Boko Haram Pledged Allegiance To?

[1stRambo]

Yo, Boko Haram has reportedly pledged allegiance to Islamic State, and Ferguson Protesters? Is this correct?

Boko Haram pledges loyalty to Islamic State after Nigeria suicide bombs

"GTP"

"OBAMA IS DESTROYING AMERICA"

"I miss-read, my bad" but if the shoe fits?

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

OP, this thread is in the wrong place seriously

wtf does this thread have to do with Judicial Interpretation?

 

[waltky]

Boko Haram 'sleeper cells' found in Nigeria...

Nigeria uncovers Boko Haram ‘sleeper cells’ in Abuja
Mon, Dec 07, 2015 - Nigeria’s secret police on Saturday said they had arrested a dozen suspects linked to the discovery of “sleeper cells” operated by Boko Haram Muslim militants in and around the capital, Abuja.

The Nigerian Department of State Services (DSS) said those arrested had traveled from the restive northeast of the nation to the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and were planning on staging attacks in Abuja during the year-end festivities. “Boko Haram ... has continued to establish and operate sleeper cells whose [sole] mandates are to conduct surveillance and carry out subsequent attacks in the FCT,” the DSS said in a statement. The statement listed the names of 12 suspected Boko Haram members, including a Niger national, who were arrested in Abuja and neighboring towns between Oct. 29 and Tuesday last week.

The suspects hid in plain sight, often working in legal jobs while carrying out surveillance to “map out soft targets for attacks,” the statement added. Hundreds of people have been killed in Abuja in recent years in attacks blamed on Boko Haram, including a 2011 bombing of a UN building, which left 25 dead. Overall, the group’s six-year old insurgency has killed about 17,000 people and displaced 2.5 million others, mostly in Nigeria.

Despite a regional military offensive against Boko Haram this year, its fighters have continued to stage guerrilla-style attacks in Nigeria and neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has given his military commanders until the end of the year to end the insurgency, although he has admitted suicide and bomb attacks might continue.

Page not found - Taipei Times

See also:

Bombers kill 27 on Lake Chad island
Mon, Dec 07, 2015 - FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISM: The EU said in a statement that the attacks threatened national and regional stability, adding that it would ‘use all available means to help’

A triple suicide bombing on an island in Lake Chad on Saturday killed at least 27 people and left more than 80 wounded, a Chadian security source said, in another apparent strike by Boko Haram Muslim militants, despite a regional offensive to stop the insurgency. “Three suicide bombers blew themselves up in three different places at the weekly market on Loulou Fou, an island in Lake Chad,” said the source in the capital, N’Djamena, speaking on condition of anonymity. He said that the explosions had killed 30 people, including the three attackers, and injured more than 80 others. N’Djamena on Nov. 9 declared a state of emergency in the flashpoint Lake Chad region, which also straddles Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger and is frequently targeted by Nigeria’s Boko Haram fighters, who this year declared allegiance to the Islamic State group.

The decree granted the governor of the remote region the authority to ban the circulation of people and vehicles, to search homes and to seize arms. The EU in a statement said Saturday’s attacks were “a threat to the stability of the country and the region.” The bloc stood ready to “use all available means to help in the fight against terrorism” in the region, it added. In recent months, Boko Haram fighters have stepped up attacks and suicide bombings on Chadian villages in the lake region that lie close to the frontier with Nigeria. The deadliest attack on Chad’s side of the lake took place on Oct. 10 — another triple suicide — which killed 41 people at Baga Sola, according to N’Djamena. Since the start of the year, the Chadian army has been on the front line of a regional military operation against Boko Haram, whose attacks have spread from northeast Nigeria — its traditional stronghold — to the nation’s three Lake Chad neighbors.

The joint operation of the four Lake Chad nations plus Benin has involved 8,700 soldiers, police and civilians. Despite being hit hard by the offensive, losing territory, Boko Haram has responded with a wave of attacks and bombings. Their attacks are often carried out by young women or adolescent boys targeting markets, which are at the heart of African daily life. Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno recently said that the regional force, which is not yet fully operational, “has without a doubt weakened” the militants, but “it has not defeated” them. Still, Cameroon — part of the regional offensive — on Wednesday claimed to have dealt a major blow to Boko Haram, killing about 100 fighters and freeing 900 hostages in a three-day operation last week.

The claim comes on the heels of twin attacks by women suicide bombers the previous day in the far north of Cameroon — an area repeatedly targeted by militants — in which at least six people died. No independent confirmation of the Cameroonian government’s statement was immediately available from the region, which is inaccessible to the media. Boko Haram fighters, believed to be hiding out in Nigeria’s Sambisa Forest and the Lake Chad’s many islands, are held responsible for 17,000 deaths and for making 2.5 million people homeless in their six-year campaign of violence. Over the past year, Boko Haram has stepped up cross-border attacks in Niger, Chad and Cameroon, while also continuing to mount shooting and suicide assaults on markets, mosques and other mostly civilian targets within Nigeria itself.

Bombers kill 27 on Lake Chad island - Taipei Times

 

[waltky]

Samantha Power on the ground in Africa...

Boko Haram still a threat months after 'technical victory'
Apr 18,`16 -- Here on the front line against Boko Haram, no one boasts of having "technically" won the war. More than four months after Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari made such a claim, the extremists still crisscross international borders, avoiding direct confrontations with U.S.-backed African forces while refocusing on soft targets like marketplaces and mosques with little to no protection.

The group may be gone from major cities, but in the countryside it poses a constant threat. And for the hundreds of thousands of refugees and impoverished villagers surrounded by fighting in the isolated northern reaches of Cameroon, terror and hunger form daily challenges to their survival. "All of you who are attempting to fight this terror, the United States stands with you," said Samantha Power, America's U.N. ambassador, making a rare visit by any foreign dignitary, let alone a U.S. Cabinet member, to this parched, dusty landscape dotted by thatched-roofed huts and meandering goats and donkeys. Underscoring the insecurity, Power traveled with a large contingent of U.S. and Cameroonian special forces. A Cameroonian helicopter monitored overhead.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power speaks to members of civil society groups at the U.S. Embassy in Yaounde, Cameroon, Sunday, April 17, 2016. Power is visiting Cameroon, Chad, and Nigeria to highlight the growing threat Boko Haram poses to the Lake Chad Basin region.​

But in a tragic accident, an armored jeep in Power's motorcade stuck a 7-year-old boy who darted onto the road, killing him instantly. She traveled back to the scene of the incident several hours later to offer her condolences to his parents and "our grief and heartbreak." Power's larger goal of pairing military efforts with greater development of West Africa's impoverished, Boko Haram-ravaged regions is daunting. They've suffered generations of neglect. In Maroua, an enclave some 800 miles from the Cameroonian capital sandwiched between Chad and Nigeria, shortages of water, schools and investment are chronic.

Activists, opposition politicians and Muslim clerics say the extremists will draw Maroua's disaffected youth to their ranks as long as economic opportunities are limited and security forces continue committing indiscriminate atrocities while trying to stamp out the insurgency. Military force must be part of the counter-terror effort, Power told reporters. "They have guns. The have suicide vests. They have armored vehicles," she said.

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[waltky]

Boko Haram an' ISIS in cahoots together...

Boko Haram and ISIS Are Collaborating More, U.S. Military Says
APRIL 20, 2016 — American military officials say that two of the world’s most feared terrorist groups — the Islamic State and Boko Haram — have begun to collaborate more closely, raising alarm that they are working together to attack American allies in North and Central Africa.

On Wednesday, Brig. Gen. Donald C. Bolduc, the commander of the United States military’s Special Operations in Africa, cited a weapons convoy believed to be from Islamic State fighters in Libya that was headed for the Lake Chad region, an area devastated by Boko Haram. Military officials described the convoy as one of the first concrete examples of a direct link between the two extremist groups since Boko Haram pledged allegiance to the Islamic State last year. The shipment, seized near the Chadian border with Libya on April 7, was carrying small-caliber weapons, machine guns and rifles, officials said.

The disclosure came during a tense series of meetings here in the capital of Chad between Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, and top officials like President Idriss Déby, who is expected to announce soon that he won recent elections and will begin his fifth term in office. He seized power in a coup and has governed Chad with a firm hand for 26 years.

Mr. Déby said Ms. Power had pressed him during their meetings about reports that dozens of Chadian soldiers who had voted for opposition candidates had suddenly disappeared. “No one has disappeared,” Mr. Déby told reporters, standing next to Ms. Power after their meeting and responding to a query from a reporter. “They will be presented to the world on television.”

The exchange highlighted a central quandary of President Obama’s efforts to rein in the spread of Islamic extremism in Africa. In recent years, the continent has increasingly become a battleground in the West’s war against militant Islam. Administration officials insist that the increased influence of groups like Boko Haram, and now the Islamic State, has some of its roots in the economic disparities and human suffering often brought on by authoritarian governments in which strongmen cling to power.

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[waltky]

Boko Haram in cahoots with ISIS now...

Islamic State names new leader of Nigeria's Boko Haram
Thursday 4th August, 2016: Islamic State has named a new leader of Boko Haram, the Nigerian militant group which last year swore allegiance to it.

Abu Musab al-Barnawi was named Islamic State's governor for West Africa in a two-page interview in its weekly magazine, al-Naba, which was circulated late on Tuesday. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, a former military ruler who took office last year, has made it a priority to defeat Boko Haram, which has tried to create a state adhering to strict sharia law in the northeast during a seven-year insurgency. Boko Haram controlled a swathe of land in northeast Nigeria around the size of Belgium at the end of 2014 but was pushed out by Nigerian troops, aided by soldiers from neighbouring countries, early last year.

In the interview, al-Barnawi said Boko Haram was "still a force to be reckoned with" and that it had been receiving new recruits. Despite having been pushed out of most of the territory it controlled, Boko Haram has carried out suicide bombings in northeast Nigeria and neighbouring Cameroon, Niger and Chad, focussing on busy public areas such as markets and mosques. Fulan Nasrullah, a security analyst, said al-Barnawi had been a senior figure within Boko Haram who was previously the group's military commander.

The Islamic State publication did not mention Abubakar Shekau, who was the group's leader and represented the Nigerian jihadists in videos during an insurgency that has killed about 15,000 people and displaced more than two million. Shekau, whose death has been reported on numerous occasions by the army only for him to reappear in videos, was last seen in a video circulated in March in which he seemed to suggest he was ailing and Boko Haram was losing its effectiveness. A video emerged the following week saying there would be no surrender.

In June, a senior U.S. general said Boko Haram had fractured internally, with a big group splitting away from Shekau over his failure to adhere to guidance from Islamic State. The Nigerian group swore allegiance to Islamic State, based in Syria and Iraq, in March 2015. That assessment came days after U.S. officials said they had seen no evidence that Boko Haram had so far received significant operational support or financing from Islamic State militants, concluding the loyalty pledge had so far mostly been a branding exercise.

Islamic State names new leader of Nigeria's Boko Haram

 

[anotherlife]

So much for feminism in Nigeria. But coming to think of judicial things on boko haram, would they make good wives when we cut off their dicks? After all, all those new American evangelist missionaries need to demonstrate their devotion to the gay problem.

 

[waltky]

With Two Men Staking Claim, Who Is Running Boko Haram?...

Who Is Running Boko Haram?
August 05, 2016 - This week saw dueling statements from two men who both claim to be the leader of Nigerian militant sect Boko Haram. The apparent leadership struggle has sparked concerns of an ideological split that could lead to a surge in violence in northeast Nigeria and the Lake Chad region.

In its weekly online publication, the Islamic State militant group named Abu Musab al-Barnawi as its “governor” of Boko Haram. The article didn’t say so explicitly, but the implication was that al-Barnawi had replaced Abubakar Shekau, the bombastic preacher who has led the group since 2009. Al-Barnawi has also reportedly released an audio statement attacking Shekau, according to the regional news service Sahara Reporters.

Shekau re-asserts authority

A man claiming to be Shekau responded to this so-called attempted coup with a 10-minute audio statement of his own, briefly posted on YouTube before it was taken down. In the statement, Shekau reasserted his authority over Boko Haram and said that al-Barnawi, a long-time member of the group, is trying to stir up conflict. "Of course, he’s so confused and it’s a sign, he [Shekau] was showing sign of weakness. I think it’s a sign of the end of the whole saga -- that is one – two, it’s a sign of a defeat also," said Khalid Aliyu, an official of the umbrella body of Islamic organizations in Nigeria, Jama’atu Nasril Islam. "It’s also a sign of loss of power and control of the insurgency itself, therefore it shows a crack in the organization of the insurgency," he added. He says Boko Haram has been overpowered by the army. In fact, Boko Haram has lost most of the territory it once held, although it still carries out attacks in northeast Nigeria and across nearby borders.

Power struggle

Aliyu speculates that this may be why the Islamic State is shifting the power away from Shekau in an attempt to raise the profile of Boko Haram again; but, there are fears that the power struggle between al-Barnawi and Shekau could lead to a spike in violence. "There will be clash over leadership if it is true that Barnawi is the new leader and Shekau is saying I am still the authority, you know. There will be clashes. They will be fighting each other," said Bulus Mungopark, a member of a Nigerian vigilante group. These groups have been key allies of the Nigerian military, helping to monitor and fight Boko Haram units. Mungopark says he battled Boko Haram in his hometown of Chibok, where Boko Haram kidnapped almost 300 schoolgirls in 2014. Al-Barnawi is said, by some, to be the son of Boko Haram founder Mohammed Yusuf, who was killed in police custody in 2009; but, that’s up for debate. Mungopark says he remembers Yusuf very well. "I know Mohammed Yusuf. Very well. And I know his age. So he could not have a son up to the age," Mungopark said.

Nigeria's Boko Haram terrorist network, shows their leader Abubakar Shekau speaking to the camera.​

What is also up for debate is the actual level of cooperation between the Islamic State and Boko Haram. The Islamic State accepted Boko Haram's pledge of allegiance last year, but many security analysts say there does not seem to be a coordination of military strategy between the two groups. "From the beginning when Boko Haram pledged their allegiance to IS, I think both Boko Haram and IS, each one of them is looking for recognition, would want to have more followers," said professor Muktar Bunza, a Nigerian historian who has followed Boko Haram. Still, an attempt by Islamic State to reshuffle Boko Haram's leadership could point to deepening operational ties to come.

Who Is Running Boko Haram?

See also:

New Boko Haram leader is son of founder
Aug. 5, 2016 | Abu Musab al-Barnawi's influence has risen, although Shekau still has loyal soldiers within Boko Haram's ranks.

The man named by the Islamic State as Boko Haram's new leader is the son of the latter group's founder, Mohammed Yusuf. Abu Musab al-Barnawi was declared "governor" of the Nigerian organization in an Islamic State magazine. He is the son of Yusuf, who founded Boko Haram in 2002 and was killed by police in 2009, CNN reported Friday, citing an unidentified source. Following a leadership split in the sect last month, which saw the rise of Boko Haram spokesman Abu Barnawi at the expense of longtime acknowledged leader Abubakar Shekau, Barnawi spoke in an interview of a change in direction. Christians, and not Muslims, will be Boko Haram's target, he said.

He told the magazine the plan is now to "blow up every church that we are able to reach" instead of sectarian violence against other Muslims. [Westerners] strongly seek to Christianize the society ... they exploit the condition of those who are displaced under the raging war, providing them with food and shelter and then Christianizing their children," Barnawi said in an interview translated by SITE Intelligence Group. He added Boko Haram would strike back by "booby-trapping and blowing up every church that we are able to reach and kill all those who we find from the citizens of the cross." Barnawi has maintained a low profile within Boko Haram, a contrast to the fiery and hot-tempered Shekau, BBC News reported.

Shekau still maintains some power, with loyal soldiers and crucially, control of schoolgirls abducted in Nigeria's Chibok forest in 2014. The kidnapping of the girls brought global condemnation and attention to Boko Haram, and the abductees are seen as a powerful bargaining chip, CNN said. Boko Haram declared allegiance to the Islamic State in 2015, as its power waned. A concerted effort by Nigerian military and police forces, as well as by a coalition of troops from neighboring countries, has taken back most of the territory the group formerly held in northeastern, and predominately Muslim, Nigeria. The oil-rich nation of about 182 million people is roughly half Christian and half Muslim.

New Boko Haram leader is son of founder

 

[waltky]

ISIS turns on Boko Haram...

World’s two bloodthirsty terror groups are at war: ISIS locks horns with Boko Haram
Saturday 17th September, 2016 - The Islamic State Militant Group has locked horns with the Nigerian militant outfit, Boko Haram.

If reports are to be believed, ISIS’ decision to remove the Boko Haram leader has led to a war between the two terrorist organisations. Earlier in September, ISIS replaced Abubakar Shekau with Abu Musab al-Barnawi - a move that created a rift in Boko Haram. Shekau had taken control of the group in 2009 immediately after it was founded and the founding leader, Nigerian cleric Mohammed Yusuf, died in police custody. Shekau was known as the group’s leader but his decision to send children suicide bombers on missions was condemned by the ISIS leaders who replaced him with a new governor. Under his control, several Muslim civilians became casualties.

Report noted that Barnawi, who is rumoured to be a son of the group’s founder gave an explosive interview to the ISIS newspaper, where he said that jihadists should shift their focus to Nigeria’s Christians. This was a massive change in strategy from the direction in which its former leader, Shekau had taken the group. Shekar had launched several attacks on the Muslim villages that refused to join Boko Haram’s ranks for years. Barnawi reportedly said that the changed vision would help win over public support. Soon after taking charge of the terror outfit, Barnawi had threatened to bomb churches and kill Christians. He vowed to end attacks on mosques and markets used by ordinary Muslims.

He was then quoted as saying, “Under my leadership the militants will work to seize back territory. Increasing numbers of youth are joining the cause, though Nigeria’s military reports that hundreds of its fighters have surrendered as aerial bombardments and ground assaults cut supply routes. There have been attacks on crowded marketplaces in predominantly Muslim areas and the killings and kidnappings of schoolchildren. The targeting of students accounts for its nickname Boko Haram, which means Western education is sinful or forbidden. They strongly seek to Christianise the society. They exploit the condition of those who are displaced under the raging war, providing them with food and shelter and then Christianising their children. The militants will respond to that threat by booby-trapping and blowing up every church that we are able to reach, and killing all of those (Christians) who we find from the citizens of the cross.”

A political analyst at the Niamey University Issoufoc Yahaya has now been quoted as saying to The Wall Street Journal, “You can’t really be more barbaric and more savage than Shekau. He’s the pinnacle of barbarism.” His replacement is said to have led to clashes between the supporters of both leaders, killing militants. Shekau meanwhile has rejected Barnawi’s appointment and has accused him of apostasy. Amid the internal fight, the two factions, reports said have been constantly clashing and accusing each other of abandoning their faith.

Worlds two bloodthirsty terror groups are at war ISIS locks horns with Boko Haram