A video of Abubakar Shekau, who claims to be the leader of the Nigerian Islamist extremist group Boko Haram, is shown on September 25, 2013. Boko Haram is an Islamist militant group waging a campaign of violence in northern Nigeria. The group's ambitions range from the stricter enforcement of Sharia law to the total destruction of the Nigerian state and its government. Click through to see recent bloody incidents in this strife-torn West African nation:
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(CNN) -- There are many groups listed by the U.S. State Department as terrorists. But few fit the classic definition -- threatening and inflicting terror on a civilian population -- better than Boko Haram in northern Nigeria. What's more difficult to work out, beyond Boko Haram's hatred for everything modern and secular, is its ideology, structure and affiliations.
Boko Haram's modus
operandi is all too clear: brutal and indiscriminate killings of both
Christians and Muslims in northern Nigeria, the bombings of churches and
suicide attacks in the federal capital, Abuja, including the
devastating car bombing of the U.N. compound in 2011. Recent attacks in
the northeast, mainly in rural areas of Borno state, have left dozens
dead. Victims are shot at point-blank range or stabbed and mutilated.
Some attacks have lasted hours without any police or military
intervention.
In the first three months
of this year, Amnesty International estimates, Boko Haram was
responsible for the deaths of more than 1,500 people.
Last month, the group
added mass abduction to its repertoire with the kidnapping of nearly 300
girls ages 16 to 18 from a boarding school in Borno. At least 223 of
the girls are still held, and in a chilling video released Monday, the
leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, said they would be sold. He
suggested that girls of 12, even 9, were suitable for marriage.
"Slavery is allowed in my religion, and I shall capture people and make them slaves," Shekau said.
It was a message typical
of a medieval mindset, reflecting the admiration for the Taliban that
inspired his predecessor, Mohammed Yusuf.
Boko Haram and other
factions have carried out kidnappings on a smaller scale, targeting
Western workers and tourists. Rescue attempts -- by Nigerian security
forces and in one instance in concert with UK special forces -- have
ended with the deaths of hostages. In one instance last year, Boko Haram
allegedly received a substantial ransom (rumored to be in excess of $3
million) for the release of a French family abducted in northern Cameroon.
Why would anyone join a
group so focused on killing, maiming and kidnapping civilians, one with
such an incoherent, apocalyptic but resolutely backward mindset? Boko
Haram, whose real name translates as the Sunni Group for Preaching and
Jihad, feeds on the poverty and discrimination felt by many young
Muslims in northern Nigeria. Shekau persistently recalls perceived
persecution of Nigeria's Muslims by Christians, among whom President
Goodluck Jonathan is the latest "oppressor."
A lure for young men
In a region where
unemployment is pervasive, the promise of a weapon and plunder has been
enticing to hundreds of young men. In a recent report, the International
Crisis Group noted that "most Nigerians are poorer today than they were
at independence in 1960 ... and the government is unable to provide
security, good roads, water, health and reliable education."
The central government's
heavy-handed and frequently untargeted anti-terrorism campaign has
radicalized enough young men to sustain Boko Haram. The country's own
Human Rights Commission last year accused the military of arbitrary
killings, torture and rape in its campaign against the group. Jonathan's
declaration of a state of emergency a year ago in three northern states
failed to halt or even stem the tide of killings.
John Campbell, a former
U.S. ambassador to Nigeria and now a fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations, says, "the security forces have proven remarkably ineffective
in securing territory or people within the areas under the state of
emergency."
This makes for fertile
territory for Boko Haram, with its demand for Sharia law and rejection
of all things Western (especially education for girls).
It is no coincidence that Nigeria and Pakistan see the most militant attacks on schools and colleges.
Among Boko Haram's
targets in recent months: a secondary school in Mamudo, where 42
students were killed, and another on an agricultural college near
Damaturu in Yobe state, where more than 40 were killed.
Boko Haram's outlook and
that of the Pakistani Taliban have similarities, even if their origins
are very different. Both have thrived in (usually rural) areas where the
state's authority is weak, exploiting corruption and sectarian fault
lines. Both have also targeted workers involved in trying to eradicate
polio. Both recruit from Islamic schools (whose students are called
almajiris in northern Nigeria) where memorizing the Quran is the core of
the curriculum.
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."
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/06/world/africa/nigeria-boko-haram-analysis/index.html?hpt=wo_c1
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