Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent.
Over a three-day period in December 2015, Nigerian security forces carried out an operation in the northern town of Zaria that resulted in the deaths of more than 300 civilians, according to an official commission of inquiry.
The attack targeted the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, or IMN, a Shiite organization founded in the 1980s by Nigerians inspired by the Iranian revolution. Nigeria is about evenly split between Christians and Muslims, and the vast majority of Muslims are Sunni. As the IMN gained followers, its members frequently clashed with security forces and Sunni civilians, and its leader, Ibrahim Zakzaky, became a prominent government critic.