BOKO HARAM: BORROWING POWER FROM AN OUTSIDE CONTEXT TO STRIKE GREATER TERROR?

In a move that seemed engineered to launch a publicity campaign to strike fear into the hearts of sub-Saharan Africans, and garner intense western media attention, on Sunday, 7 March 2015, the Islamist Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram pledged its allegiance to The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). What does this pledge of allegiance to ISIS mean?  Will it expand Boko Haram’s effective terrorist capacity, or simply make sub-Saharan Africa and the western world fear it more?

Boko Haram, which means “Western education is forbidden”, is an Islamist terrorist group based in North-East Nigeria, founded in 2002. The group’s official Arabic name is Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’Awati Wal-Jihad, meaning, “Group of the People of Sunnah for Preaching and Jihad”. Though the group is based in Nigeria, it is also active in neighboring African countries such as Cameroon, and Niger, and in Chad.

Boko Haram was founded as a Sunni Islamic fundamentalist movement that believed in a strict form of sharia law. It later developed into a Salfist-jihadi group in 2009. Its goals are to establish an Islamic state within Nigeria.  So far, the group has been successful in capturing several states within the country that the government has had much trouble trying to get back.

Boko Haram has been responsible for many violent acts, and was responsible for the deaths of over 5,000 civilians between July 2009 and June 2014. The first most notable violent uprising was in 2009 when Boko Haram clashed and rioted against police in reaction to the confiscation of several weapons, and the arrest of several Boko Haram members. This also led to the arrest of former Boko Haram leader Mohammed Yusuf, who died in custody while “attempting to escape”.

In September of 2010, Boko Haram successfully broke one hundred and five of its members out of prison in Maiduguri, and went on to conduct various attacks in northern Nigeria. In 2011, the group managed to bomb the United Nations Headquarters in Abuja, which marked the first time that the group had struck at a Western target.

In 2012, the Nigerian Government was forced to declare a State of Emergency because of the 115 attacks that Boko Haram had carried out in 2011, with a total death toll of five hundred and fifty people. After the declaration, the leaders of Boko Haram gave all southern Nigerians living in the north three days to leave, and after those three days, started conducting attacks on Christians and members of the Igbo ethnic group.
The attack that garnered the most international attention was the 2014 kidnapping of over two hundred and seventy six Nigerian schoolgirls. Fifty of the girls managed to escape, but to date, the remainder is still captive. Current Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, announced his intention to sell all of the girls into slavery.

The majority of Boko Haram’s attacks have been conducted in Nigeria, however, since 2014, the group has begun to spread to countries such as Cameroon, Niger, and Chad, and it has announced that it will start attacking in neighboring Benin.

The reason the pledge to ISIS is so important is because it indicates that Boko Haram may have plans to expand throughout West Africa. The group is no longer solely a Nigeria-focused group. Though its primary goal will remain for Boko Haram to establish an Islamic State in Nigeria, by pledging allegiance to ISIS, and perhaps entering ISIS’ well-funded terrorist network, Boko Haram may now become a serious threat to the majority of West African countries. 

The moment Boko Haram pledged its allegiance to ISIS, people around the world asked themselves what changes Boko Haram would make. Even before Boko Haram’s pledge of ISIS allegiance, its strategy had begun to shift in a way that seemed to mimic the ISIS strategy. Mere days before Boko Haram’s pledge, it released an ISIS-style video that showed the beheading of two men at the hands of the group.

Though neither media outlets nor governments could confirm that the video was authentic, just the fact that Boko Haram released a violent beheading video appeared to indicate a ratcheting up of the group’s terror strategy that I believe will persist. 

Due to Boko Haram’s recent pledge, I believe that the group will begin to focus beyond Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger, and will attempt to spread throughout the rest of West Africa into countries such as Mali and Senegal.

Now that ISIS has accepted Boko Haram’s pledge, its attack strategy may shift in a way that the world has not seen before. In the past, Boko Haram has sent hundreds of militants to invade and completely destroy whole villages, leaving countless dead. Now that Boko Haram is officially a branch of ISIS, I believe that they will conduct more targeted terrorist attack throughout West Africa, such as the shooting at a nightclub in Bamako, Mali, which left five dead.

Boko Haram is going to stop focusing on the villages, and start trying to attack in the big cities where there will be more attention. So far, though its attacks have been brutal and left many dead.  Most Boko Haram attacks, aside from the kidnapping of more than two hundred schoolgirls, have failed to truly capture worldwide attention. 

Bolstered and perhaps newly emboldened by its pledge of allegiance to ISIS, Boko Haram may not only step up its efforts in terms of attacks in West Africa, but may also begin to focus more on Western targets such as UN offices, NGOs, and foreigners travelling in territories controlled by Boko Haram. Certainly, the relative porosity of West Africa’s borders, combined with the remoteness of certain national territories that are not effectively controlled by their governments, will make it easy for it to expand to countries such as Burkina Faso, Mali, and Senegal, and beyond these countries to Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea.

With this pledge, Boko Haram threatens to be a much greater source of terror to the entire world. Whether or not its allegiance to ISIS results in the material and financial means to make good on this threat remains to be seen.

klake@seneplus.com