge of the village, was not so lucky.

“They captured him and they cut his throat right there,” he said, his eyes widening. “I really don’t understand why they are so brutal, why they come to decapitate people. I really don’t understand.”

In the end it seems as though it was a lack of opportunities for career development that prompted Alhadji to leave Boko Haram.

After five years he had ended up in charge of a unit responsible for resolving internal disputes within the group, of which there must have been many – a kind of terrorist HR manager.

While grateful for his rations, he said he received no pay “even though I was part of the army”.

So in 2023 he decided to flee, making a daring escape across the lake to join the community of displaced people in the village of Fourkoulom.

The former fighter said he had been welcomed “with open arms” and even brought two of his wives with him. But one stayed behind and remarried, and he joked that he suddenly had “a vacancy” that he had no trouble filling.

Alhadji claimed he “deeply regretted” becoming part of Boko Haram.

“The advice I give to anyone wanting to join this group is that they should never even think of going there,” he said.

His repentance was hard to believe.

Meanwhile, Alhadji’s former comrades have stepped up their attacks since he left.

Around 40 soldiers were killed in an October 2024 attack, prompting Mahamat Déby, the Chadian president, to launch a major counteroffensive which he promised to lead himself (his predecessor, Idriss Déby, holds the dubious distinction of being the most recent head of state to die in combat, succumbing to wounds he picked up fighting rebels in 2021).

More recently, Chad declared three days of mourning after two of its generals were killed in a Boko Haram ambush earlier this month.

Two days before that, at least 24 soldiers were killed and dozens more were injured in a raid on a military base on the island of Barka Tolorom, leading to retaliatory air strikes that are believed to have mistakenly killed dozens of Nigerian fishermen.

Analysts have long argued that years of counterinsurgency operations have so far failed to put a stop to the violence because of a lack of focus on addressing the root causes of the conflict, from systemic poverty and historical marginalisation to corruption and weak governance.

The vast swathes of border territory in which Boko Haram and ISWAP operate also make stamping them out all but impossible – the terrorists can melt away into the marshes, deserts and forests as quickly as they appear.

The Telegraph understands that French military advisers have recently returned to Chad for the first time since its troops were unceremoniously kicked out of the country in 2024, as the country joined others in the region and pivoted towards Russia.

The United States has also stepped up its military action against ISWAP in recent weeks, carrying out drone strikes in the lake basin targeting the group and reportedly killing its deputy leader, Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, and several of his lieutenants.

In a Facebook post published as the country reeled from the Barka Tolorom attack, President Déby vowed: “We will continue the fight with renewed determination until this threat is completely eradicated.”

But any effort to defeat Boko Haram militarily is doomed to fail, Alhadji believes.

“The army cannot defeat Boko Haram [...] There are too many of them.” 

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