The emergence of civilian vigilante groups in cities like Maiduguri has driven Boko Haram into the remote northeastern corner of Nigeria, close to the borders with Cameroon and Chad. It has a network of camps in the thick forests of the Sambisa Reserve, which is where at least some of the abducted schoolgirls are likely to have been taken.
Boko Haram and al Qaeda
There’s no firm evidence as yet that Boko Haram has ambitions beyond Nigeria, though its campaign of terror has spilled into remote parts of Cameroon and it appears to have informal links with militant Islamist groups in Mali and Niger. And for a while in 2012, Shekau sought refuge in Gao in northern Mali, a town then held by the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, after being wounded in a shootout with Nigerian security forces.
Shekau has declared his allegiance to al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. But Boko Haram’s structure and ideology are so opaque and its focus so local that al Qaeda’s leadership has thus far — at least publicly — shunned it.
Other factions that have broken with Shekau may have broader ambitions. Jacob Zenn, an expert on Boko Haram and its several offshoots, wrote in a recent edition of the Combating Terrorism Center’s Sentinel that some leaders “are uniquely capable of expanding Boko Haram’s international connections to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), al-Shabaab” in Somalia and other militant groups.
Zenn, an analyst with the Jamestown Foundation, says that Mamman Nur, said to have masterminded the bombing of the United Nations building in Abuja, has trained with Al-Shabaab. Another senior figure, Adam Kambar, “became the leader of an AQIM training camp” before being killed in 2012.
Kambar led the most effective of several factions: Ansaru, whose full name is Vanguards for the Protection of Muslims in Black Africa.
The group emerged in 2012 in opposition to Shekau’s targeting of Nigerian civilians. Its members are said to have received training with jihadist groups in Algeria, and it appears to have a broader canvas than does Shekau. In January 2013, Ansaru attacked a convoy of Nigerian troops on their way to support the French operation against al Qaeda in Mali. It has also targeted western workers, killing seven engineers in Bauchi early last year.
Just who leads Ansaru is a mystery; its videos show only veiled men. But according to the International Crisis Group, the group is now led by Khalid Barnawi, who has close links with al Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb and has profited from its part in the kidnapping business.
Yet another faction called itself al Qaeda in the Land Beyond the Sahel, a nod toward al Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb and its ambitions for a broad West African jihadist front. The group’s abduction and eventual murder of two foreign construction workers in 2012 bore the hallmarks of Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an al Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb leader in Mali who has turned kidnapping into a lucrative business.
A more dangerous beast
No one (apart from Boko Haram’s leaders) believes the group can overthrow the Nigerian state. It has no presence in the oil-rich south (even if Shekau threatens to attack oil refineries there), and its fighters probably number in the hundreds at most. But it can drain the federal government of resources, damage Nigeria’s international reputation and turn swathes of northern Nigeria into no-go zones. (The governor of Borno state admitted it was too dangerous for him to travel to the Sambisa area.)
The International Crisis Group says the fractured militant groups in northern Nigeria are “unlikely ever to be completely suppressed, unless the government wins local hearts and minds by implementing fundamental political reforms to address bad governance, corruption and underdevelopment.”
There have been few signs of such an approach — and its absence may usher in a much worse scenario.
Greater cooperation between Boko Haram, Ansaru and other militant factions in the region could create an altogether more dangerous beast, according to Zenn, creating “a multimillion-dollar “terrorism economy” in the southern Sahel that fuels corruption and raises tensions between neighboring countries and the region’s Muslims and Christians.”
*Culled from CNN
