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 Re: النيجر الأزمة المقبلة... يحاصرها المتطرفون في مالي ونيجيريا (Re: mwahib idriss)
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بوكو حرام
Boko Haram’s International Connections
Jan 14, 2013
Author: Jacob Zenn
Since carrying out its first attack under Abubakar Shekau’s leadership in September 2010, Boko Haram has unleashed a wave of violence in northern Nigeria, mostly targeted against government personnel and security officers, Muslim politicians and traditional Muslim religious leaders, and Christians.[1] Although the insurgency began as a local movement in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno State, since August 2011 there have been increasing signs of international collaboration between Boko Haram and militants outside Nigerian territory, such as in Borno State’s border region, northern Mali, the Sahel, Somalia and other countries in the Muslim world. As a result of these international connections, Boko Haram, which in 2009 was known as a “machete-wielding mob,” has now matched—and even exceeded—the capabilities of some al-Qa`ida affiliates, while also incorporating al-Qa`ida ideology into the locally driven motives for the insurgency in northern Nigeria.
This article examines Boko Haram’s international connections and their impact on the insurgency in northern Nigeria.
Boko Haram in Mali
In November 2012, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO)[2] and al-Qa`ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) captured Menaka in Mali’s Gao region from the secular Tuareg-led militia, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA). An MNLA spokesman said that MUJAO, AQIM and Boko Haram prevented the local population from leaving the city so that they could be used as human shields.[3] Several sources corroborate the spokesman’s claim that Boko Haram fighters are present in Mali.
First, news reports from Mali said that 100 Boko Haram militants reinforced MUJAO’s positions in the battle for Gao and that Boko Haram helped MUJAO raid the Algerian consulate in Gao and kidnap the vice-consul, who was executed by MUJAO on September 2, 2012, and that Boko Haram supported MUJAO, AQIM and Ansar Eddine in their January 8, 2013, attack on Kona, central Mopti region.[4] Second, displaced persons from Gao, including a former parliamentarian, said that Boko Haram is training at MUJAO-run camps.[5] Third, military officials from Niger said that Boko Haram militants are transiting Niger en route to Mali on a daily basis.[6] Fourth, a MUJAO commander said in an interview with a Beninese journalist for Radio France Internationale that Boko Haram members were arriving in Gao en masse.[7] Fifth, U.S. Africa Command General Carter Ham, who in January 2012 said Boko Haram has links to AQIM and al-Shabab, said in November that Boko Haram militants train in camps in northern Mali and most likely receive financing and explosives from AQIM.[8] In addition, the U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, Nigerian minister of foreign affairs, Nigerien foreign minister, Malian foreign minister and Algerian minister for Maghreb and African affairs report that Boko Haram and AQIM are coordinating operations in northern Mali.[9]
A Boko Haram video released on November 29, 2012, suggested that Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau may be one of the Boko Haram militants in northern Mali. The video emerged only one month after a Nigerian media source reported that Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan discussed Shekau coordinating attacks in northern Nigeria from northern Mali during the president’s October 17 visit to Niamey and October 19 visit to Bamako.[10] In contrast to Shekau’s first five video statements of 2012, the November 29 video is the first to show Shekau not seated in a room wearing traditional Islamic dress, but wearing green camouflaged military fatigues and training in a desert with heavily armed and veiled militants. He did not speak in Hausa, the predominant language of northern Nigeria, but spoke entirely in Arabic, and he praised the “brothers and shaykhs in the Islamic Maghreb” and “soldiers of the Islamic State of Mali.”[11] The video was also not disseminated via YouTube like the previous five videos, but posted on a jihadist online forum. In the video, Shekau appealed to al-Qa`ida by paying homage to “martyred” leaders such as Usama bin Ladin, Abu Yahya al-Libi and Abu Mus`ab al-Zarqawi. He recited five of the ten suras in the Qur’an that are most commonly quoted by al-Qa`ida, and he called the United States, the United Kingdom, Nigeria and Israel “crusaders” and warned them that “jihad has begun.”[12]
Even if Shekau is not in Mali, it is unlikely that he is still in Nigeria. In contrast to Mali’s and Niger’s vast desert regions, where AQIM has hosted training camps since the mid-2000s that Boko Haram members have attended, northeastern Nigeria’s desert is not known to have terrorist training camps and is not particularly remote or uninhabited.[13] Shekau and the other militants would have also placed themselves at unprecedented risk to train in broad daylight, as seen on the video, in Nigeria only days after Abuja announced a $320,000 reward for information leading to Shekau’s capture and lesser rewards for 18 Boko Haram Shura Committee members.[14]
Boko Haram militants could have joined the insurgency in northern Mali in alliance with MUJAO and AQIM, and Abubakar Shekau and his commanders may have found refuge in northern Mali or Niger to escape the Nigerian security forces crackdown on Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria. The crackdown led to the capture or killing of more than 10 commanders since September 2012, as well as Shekau’s spokesman, one of his wives and his daughter.[15] Shekau and other commanders are likely coming into greater contact with AQIM and therefore attempting to steer Boko Haram’s ideology closer to al-Qa`ida.
Borno’s Border Region
While some Boko Haram members have come from the parts of Niger, Chad and Cameroon that border Borno State and where the three main languages of Borno—Hausa, Kanuri and Arabic—are spoken, few members are reported to have come from outside of those three countries or Nigeria.[16] According to one of Boko Haram founder Muhammad Yusuf’s relatives, 40% of Boko Haram’s funding comes from outside of Nigeria, and as many as one-third of its members fled Nigeria following major clashes with the government in July 2009.[17]
The architect of those clashes was a Nigerien, Abubakar Kilakam. While Kilakam was arrested and deported to Niger, several other Nigerien Boko Haram leaders are still in Nigeria, including Ali Jalingo, who masterminded bombings in Borno State and escaped an attempt to capture him in Benue State on January 7, 2013.[18] Other Boko Haram leaders are reportedly still hiding in Diffa, Niger, and Boko Haram cells were uncovered in Zinder, Niger in September 2012 and Diffa in December 2011 and February 2012.[19] Similarly, in 2012, Boko Haram members have been reported in several primarily Baggara Arabic-speaking cities of Far North Province, Cameroon, including Fotokol, Kousseri, Mora and the border town of Banki-Amchide, where on December 19, 2012, Cameroonian security forces arrested 31 suspected Boko Haram members, including two Nigeriens, and confirmed that a Boko Haram logistics network facilitates “trans-border operations” and that Boko Haram uses the border area to “regroup after attacks in Nigeria, preparing for the next attacks.”[20] Cameroon’s similar characteristics to Nigeria, such as a relatively poor majority Muslim north, which has seen trade reduced because of Boko Haram attacks on border markets and stricter border monitoring, and a wealthier majority Christian south, also make it an ideal recruiting ground for the group.[21]
In terms of geography, Niger’s vast desert provides an ideal training ground and refuge for Boko Haram, while the Mandara Mountains along the Nigeria-Cameroon border, where state authority is weak and smuggling is pervasive, provides an ideal supply route, hideout and staging ground. The recent upsurge in Boko Haram attacks in rural towns at the foothills of the Mandara Mountains in Adamawa State, where in 2004 Muhammad Yusuf’s followers had their first major battles with the Nigerian security forces, support the claims made by high-level Nigerian and Cameroonian officials that Boko Haram is operating from bases in Cameroon.[22] Some of these attacks include: a December 13, 2012, burning of a police station in Madagali, five miles from the border; a December 28 night raid on a prison, customs office, education administration complex and Divisional Police Headquarters in Maiha, three miles from the border, which killed 21 people, and a separate attack on Fufore, five miles from the border; a December 31 attack on the Divisional Police Headquarters in Hong, 25 miles from the border; and a January 3, 2013, attack involving rocket-propelled grenades fired at government buildings and a police station in Song, 20 miles from the border.[23]
Boko Haram takes advantage of Niger, Chad and Cameroon for refuge, training, transit, attack planning and recruitment. Boko Haram does not, however, carry out attacks in those countries, possibly to prevent those governments from cracking down on the group and because Boko Haram’s grievances are rooted in Nigeria. The porosity of the border region is one reason why the first Boko Haram base called “Afghanistan” in 2003 was situated only two miles from Nigeria’s border with Niger. As reports of Boko Haram in Niger and Cameroon have shown, the border region still serves similar purposes for Boko Haram as it did in 2003.
Boko Haram Diplomacy in Saudi Arabia and Senegal
Boko Haram appears to have a “diplomatic” presence in Saudi Arabia, in addition to other militant connections. In August 2012, a Boko Haram faction led by Abu Muhammed negotiated in Mecca with a Nigerian government team led by National Security Adviser Sambo Dasuki and advised by General Muhammed Shuwa. President Jonathan has rejected new talks with this faction, however, on the grounds that “there can be no dialogue” with Boko Haram because it is “faceless.”[24] Abu Muhammed’s proposed negotiating team included, among others, the Cameroonian Mamman Nur, who lost a power struggle with Shekau to lead what became the main Boko Haram faction after Muhammad Yusuf’s death in July 2009.[25] Therefore, Abu Muhammed’s claim to represent Shekau’s faction is likely false, and Shekau’s spokesman called Abu Muhammed a “fake” in August 2012.[26]
Boko Haram also has a deeper history of involvement in Saudi Arabia: Muhammad Yusuf found refuge in Saudi Arabia to escape a Nigerian security forces crackdown in 2004; Boko Haram has reportedly received funding with the help of AQIM from organizations in the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia; and Boko Haram’s spokesman claimed that Boko Haram leaders met with al-Qa`ida in Saudi Arabia during the lesser hajj (umra) in August 2011.[27] More recently, the leader of a Boko Haram cell that was responsible for the November 25, 2012, attack on a church inside a military barracks in Jaji, Kaduna, was in Saudi Arabia during the months prior to the attack.[28]
Boko Haram may also have had dialogue with the Nigerian government in Senegal, where in August 2012 the imam of the Grand Mosque in Bignona, southern Senegal, claimed that Boko Haram was recruiting local youths.[29] In December 2012, Nigerian media reported that President Jonathan’s adviser and minister of Niger Delta affairs, Godsday Orubebe, held secret negotiations with Boko Haram commanders in Senegal arranged by the Malian and Senegalese secret services.[30] Based on Orubebe’s credentials as the “author” of the government’s arms-for-amnesty peace program with Niger Delta militants in 2009, he may have discussed the release of Boko Haram members from prison and “compensation” for the destruction of mosques and Boko Haram members’ homes, which are demands shared by all Boko Haram factions.[31]
Impact on Northern Nigeria
Emulating the Taliban
Boko Haram has long drawn inspiration from the Taliban and was called the “Nigerian Taliban” by outsiders from 2003 until 2009. Some Boko Haram members have reportedly trained in Afghanistan, and in northern Nigeria Boko Haram appears to have adopted tactics similar to the Taliban.[32] For example, in the second half of 2012, Boko Haram systematically destroyed hundreds of telecom towers, causing millions of dollars of damages and preventing the security forces from tracking down its members; used text messages to coerce government officials against obstructing Boko Haram operations and warned civilians against cooperating with the government; extorted “taxes” from merchants with the threat of death to the family members of anyone who does not pay; and employed complex Haqqani-style attacks with multiple suicide bombers. President Jonathan said suicide bombings were “completely alien” to Nigeria after Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to detonate explosives in his undergarments on a Detroit-bound airliner on behalf of al-Qa`ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in 2009. On June 16, 2011, however, one day after Boko Haram warned that its members arrived from Somalia “where they received real training on warfare,” Boko Haram carried out its first suicide car bombing at the Federal Police Headquarters in Abuja, and then in August 2011 the Somali-trained Mamman Nur masterminded another suicide car bombing at the UN Headquarters in Abuja.[33] After more than 30 Boko Haram suicide attacks in 2012, it is now fathomable that Boko Haram could employ female suicide bombers, a tactic which the Taliban have employed in Afghanistan since June 2010.[34]
As a sign of Boko Haram’s desire to hold territory, the group has also planted flags with its logo in its desired future capital of Damatru, Yobe State, and mobilized 500 supporters in the streets of Damatru in December 2011 as a show of force after the commissioner of police said there were no Boko Haram members in the state.[35]
Weapons Procurement
Boko Haram has procured weapons from abroad, which was described as a “worrisome development” by the Nigerian chief superintendent of police in August 2012.[36] Such weapons include rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) with a 900 meter range for attacking hardened targets from long distances and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) for ambushing military and police convoys.[37] There is also concern that Boko Haram could use Libyan-made man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) to shoot down commercial airlines flying into Niger, Chad and Nigeria—a tactic employed in 2002 by an al-Qa`ida-linked Somali terrorist cell on a Mombasa-borne Israeli El Al airlines flight.[38] The threat of a Boko Haram attack on aviation prompted Nigeria to place all airports in the country on 24-hour security surveillance during the Christmas holiday in December 2012.[39] The weapons in Boko Haram’s “upgrade” often enter the country through illegal or unmanned border crossings and sometimes with the collaboration of immigration officials.[40] Boko Haram attacks on border posts, such as a 50-man attack at Gamboru-Ngala on the Nigerian side of the border with Cameroon on December 2, 2012, are often intended as a diversion to smuggle weapons through other border areas.[41]
Target Selection
Boko Haram’s target selection has also been influenced by its interaction with militants abroad. The Cameroonian Mamman Nur, who is wanted by Interpol and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for masterminding the August 26, 2011, bombing of the UN Headquarters in Abuja, reportedly fled to Chad and then traveled to Somalia to receive explosives training from al-Shabab before returning to Nigeria in the weeks before the attack.[42] The UN attack remains the only time Boko Haram has targeted an international institution and was similar to al-Qa`ida’s attack on the UN building in Baghdad in 2003 and AQIM’s attack on the UN building in Algiers in 2007.
In 2012, the group also showed a new focus on foreigners. A British and Italian hostage were killed in Sokoto in March; a German hostage was killed in Kano in June; a French hostage was kidnapped in Katsina in December; and a number of Chinese and Indians were killed in Borno in late 2012.[43]
Transnational Ideology
As seen in Shekau’s November 29 video statement, interaction with Islamist militias has likely caused a shift in Shekau’s messaging, which now resembles al-Qa`ida’s. The Boko Haram faction Ansaru[44] has also embraced an ideology similar to MUJAO as well as the primary tactic of MUJAO and AQIM: kidnapping foreigners.[45] Ansaru was placed on the UK Proscribed Terror List on November 23, 2012, for kidnapping and killing a British and Italian hostage in March 2012 while operating under the name “al-Qa`ida in the Lands Beyond the Sahel.” On December 24, 2012, Ansaru also claimed the kidnapping of a French engineer in Katsina 30 miles from the Nigerien border and said it would continue attacking the French government and French citizens until France ends its ban on the Islamic veil and its “major role in the planned attack on the Islamic state in northern Mali,” which is virtually the same warning that MUJAO’s and AQIM’s leaders have issued to France.[46] According to the United Kingdom, Ansaru is “anti-Western” and “broadly aligned” to al-Qa`ida, while in its own words Ansaru says it wants to restore the “dignity of Usman dan Fodio.”[47] Similarly, MUJAO proclaimed at the time of its founding in December 2011 that it wants to spread jihad in West Africa and that its members are “ideological descendants” of Usman dan Fodio.[48] MUJAO and Boko Haram have also both threatened to attack the West when their capabilities enable them to do so.[49]
Conclusion
At a time when even al-Qa`ida is questioning its own brand, militant groups need not have formal affiliation with al-Qa`ida to have an international agenda.[50] Boko Haram’s connections to militants in northern Mali, the Sahel and elsewhere in the Muslim world enable it to receive and provide support to other Islamist militias. As a result, Boko Haram will be capable of surviving outside of its main base of operations in Borno State if the Nigerian security forces drive out key leaders from Nigeria such as Abubakar Shekau. Moreover, Boko Haram has been able to draw on al-Qa`ida’s ideology and take advantage of anti-government and anti-Western sentiment in northern Nigeria to justify its existence and recruit new members from Nigeria and Borno’s border region.[51]
As evidenced by the collapse of the Malian state when Tuareg fighters based in Libya returned to “Azawad” after the fall of the Mu`ammar Qadhafi regime, the transfer of Boko Haram fighters from Nigeria to other countries in the Sahel does not bode well for the region. It means Nigeria’s problem will become another country’s problem, such as Mali, Cameroon or Niger, or smaller countries like Guinea, Burkina Faso and Senegal. Like northern Nigeria, these countries have majority Muslim populations, artificial borders, ethnic conflicts, insufficient educational and career opportunities for youths and fragile democratic institutions, and they have all witnessed Islamist militant infiltration in their countries and their countrymen traveling to northern Mali to join the Islamist militias in 2012. Although the ethnic groups in some of these countries differ from northern Nigeria, Boko Haram and Ansaru have the potential to inspire other “Boko Harams” in West Africa with their ideologies that fault the secular government, democracy and the West for their troubles and hark back to a time when Usman dan Fodio and the Islamic caliphate brought “glory” and “dignity” to the Muslims of the region.
Jacob Zenn is an analyst of African and Eurasian Affairs for The Jamestown Foundation and author of the Occasional Report entitled “Northern Nigeria’s Boko Haram: The Prize in al-Qaeda’s Africa Strategy,” published by The Jamestown Foundation in November 2012. In 2012, he conducted field research in Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon on the socioeconomic factors behind the Boko Haram insurgency. Mr. Zenn earned a J.D. from Georgetown Law, where he was a Global Law Scholar, and a graduate degree in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins SAIS Center for Chinese-American Studies in Nanjing, China. He has spoken at international conferences on Boko Haram and is frequently interviewed by international media
(عدل بواسطة mwahib idriss on 01-22-2013, 10:22 PM)
(عدل بواسطة mwahib idriss on 01-22-2013, 10:26 PM)
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أبوبكر أبوالقاسم
mustafa bashar
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست